dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Dominion Voter Systems Bun

DOMINION VOTER SYSEMS / DIEBOLD

“For the record, late last year, Diebold's failed election division (renamed Premier in 2007 after years of embarrassment over their voting systems) was purchased for a pittance by ES&S, which was subsequently forced by the DoJ to sell off the assets due to anti-trust concerns. Two weeks ago, ES&S finally found a buyer they approved of (yes, the DoJ gave them that right, for some reason, in their settlement). The new owner of whatever is left of Diebold Voting System's assets is now a Canadian-based firm with an insanely totalitarian name: Dominion Voting [PDF].

While there was much (appropriate) outrage and concern, particularly from the Right, over the foreign-ownership of the nation's third largest e-voting company, Sequoia - whose parent company, the Venezuelan-based, Chavez-tied Smartmatic was forced Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) into what appears to have been a sham sell-off) - we've yet to hear a whimper of concern about the control of the U.S.' second largest voting machine company having its roots in Canada.”

https://www.bradblog.com/?p=7871

Staple Street Capital was started inside the carlyle Group. http://staplestreetcapital.com/Team

The co-founders of Staple Street Capital, Stephen D. Owens and Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, are veterans of The carlyle Group and Cerberus Capital Management, respectively, and first worked together in carlyle's US Buyout Group starting in 1998. Our team has completed over 100 transactions involving complicated corporate carve outs, operational turnarounds, management led buyouts, public-to-privates, restructurings, refinancings and/or recapitalizations.

They bought Dominion

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dominion-voting-systems-acquired-by-its-management-team-and-staple-street-capital-300681752.html

Deepstate Private Spy Network

bout a year ago, I wangled a media invitation to a "leadership dinner" in northern ?Virginia sponsored by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. INSA is a powerful but ?little-known coalition established in 2005 by companies working for the National Security Agency. In recent years, it has become the premier organization for the men and women who run the massive cyberintelligence-industrial complex that encircles Washington, DC.

Corrupt insiders?

"ES&S and Dominion are both owned by private equity, which means we don’t know who funds and controls them. And what little we do know is concerning.

ES&S, which by itself accounts for 44 percent of US election equipment, received its initial financing from the families of Nelson Bunker Hunt and Howard Ahmanson, Jr., right-wing billionaires who also contributed substantially to the Chalcedon Foundation, Christian Reconstruction’s main think tank.

In 2000, ES&S’s founder, Bob Urosevich, was appointed President and Chief Operating Officer of another mega-vendor, Global Election Systems, which later changed its name to Diebold and was acquired by ES&S in 2009. Urosevich’s brother remained at ES&S the whole time as a Senior VP.

It was a Global/Diebold voting machine that “lost” 16,000 Gore votes in the 2000 presidential election in which George W. Bush was declared victorious over Al Gore by just 537 votes in Florida. The “Volusia error” was discovered only because an alert poll worker happened to notice Gore’s total dropping which should never happen — absent fraud or error. It is unknown whether other machines experienced similar issues because Bush — with an assist from future Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts — succeeded in stopping the recount.

As discovered by Black Box Voting author Bev Harris, Global’s largest shareholder & Senior Vice President was Jeffrey Dean, a convicted embezzler who programmed voting machines for the company. According to the Guardian, Dean programmed ⅓ of the machines in 37 states used in the 2004 presidential election.”

https://medium.com/@jennycohn1/americas-electronic-voting-system-is-corrupted-to-the-core-1f55f34f346e

cont

>>11536231

cont

DIEBOLD

In August 2004, the Department of Homeland Security issued a Cyber Security Bulletin regarding Diebold’s “GEMS” central tabulator, stating that “a vulnerability exists due to an undocumented backdoor account, which could [allow] a local or remote authenticated user [to] modify votes.”

The control cards that transfer the vote totals from the precincts to the central tabulators are another potential target for bad actors. From 2000 through at least 2017, ES&S got its control cards from a company called Vikant whose owner refused to tell an investigative reporter where the cards were made.

NOTE* “In fact, Vikant Corp., a Chicago-area company owned by Alex Kantarovick, formerly of Minsk, Belorussia (also known as White Russia, formerly U.S.S.R.), supplies the all-important 'control cards' to Election Systems & Software (ES&S), the world's largest election management company, writes reporter Christopher Bollyn. According to ES&S, they have "handled more than 40,000 of the world's most important events and elections. ES&S systems have counted approximately 60% of the U.S. national vote for the past four presidential elections. In the U.S. 2000 general election, ES&S systems counted over 100 million ballots.

Getting back to Kantarovich, he would not disclose where the control cards are made, except they aren't made in America, writes Bollyn. Nor would he discuss his previous employment. Bollyn says he got some not-too-thinly-veiled threats from Kantarovich.

Kantarovich sounds more like the Russian mafia, than a legitimate businessman.

Air America Radio's Mike Malloy gave the most succinct and passionate explanation in his Wednesday, November 3, 2004, program :

"The American vote count is controlled by three major corporate players, Diebold, ESS, Sequoia, and a fourth, SAIC, Science Applications International. All four are hard-wired into the Bush power structure, the Bush crime family.

"They have been given millions of dollars by the Bush regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines that were just used in the 2004 election. The technology involved had a trial run during the 2002 mid-term elections. Georgia had Diebold machines in every precinct. As a result, a popular Democratic governor and senator were both unseated in what the media called an "amazing" 16 percent swing.

"Diebold's Walden O'Dell, a top Bush fundraiser, publicly committed himself to delivering his home state Ohio's votes to Bush. At Diebold, the election division is run by Bob Urosevich. Bob's brother, Todd, is a top executive at "rival" ES&S. The brothers were originally staked by Howard Ahmanson, a member of the Council For National Policy, a right-wing steering group stacked with Bush true believers. Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the extremist Christian Reconstruction Movement, which advocates the theocratic takeover of American democracy.

"The four companies are interconnected; they are not four "competitors". Ahmanson has large stakes in ES&S, whose former CEO was Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. When Hagel ran for office, his own company counted the votes, and his victory was considered "an amazing upset". Hagel still has a million dollar stake in ES&S.

"Sequoia is the corporate parent of a private equity firm, Madison Dearborn, which is partner in the Carlyle Group. (Also see here.)

"Meanwhile, SAIC is referred to a "shadowy defense contractor". They have gotten into the vote count game both directly and through spinoffs by its top brass, including Admiral Bill Owens, former military aide to Dick Cheney, and Carlyle Group honcho Frank Carlucci and ex-CIA chief Robert Gates. SAIC's history of fraud charges and security "lapses" haven't prevented it from becoming one of the largest Pentagon and CIA contractors, and will doubtless encounter few obstacles in its entrance into the vote counting business. "

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x31265

cont

>>11536231

>>11536288

Meanwhile, as reported in Bloomberg and Salon and highlighted during a recent election-security panel by SMARTelections.us, ES&S (Diebold) voting machines in both Tennessee and Georgia seem to be “losing” large numbers of votes from predominantly black neighborhoods. It was concerned citizens, rather than election officials or campaigns, who discovered these problems by reviewing precinct totals (as shown on precinct poll tapes). The missing black votes in Georgia are now the subject of a citizen-funded lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Coalition for Good Governance. As a result of the lawsuit, the House has opened an investigation as well. Concerned citizens can donate to the litigation, which has national implications given ES&S’s national presence, via this link: https://coalitionforgoodgovernance.org/donate/

Compared to ES&S, even less is known about Dominion, which accounts for 37 percent of US election equipment. Dominion was a Canadian company that became a major player in US elections when the Department of Justice forced ES&S to sell some of Diebold’s assets because the combined ES&S/Diebold company had accounted for a whopping 70 percent of US election equipment.

It was Dominion that rose from obscurity to buy those Diebold assets in 2010. We don’t know if Dominion is related to ES&S, or if it’s a legitimate competitor because it is also owned by private equity.

What we do know is that Dominion does its programming in Serbia. And a former executive of GTech/IGT — an international gaming company and former Paul Manafort client — joined Dominion as a Senior Vice President in June 2016.

*NOTE- GAMING CO. (we just learned scorecard operates through gaming sites and others.

Another former executive of GTech/IGT, Donald Sweitzer, who once worked for Paul Manafort, sits on the Board of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems with Ken Blackwell (infamous former Ohio Secretary of State) and Tad DeVine (Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign advisor).

These connections are concerning because, among other reasons, DeVine worked with Paul Manafort and Rick Gates (Manafort’s partner) as recently as 2014 to promote Vladimir Putin’s candidate and other interests in Ukraine and also advised the 2014 campaign of pro-Putin Aleksandar Vučić in Serbia.

As for Blackwell, he infamously hired Mike Connell (owner of GovTech and New Media Communications) and Jeff Averbeck (owner of Smartech and Airnet) to create a mirror website and backup server in Tennessee for Ohio’s election-night returns during the 2004 presidential election. George W. Bush was declared the victor of that election, defying the exit polls, which Blackwell had attempted to block in Ohio.

After the 2004 election, Ohio attorney Cliff Arnebeck filed a lawsuit alleging that Karl Rove and his associates had stolen the election by electronically manipulating Ohio’s results. On November 3, 2008, the day before the 2008 presidential election, Arneback “took a sworn deposition from Connell, who had repeatedly tried to quash [the] subpoena.” According to Harpers, Blackwell hired Connell, an anti-abortion activist, in 2004 “to design a website that would post Ohio election results to the public” and to “create a ‘mirror site’ that would kick in to display the vote totals if the official Ohio servers were overwhelmed.” The backup server was provided by Smartech, which was headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee and whose “servers hosted hundreds of high-profile Republican websites (and later on, an assortment of anti-Obama websites).”

Connell testified in deposition that the system he created “was not connected to the [county or state] tabulators in any way.” According to Harpers, he also “denied… any knowledge of whether the mirror site had even been activated,” but Smartech’s server did go “into action at 11:14 p.m. on Election Day.” The transfer of Ohio’s vote count to the backup server remains a mystery because there was no evidence that the main server had failed. According to Global Research, “Connell swore under oath that, ‘[t] o the best of my knowledge, it was not a fail-over case scenario…” Bob Magnan, a state IT specialist for Blackwell in 2004 “agreed that there was no failover scenario”

Here is a link to Mike Connell’s deposition testimony: https://bradblog.com/Docs/Deposition_MichaelConnell_110308.pdf. Although Connell was subpoenaed to testify at trial, he died in a private plane crash soon after and thus never provided that testimony.

https://medium.com/@jennycohn1/americas-electronic-voting-system-is-corrupted-to-the-core-1f55f34f346e

cont

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>>11536310

Remote Access

Vendor lies re: election security

Voting machine vendors have an alarming history of deception. In July 2018, cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter reported that, despite ES&S’s prior denials, ES&S’s election-management system (EMS) computers were sold with remote access software between 2000 and 2006. ES&S won’t say where it installed the remote access software that it lied about, but claims it’s been removed. According to Zetter’s article, Diebold’s EMS computers were sold with remote access software as well, and Dominion refused to comment.

The installation of remote access software in EMS computers is a big deal because these are centralized county or state computers used to program all voting machines in the county or state. According to Zetter’s reporting, some of these computers also include the central tabulators that aggregate all precinct totals.

But the vendor lies don’t end there. On August 8, 2019, Zetter further reported that ES&S’s EMS computers also connect to the internet, something else that ES&S had said was not the case but that leading election-security experts had long suspected.

Meanwhile, ES&S installed wireless modems in ballot scanners in Florida, Wisconsin, and Illinois starting in about 2015. Although some election officials claimed that these modems do not connect to the internet, this too was a lie, as further reported by Zetter.

https://medium.com/@jennycohn1/americas-electronic-voting-system-is-corrupted-to-the-core-1f55f34f346e

SMARTECH (Blackwell (CFR) -Connell link)

Another former executive of GTech/IGT, Donald Sweitzer, who once worked for Paul Manafort, sits on the Board of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems with Ken Blackwell (infamous former Ohio Secretary of State) and Tad DeVine (Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign advisor).

These connections are concerning because, among other reasons, DeVine worked with Paul Manafort and Rick Gates (Manafort’s partner) as recently as 2014 to promote Vladimir Putin’s candidate and other interests in Ukraine and also advised the 2014 campaign of pro-Putin Aleksandar Vučić in Serbia.

As for Blackwell, he infamously hired Mike Connell (owner of GovTech and New Media Communications) and Jeff Averbeck (owner of Smartech and Airnet) to create a mirror website and backup server in Tennessee for Ohio’s election-night returns during the 2004 presidential election. George W. Bush was declared the victor of that election, defying the exit polls, which Blackwell had attempted to block in Ohio.

SMARTECH / PROMIS

Microsoft Corporation, "Microsoft and VARBusiness Announce “Best Solutions for Small Business” Contest Winners", 1998/06/08

https://news.microsoft.com/1998/06/08/microsoft-and-varbusiness-announce-best-solutions-for-small-business-contest-winners/

Averbeck's former company won a 1998 award for PROMIS-like software: "The grand prize was awarded to Executive Consulting Services Inc. of Chattanooga, Tenn., for its installation in a local law firm of a networked solution running on Microsoft BackOffice® Small Business Server with Microsoft Access 97 Runtime. Because the bankruptcy industry has gone to a per-case fee arrangement, Executive Consulting Services developed a software package that tracks bankruptcy and collection cases, allows electronic court filing, schedules dockets, receives and calculates payments and payoffs with or without interest, and schedules the attorneys’ time. Its installation for Fields & Bible, PC has allowed the law firm to go from 150 cases per month to well over 650 cases per month in four states, increasing monthly revenue by 30 percent. “We value this recognition of our efforts to serve the small-business market effectively,” said Jeff Averbeck, president of Executive Consulting Services Inc."

PROMIS successors have names like SMART and TECH, as noted by Mike Ruppert's article linked on the Inslaw affair page

http://cavdef.org/w/index.php?title=Jeff_Averbeck

cont

SMARTECH / MICHAEL CONNELL

Michael Connell was a Republican IT consultant with close relations to the Bush family and Karl Rove. He got his start working on numerous political campaigns before entering the political technology business. Connell founded two companies, New Media Communications for campaign services and GovTech Solutions for government services, and assisted other GOP tech firms and lobbying groups. New Media scored dozens of contracts from Republican campaigns, national and state parties, and interest groups, while GovTech built systems for the White House, congressional subcommittees, and more.

As the Bush Administration became engulfed in scandals, Connell began to emerge as a key player. He was behind the White House email system, central to the US attorneys scandal and Don Siegelman prosecution, and played a role in building the election reporting system for the 2004 Ohio election, which enabled electronic vote rigging. Connell was subpoenaed in 2008 for an election lawsuit concerning 2004 Ohio. While evasive at his November deposition, he later appeared to be struggling with his conscience and indicated a desire to testify further. In late December 2008, he was killed when his private plane crashed. The circumstances of his death were suspect, especially as Connell had received threats over his testimony and encountered suspicious problems with his plane.

*NOTE- Search archives for Siegelman (connects to Scarborough murder, 9/11, ptech etc) these posts:

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>>9902611

(within these posts is discussion of Jack Abramhoff, he was also a lobbyist for Diebold)

Velvet Revolution offered a reward to Abramoff on 2006/01/02 if he revealed information about the theft of the 2004 election:

"We now make an offer directly to Mr. Abramoff. VR will pay $100,000 toward his legal bills if he provides us and the Department of Justice with conclusive proof that the 2004 Presidential election was rigged in favor of the Republicans. We have received numerous tips that Mr. Abramoff made deals with Republican power brokers who were in a position to illegally rig the election. Moreover, we have indications that he had ties with folks associated with Diebold and ES&S. Finally, press accounts have revealed that much of the money paid out by Abramoff was used to affect elections, leading us to conclude that he should know of illegal schemes to rig the vote."

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x407579

*more info on Jack Abramhoff at cavdef.org/w/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff

cont

Family and early life

GOP political consulting

In 1984, while studying marketing at the University of Iowa, Connell became deeply involved with Republican politics.[1] He began his political career in 1986 as the Finance Director for Jim Leach's congressional reelection campaign. For the 1988 presidential election, Connell worked on George H.W. Bush's Iowa campaign and was then promoted to Bush's national campaign, designing a delegate tracking system. Bush appointed him to the Department of Energy in early 1989 as a Legislative Affairs Specialist. Following that, Connell returned to political consulting, working on Indiana Senator Dan Coats' 1990 campaign, legislative redistricting for Iowa, and a 1992 congressional race in New Hampshire.[2]

Connell became Ohio congressman Martin Hoke's press secretary in 1993.[1][2] Hoke ended up being the first Ohio congressman to have an email address. This was likely thanks to the influence of Connell, who was an early adopter of technology in political campaigns. In late 1994, Connell left Hoke's office and moved to Ohio, where he founded New Media Communications, a political technology consulting company.[3]

New Media was initially run by the Connells out of their basement, and its early years were quite rocky. In 1995, using the Internet was still a foreign idea to most politicians, so New Media's business of developing websites attracted little demand. Connell hailed the Internet as a bold new invention in 1996, comparing it to the printing press, but was cynical about how quickly it would be adopted by campaigns. Business was so difficult that in 1996, the Connells declared bankruptcy.[1][3]

But in 1998, Connell received a high-profile client that would get New Media off the ground. Jeb Bush hired Connell to build a website for his Florida gubernatorial campaign. That same year, Connell designed a website for Bob Taft's Ohio gubernatorial campaign. Bush and Taft both won their elections.[1] Connell also did web development for an assortment of state Republican parties and PACs.[2]

The lobbying firm DCI Group partnered with New Media in 1999, forming DCI/New Media.[3] Even more Republican clients soon followed. By 2000, New Media had grown from a tiny basement startup to a $3 million business with 38 employees.[1]

They received another big break when George W. Bush's 2000 campaign hired New Media to redesign their website. Connell and his company spent 45 days making it easy to use.[1] Bush became the official winner in 2000 after a close Florida race and recount, although the election was marred by irregularities.

Heather, Connell's wife, founded GovTech Solutions that same year. As opposed to New Media, which did partisan work for Republican candidates, GovTech was a nonpartisan company pursuing government contracts. Until September 2001, the DCI Group was a minority stockholder in the company. The General Services Administration approved GovTech as a vendor in 2002 and 2004, allowing them to streamline the bidding process in contracting with federal agencies.[3] GovTech built the IT infrastructure (such as websites and mail servers) for the White House, Department of Energy, and several congressional committees.[4]

As the Internet grew commonplace, both of Connell's businesses expanded. Aside from Republican campaigns and state parties, political action groups (like the NRA) and corporations (like Microsoft) hired New Media.[1] In 2004, New Media built websites for Bush's reelection campaign, 3 Senate campaigns, 7 House campaigns, and the Republican National Committee. Connell joined with R. Rebecca Donatelli to form Connell-Donatelli, a web advertising company[3] that created the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad campaign against John Kerry.[4] GovTech, meanwhile, was the web designer for 37 members of Congress. At least four Republican winners in 2004 who had used New Media's services hired GovTech to build their congressional website.[3]

For 2006, New Media designed the websites of over 24 state Republican parties and worked on Ken Blackwell's Ohio gubernatorial campaign.[3]

cont

International activism

Connell also consulted in foreign elections for the International Republican Institute (IRI) and USAID. He was a volunteer at the IRI from at least 2000[3] to 2008.[5][6][7] According to Stephen Spoonamore, Connell and him shared "a mutual interest in democracy building […] worldwide" and have "mutually participated in activity to forward this goal"[8], implying they both worked together on international election projects.[9] New Media built websites and sent text messages to voters for the 2000 Slovenia general election, and Connell also did work in the 2000 Macedonia parliamentary elections.[3] In 2003, Connell provided web development advice to a Croatian NGO supported by the IRI, which was dedicated to professionalizing journalism in the country.[10]

2004 Ohio election

In the 2004 Ohio election, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell contracted with GovTech to build the election night results website.[3] Ohio's 88 counties transmitted their results to a statewide tabulator at the SoS's office, which GovTech's election reporting application aggregated and displayed. GovTech's contract also included a mirror site to take over if the main site got overwhelmed, a job that fell to SmarTech, a partisan-Republican server hosting company. Throughout the night, county election results were rerouted to SmarTech and anomalous returns favoring Bush appeared. This raised fears that the Ohio vote was altered by SmarTech, which had a strategic position as a man-in-the-middle (MITM) between county and state tabulators.

King Lincoln case

GovTech's role in the 2004 Ohio election made Connell a person-of-interest in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case. Filed in 2006, it charged SoS Blackwell with discriminatory voter suppression and vote rigging. Not long after the King Lincoln case began, independent researchers at ePluribus Media discovered the rerouting of the Ohio election returns through SmarTech. With the ensuing revelation that Bush Administration emails were also hosted on SmarTech servers, the King Lincoln attorneys took notice. Stephen Spoonamore joined the case in July 2008 as an expert IT witness, opining that SmarTech's role was likely malicious. Since Connell's company had built the Ohio election reporting system that incorporated SmarTech, the King Lincoln attorneys sought his testimony.

Connell was subpoenaed in late September of 2008. He attempted to quash the subpoena, claiming that the information sought was both "readily ascertainable through public records request" and "confidential, trade secrets, and/or proprietary information […] not known to the public".[11] However, he was ultimately compelled to give a deposition on November 3, 2008, the day before the 2008 election.

In his testimony, Connell stressed multiple times that the election results website had no connection to vote tabulation systems. However, the Conyers report on the 2004 Ohio election specifically mentioned a county whose tabulator was linked to the SoS's office, and many of the tabulators were confirmed to be remotely-accessible or could have been rigged for remote access. Another strange statement was Connell's denial that he had worked on the White House email system, despite GovTech having worked on White House IT infrastructure that included "Internet communications projects". And in spite of the fact that GovTech had almost always used SmarTech for hosting, Connell was adamant that Blackwell, rather than himself, picked SmarTech to handle the mirror site.

cont

His inconsistencies and apparent lies notwithstanding, Connell did reveal some important tidbits. He testified that, to the best of his knowledge, there was no "failover situation" on election night that would have necessitated SmarTech taking over the election returns. That meant that SmarTech's appearance on election night as a MITM most likely lacked any explanation beyond vote rigging. And Connell mentioned his collaboration with employees at Triad GSI on another election-related project for Blackwell dealing with voter registration.[12] Triad was formerly identified as the voting system contractor responsible for rigging tabulators and manipulating the recount in the 2004 Ohio election. Thus, Connell admitted to working closely with two companies that had suspicious roles in the election.

Connell, according to journalist Larisa Alexandrovna, had a desire to talk following the deposition. Since late 2007, his conscience had been eating at him over his involvement with unethical GOP activities. He made an effort to appear before Congress as an expert on election issues, but as the White House email scandal unfolded, Connell pulled back. In early summer of 2008, Connell once again became interested in setting up a meeting, but Rep. John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich's congressional staffs appeared to fumble it.[13] At the same time, Connell started receiving threats, as confirmed by Connell himself and King Lincoln attorney Cliff Arnebeck[14], and he clammed up again. But Alexandrovna managed to talk to Connell before the end of 2008, confirming the threats and that "Mike was getting ready to talk. He was frightened."[15]

His sisters Shannon and Mary Jo both felt that he was upset following the deposition. Mary Jo characterized him as "stressed out and depressed" on his November birthday, and Shannon noted that he unusually didn't respond to one of her emails.[16] Combined with Larisa Alexandrovna's account of the situation, Connell appeared to be facing an internal struggle over whether to come forward.

Death

On Friday, December 19, 2008, Connell's private plane crashed while flying from College Park MD to Akron-Canton OH. He had spent the day in Washington D.C., and was returning to Ohio to attend a GovTech/New Media Christmas party.[17] On his approach to an Akron-Canton runway, air traffic controllers informed Connell that he had drifted left of course. They directed a re-approach, but before Connell could perform it, he declared an emergency and went down. His plane crashed into an empty house in Lake Township OH. Connell was ejected from the plane and killed instantly.

The plane broke up, caught on fire, and tumbled into a neighbor's backyard. Several witnesses called 911, and the Greentown Fire Department was dispatched at 5:54 PM, just a minute after the crash. They arrived 4 minutes later and put out the fires. On his way there, Capt. Geisner attempted to find out about the size of the plane and who was onboard, but Air Traffic Control told him they were "all in lockdown" and couldn't release the information.

The State Highway Patrol in North Canton was alerted at 6:04 PM, with their first responders arriving at 6:22 PM. Stark County's medical examiner came at 7:03 PM to collect Connell's body, later identified as him through fingerprints. An FAA crew arrived several hours later to clean up the scene and move the plane into storage. It was transported in the early morning of December 20 to a nearby Lockheed Martin hangar.[18]

Due to Connell's central role in the GOP's illegal activities and the threats made against him, many people became suspicious of his death. They believed Karl Rove or his associates had Connell murdered to prevent him from talking. GovTech president Randy Cole and Connell's wife Heather dismissed this idea, with Cole chalking the crash up to bad weather[17] and Heather denying that Connell had anything to do with criminal activities.[19] Connell's sisters (both progressives) initially dismissed the possibility that their brother had been assassinated, but came to believe that his death was too suspiciously timed not to be deliberate.[16][1

cont

There were, in fact, several strange aspects of the crash. Connell was an experienced pilot who had logged thousands of miles and knew how to cope with inclement weather.[17] And according to a local CBS station reporting on the crash, a close friend of Connell's warned him not to fly his plane out of fear it was sabotaged, and Connell cancelled two flights due to "suspicious problems with his plane".[20] Larisa Alexandrovna corroborated at least one aborted flight (which occurred just a day before the stay was lifted in King Lincoln) that was due to "engine trouble".[18] The handling of the crash was suspicious as well. Air Traffic Control's "lockdown" and refusal to provide information to the fire department was an odd occurrence. And rather than waiting until daylight to examine the scene, as federal guidelines stipulate, the plane was investigated at night and moved to a private hangar. Many of Connell's posessions were recovered and returned to Heather, but suspiciously missing was Connell's Blackberry, used to communicate with his Republican contacts.[19]

Many sources hypothesized that the crash was simply due to poor weather conditions. However, the NTSB's preliminary report found no evidence of icing[21], and despite a claim from the Akron Beacon Journal that visibility was only 1 mile, the National Climate Data Center had visibility in the area at 9-10 miles at the time of the crash. The temperature was also slightly above freezing.[17]

In late 2009, almost a year after Connell's death, the Connell family and King Lincoln attorneys received an anonymous memo claiming to be from an assassin who had sabotaged his plane. Shannon Connell had her suspicions over Connell's death confirmed by the memo. Arnebeck considered the letter credible and passed it along to the FBI.[19] The letter was also received by the NTSB, which claimed to have forwarded it to the Cleveland FBI. Some intelligence community experts reportedly believed the letter to be genuine[22], but others considered it suspect.

The letter, sent by "Mark Felt", contained an "after-action report" about a covert operation to "neutralize" Connell. It detailed the installation of an AMD microprocessor in Connell's plane the morning before his death, used to hijack his flight. Based on the report, Connell was targeted by black ops agents as a national security threat to eliminate, but the anonymous letter concluded with the words "Connell was not NST (national security threat)".[23]

Heather Connell, by 2010, had grown less willing to accept that the crash was an accident. She was disgusted by the 2008 plane crash investigation, which left behind pieces of Connell's body and mysteriously failed to return his Blackberry. Originally refusing to entertain the idea that Connell had been murdered, she tearfully told journalist Simon Worrall when asked in early 2010, "I don’t know. I don’t know."[22]

Controversies

Bush Administration emails

Main article: Bush Administration email controversy

GovTech Solutions, one of Connell's companies, built the IT infrastructure for the Bush White House, including its "Internet communications projects". It would later be revealed, during the US attorneys scandal, that several White House staffers (including Karl Rove) were conducting official business on private RNC email accounts hosted by SmarTech. Connell denied any involvement with the White House emails, but the fact that he worked on White House communication systems, intentionally left this off the GovTech website, and frequently used SmarTech for web hosting implies he did build the email system and attempted to hide his role. According to Stephen Spoonamore, Connell discussed the White House email system with him in 2006 and asked about permanently destroying data, potentially alluding to the private Bush Administration emails that would go missing.[24]

cont

2004 Ohio election

Main article: 2004 Ohio general election

Connell was at the center of the electronic fraud in the 2004 Ohio election. GovTech built the election reporting system which put SmarTech, a partisan GOP server company, in a central position to alter election results. On election night, SmarTech took over the results reporting and corresponding irregularities favoring Bush were observed. Connell denied a direct role in election theft, but allegedly told Stephen Spoonamore that he may have allowed GOP partisans to take advantage of his systems to rig elections.[8]

Foreign election rigging

Connell worked abroad on democracy building under the auspices of USAID and the IRI (largely funded by USAID). USAID has been criticized as a front for covert CIA operatons and manipulating foreign elections. It is unknown if Connell's activities extended into this area, but certainly possible. Connell was also potentially connected to election fraud in the 2004 Ukraine election. According to CIA agent Steven Stigall, Viktor Yanukovych's campaign electronically altered election results with a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack, similar to what was employed in the 2004 Ohio election. Yanukovych was advised in 2004 by Rick Davis and Paul Manafort, co-owners of GOP lobbying firm 3eDC whose "strategic partners" included New Media Communications (Connell's company), two Connell-affiliated GOP tech firms, and SmarTech's parent company Airnet.[25]

http://cavdef.org/w/index.php?title=Michael_Connell

TRIAD GSI (KHASHOGGI)

Daniel Hopsicker, "Rogue State: The Cover Op That Ate The World", 2005/01/04 - alleges a connection to Adnan Khashoggi:

www.madcowprod.com/2005/01/04/rogue-state-the-cover-op-that-ate-the-world/

"Was Adnan Khashoggi a principal in a company which has been counting the votes of American servicemen overseas? Answer: highly likely. Both Election.com, and Triad, the election company cited for causing most of the problems in Ohio, should receive close scrutiny for evidence of Khashoggi involvement. While there has been no suggestion of it anywhere in the media, the name “Triad” was used extensively by Khashoggi at exactly the same time (the early 80’s) and in exactly the same place (Palm Beach, Florida) as the “Triad Governmental Systems” involved in Ohio’s current election “difficulties.” Khashoggi owned a number of companies named “Triad.” Khashoggi owned “Triad International Marketing.” “Northrop, the Los Angeles-based aircraft and electronics manufacturer, owes Triad International Marketing, S.A., a Liechtenstein corporation controlled by Khashoggi, $31 million in commissions on sales to the Saudi air force,” reported the L.A. Times on August 29, 1987. Khashoggi owned “Triad America.” “Creditors claim they are owed more than $100 million by Triad America and its subsidiaries… in Salt Lake City. Leonard Gumport, the court-appointed examiner, also is recommending that Triad America seek repayment of the $189.2 million loaned to companies controlled by the Khashoggis,” reported the Salt Lake Tribune. From the company’s literature: “TRIAD Governmental Systems, Inc., is a nationally recognized corporation that is committed to providing quality, computer based systems for governmental voting units. Incorporated in 1982, TRIAD GSI was founded to provided quality support and services for Rapp Systems’ Election products, with election experience that spans a quarter of a century.” In 1982, Khashoggi owned Triad Farms in Kentucky. In “The Blue Grass Conspiracy” by Sally Denton, she revealed that the large drug smuggling operation called “The Company,” headquarters were near Lexington, Kentucky, at Triad Farms, owned by Khashoggi. That’s just about the same time (1983) that TRIAD Governmental Systems was founded…"; interesting that a flight attendant on his private planes was Theresa LePore, who introduced the butterfly ballot of which the Rapps sell replicas

Rapp Systems background

DU thread searching for a link between Triad and Datamaxx (cited page from the Rapp Systems website)

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x198399

dug up the fact that Rapp Systems claimed to have developed software for NASA (also a client of Yang Enterprises) to monitor tiles on the Space Shuttle

*NOTE

CHOICEPOINT connection *search archives for Choicepoint

cont