Saturday, October 23, 2010

The Naked Body Scanners and the Military Industrial Complex

This is just a curiosity, but don't for a minute think the Naked Body Scanners that are being placed at airports around the country, and are technically known as backscatters, are coming from what in any way could be considered the private sector. It's tough to pin down, but around every corner of the backscatter are military men and intelligence operatives.

The backscatter X-ray was first applied as a commercial security scanning device by Dr. Steven W Smith. Smith is currently President of Spectrum San Diego, a wholly owned subsidiary of the military connected SAIC. The president of SAIC is Walter P. Havenstein.

Havenstein received a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. He served on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1971 to 1983, specializing in tactical communications and systems acquisition management, and completed his career in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1999 retiring as a colonel.

SAIC has an Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group. Its president is K. Stuart Shea. In 2003, Shea was named to the 12-member National Commission for the Review of the Research and Development Programs of the U.S. Intelligence Community, established by Congress to review the full range of current research and development programs in the intelligence community
 
Smith sold his backscatter device to Rapiscan Systems, a division of OSI Systems, Inc. On OSI's board sits Dr. William F. Ballhaus, Jr. He served as director of NASA's Ames Research Center.

Another producer of the backscatter is American Science & Engineering. It  is a publicly traded company and has on its board, General John A. Gordon, who, naturally, has a very strong military/intelligence background 

Gordon  is a General, United States Air Force (Retired) He was elected as a Director of the AS&E in November 2008, and has served on AS& E’s Science and Technology Advisory Committee since January 2006. General Gordon served in the White House as the President’s Homeland Security Advisor from June 2003 to June 2004 and as the Deputy National Security Advisor for Counter Terrorism and the National Director for Counter Terrorism from June 2002 to June 2003. General Gordon was the first administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration and Undersecretary of Energy, responsible for the entirety of the nation’s nuclear weapons program, serving from June 2000 to June 2002. Additionally, he served as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency from 1997 to 2000 and as Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Military Support from 1996 to 1997. As an Air Force four-star general, General Gordon’s thirty-two year Air Force career included assignments in research and development, strategic planning, missile and space operations, inter-governmental operations, and international negotiations. He was commissioned in 1968 following graduation from the University of Missouri with a bachelors of science degree in physics. He earned a masters degree in physics from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, and a masters of arts in business administration from New Mexico Highlands University.

Again, there are no smoking guns here of any kind, there is no direct connection, but around every corner of the backsactters is a military/intelligence man, somewhere. Big Brother is bad enough, but Big Brother with a military/intelligence man lurking around every corner is worse. Creepy.

10 comments:

  1. Deadly "backstatters", a.k.a. naked-body scanners, must be banned, because they kill people, while allowing the elite to avoid having to be "scanned", like us peons...

    At Austin City Hall, punishing citizens who bother to participate, because we are assumed to be guilty is UnConstitutional, elitist, and counter-productive...

    Welcome to the oblivious, brain-dead sanctuary-city Austin, Texas...

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  2. People should stop flying until these devices are removed from airports.

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  3. Intriguing sleuth work, Mr Wenzel. You didn't mention Chertoff's role in promoting these scanners to the public as safety devices while his consulting company represented AS&E and RapiScan as the top scanner companies for the government to shovel money into. Perhaps that is already all-too-well-known.

    What does not seem to be nearly as well known is how big of a scam the whole Underwear Bomber incident really is, which is what catalyzed this encroachment upon our liberties. These scanners would have prevented nothing because according to eyewitnesses and the Detroit News the underwear bomber didn't go through security, didn't have a passport, was escorted onto the plane by the US State Dept, and was filmed inside the plane well before the pants-on-fire incident even began.

    Read all about it at my website, bodyscannertruth.com

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  4. SAIC was a major contractor for the whole Total Information Awareness thing a few years back.

    You have to laugh sometimes, how "informationally aware" were these guys to think that their creepy logo with a pyramid eye would not arouse popular anxiety? That would have to be some kind of record for being informational unawareness.

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  5. Seems that charges of child porn could be leveled easily.

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  6. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to our DIVINE CREATOR!!!

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  7. I travel every week all over the country and every time I see one of these devices in use, I tell fellow passengers that they do not have to go through these scanners. Most say - "ah, I don't travel very often so it's no big deal"...I am amazed at the sheeple in this country willing to bow down for any/all reasons to the authoritarian regime(s) in power....It makes me very sad indeed for the future of this country.

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  8. I heard it causes cancer because it unravels your dna

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  9. Please remember to say OPT OUT,OPT OUT the next time you are going through the screening process at the airport. You have a legal right to and it is safer. The more people that do it, the more we will effect on the bozos in government. My apologies to Bozo. If you hear the tsa peon calling out really loud,"OPT OUT,OPT OUT" to a person in front of you. Call out very loud that you want to opt out and try to cut to the front of the line, cause you are special. Make sure you request the hottest opposite sex attendant to frisk you, maybe in a private room. After all, you'll probably have a few hours to kill. LOL!!!

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  10. Somebody already mentioned it but it bears repeating that the individuals behind these backscatter x-rays in both the corporate and political sense almost certainly all fly privately and are therefore not subject to this indignity and invasion of privacy commercial travelers are now subjected to at U.S. airports. Which makes me wonder, could commercial airlines "opt out" of this latest scanning technology for their passengers, reverting to the metal detectors used over the past decades?

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