[Vision2020] Former Fox News 'terror expert' gets prison for fraudulent CIA claim

[Moscow Cares]

Courtesy of Stars and Stripes at:

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/former-fox-news-terror-expert-gets-prison-for-fraudulent-cia-claim-1.419499

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Former Fox News 'terror expert' gets prison for fraudulent CIA claim
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (Tribune News Service) — The Annapolis man who appeared as a guest on Fox News claiming to be an ex-CIA employee was sentenced to 33 months in prison on Friday.

In addition, 62-year-old Wayne Simmons was ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Selby Ellis III to serve three years of supervised release, forfeit two firearms and $175,612 in criminal proceeds, and to pay restitution to his victims, the Department of Justice said Friday.

Last year, the Justice Department accused him of falsifying his experience as a former "Outside Paramilitary Special Operation Officer" who served in the CIA between 1973 and 2000. He'd been a recurring guest on Fox News under that pretext, where he regularly criticized the Obama administration for its handling of the 2012 attack on the American diplomat compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Simmons pleaded guilty to major fraud against the government, wire fraud and a firearms offense in April. While Simmons admitted that no record or evidence existed of his service in the CIA through his guilty plea, he did not admit to making false statements about his record.

"Wayne Simmons is a fraud," said Dana J. Boente, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. "Simmons has no military or intelligence background, or any skills relevant to the positions he attained through his frauds. He is quite simply a criminal and a con man, and his fraud had the potential to endanger national security and put American lives at risk in Afghanistan."

Simmons' lawyer, William Cummings, said he and his client had hoped to avoid jail time in Friday's sentencing. The attorney said he'd pushed for Simmons to be placed under house arrest or for a probationary sentence, adding "this came down hard on him because he has (two) children.

"It was a little harsher than we had hoped for, so we were a little disappointed in that regard," Cummings said.

Prior to Friday's sentencing, former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich wrote a letter on Simmons' behalf to Judge Ellis.

In it, Ehrlich said he knew Simmons as "warm, forward thinking and above all patriotic."

"Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find a person more dedicated to the security of the U.S.A.," he continued.

In response, the government's prosecuting attorneys wrote that they were "baffled" by Ehrlich's letter "in light of the actual and potential harm the defendant's crimes imposed on national security."

Additionally, after a story posted in the Wednesday edition of The Capital included an interview where the former governor said he could not speak to knowing Simmons on a personal level, prosecutors also questioned the legitimacy of those writing on Simmons' behalf.

Simmons' case also served a warning to news networks about properly vetting outside analysts whose, as CNN's Dylan Byers put it, "claims to expertise are often the result of their own self-promotion and past media appearances."

While Fox News has distanced itself from Simmons, saying he was never a paid contributor, he served as an expert on military and international relations on a number of occasions since 2002.

In 2004, he was recruited to a now defunct Department of Defense program that was billed as an initiative to bring in retired military officials who'd become successful television-news analysts to participate in military briefings and visit Guantanamo Bay, Rolling Stone reported. The program would later be disbanded in 2008 after a New York Times article found those involved were largely acting to promote agendas tied to the George W. Bush presidency when interviewed by media outlets and some did not disclose their ties to military contract work.

The Justice Department reported that, in a statement of facts filed with his plea agreement, Simmons "admitted he defrauded the government in 2008 when he obtained work as a team leader in the U.S. Army's Human Terrain Systems program." In addition, the department said he'd been deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 as an intelligence analyst to senior military personnel after falsifying his credentials.

He'd had a delinquent tax bill of $1.1 million reduced by $430,000 in 2008, as court records state he invoked his supposed CIA credentials to invoke the debt relief.

Yet, while he'd claimed a 27-year career in the CIA as a way to curry favor in both the defense contracting and media world, court records show that during that time, Simmons worked as everything from a nightclub bouncer to a defensive back for the NFL's New Orleans Saints in the months leading up to the 1978 season.

It's why Judge Ellis said on Friday, after calling Simmons' claims of a career in the CIA "buffalo chips," that "[i]t's astonishing to me how many people believed otherwise," according to a New York Daily News article.

The most recent clip of Simmons is an April 2015 interview on Fox News Radio with anchor Brian Kilemeade.

Still available on radio.foxnews.com he calls the Obama administration "the worst administration ... that this country will have ever seen."


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"Moscow Cares"
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
   
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