Wayne Simmons claimed to be something of an American James Bond. On his Web site and in official, government documents, he wrote that he was part of the CIA’s “outside paramilitary special operations group,” and that he spearheaded deep cover operations against some of the world’s most dangerous drug cartels and smugglers.
His claims won him frequent commenting gigs on Fox News and government contracting jobs overseas. He even wrote a novel — a spy thriller that seemed to have been drawn from his work.
But according to federal prosecutors, much of it was a lie. In an indictment unsealed Thursday, they said Simmons’s claim that he worked for the CIA for 27 years was false. He was arrested and charged with false statements, major fraud against the U.S. and wire fraud.
The indictment did not specifically call out as fictitious all of the work Simmons claimed to have done, and indeed, it acknowledged that he had won jobs with government contractors overseas. Those jobs, though, came only after Simmons “falsely represented ... that he had spent 27 years working in ‘Outside Paramilitary Special Operations’ for the CIA,” prosecutors wrote in the indictment.
Glenn Miller, a CIA spokesman, declined to comment for this story. Relatives of Simmons could not immediately be reached. He is scheduled to appear in court Thursday afternoon.
On his Web site, Simmons, 62, of Annapolis, claimed he was recruited to the CIA from the Navy, and he soon became part of the agency’s “Outside Paramilitary Special Operations Group,” leading “Deep Cover Intel Ops against some of the world’s most dangerous Drug Cartels and arms smugglers from Central and South American and the Middle East.” Simmons claimed on the site he was one the first “outside Intelligence officers” to visit the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, and he served as a consultant to the Bush White House on the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
It could not immediately be learned if those claims were true.
Simmons was also a periodic commentator on Fox News and in other media outlets, typically on the subject of terrorism. In a 2014 interview with Neil Cavuto, for example, he criticized the U.S.’s bringing Ahmed Abu Khattala, a suspected ringleader of the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, to D.C. to face the charges against him.
The charges against Simmons are based largely on his allegedly lying on official government documents to help get contracting jobs and security clearances.
Prosecutors alleged in the indictment that Simmons was hired as the “Human Terrain System Team Leader” for an unnamed government contractor in 2008, and in that role, he trained at a U.S. Army facility. He won an interim security clearance for that job, prosecutors alleged, by “falsely stating that he had been recruited to the CIA in 1973, that he had not previously been charged with or convicted of a felony offense, that his prior arrests and criminal convictions were directly related to his supposed intelligence work for the CIA, and that he had held a top secret security clearance from 1973 to 2000.”
Simmons was hired two years later by a different government subcontractor, prosecutors alleged, based on similar lies. In that role, they said, he was actually deployed overseas as an adviser to senior U.S. military personnel.
Simmons was also charged in an apparently unrelated scam in which he convinced someone to make a $125,000 real estate investment with him, then simply used the money for personal expenses. Prosecutors alleged that Simmons “used his supposed affiliation with the CIA to bolster his credibility” with the person whose money he took.
Your anger and ego will always reveal your true self.
(10-15-2015, 10:40 PM)Devils Advocate Wrote: dont know how a guy gets connected this high up making shit up. Me thinks there's more to the story than what's being reported.
You know, Fox News better start vetting stories and contributors, lol.
It's probably not that hard to do and credibility goes a long way. Fox News wanting to get the word or news out for the Right is destroying everything they are trying to accomplish.
(10-15-2015, 10:40 PM)Devils Advocate Wrote: dont know how a guy gets connected this high up making shit up. Me thinks there's more to the story than what's being reported.
He's probably done some contract work and knows a few key players.
If he was who he claims to be, I'd wager the Feds would've been up his ass over violations of Non-Disclosure agreements.
(10-16-2015, 06:33 AM)Nebuchadnezzar Wrote: You know, Fox News better start vetting stories and contributors, lol.
It's probably not that hard to do and credibility goes a long way. Fox News wanting to get the word or news out for the Right is destroying everything they are trying to accomplish.
Oh man. Great article, but none of the conservatives on here will even click it. All the Faux guys and talk radio hosts tell their audience on a near-daily basis that Media Matters is a hate site because they're petrified of their followers finding out just how much they get lied to on a daily basis.
Why are people so focused on the fox news side of this story? We already know they're not credible (like most big network news. Lol @ "media matters")
My question is how did this guy get contracts from the US government? I've also seen reports he gained access to some classified information. That's pretty bad if we're just giving out stuff because a guy claimed to be in the CIA.
(10-17-2015, 02:04 PM)Aquapod770 Wrote: Why are people so focused on the fox news side of this story? We already know they're not credible (like most big network news. Lol @ "media matters")
My question is how did this guy get contracts from the US government? I've also seen reports he gained access to some classified information. That's pretty bad if we're just giving out stuff because a guy claimed to be in the CIA.
Because all that matters is making Fox News look bad.
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