Secrets Revealed: Inside the Spy Game With The Man Who Knew Too Much

Mr. Dan Smith is either breaking the spy game rules or playing by someone else's covert game plan.

At issue: Smith's allegations that a meeting with physicist Robert Park, arranged by Smith at the request of a Senior Intelligence Official at the DIA, who reports to the Director of National Intelligence, was about potential misuse of government resources for research into high-frequency gravity waves. A response to Mr. Smith's allegations from a physicist, and another top former intelligence officer and professional consultant to the U.S. Government, exposed a more serious allegation of impropriety on the part of the Senior Intelligence Official.

Physicist Robert Park is a well-known skeptic of all things paranormal. He is the author of the book "Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud."

Park failed to respond to our request for his comments.

Citizen Smith's involvement in an elastic affair involving the Intelligence Community began shortly after the torn curtain that once divided east and west was permanently dissolved by the frenzy of electronic communication over the Internet. Mr. Smith is known for his allegorical twisting of behind-the-scenes spy games, posted at his blog, which has received attention recently from UFO researchers and forum members.

And Mr. and Mrs. Smith are not strangers to Washington politics.

Mr. Smith's father, Harvard economist Dan Throop Smith, was the Treasury Department's number one tax adviser during the Eisenhower White House. He has two sisters, one that once taught in a one-room school in Montana, and according to Smith's Blog, lives without the luxury of television or the Internet. Mr. Smith's other sister, the wife of business executive Charles Leighton, is a friend of President George W. Bush's aunt, Nancy Bush Ellis. Mr. Leighton earned a Jack Anderson story in the Washington Post over a bizarre cuff link affair.

Dan Smith posted what appear to be sensitive email messages to a public Internet web site, the Open Minds Forum, and in the process transmuted private messages into open source material. As a result it appears that Smith's actions helped to sabotage the alleged meeting with Park.

What are we to make of Mr. Smith's new role as saboteur? Smith's attempt to effectively blackmail his handler has tied a rope around his personal agenda, strangling the intended disclosure for the time being. It's all downhill from here.

One area of concern regarding the latest series of 'leaks' coming from email messages distributed by Mr. Smith, is that some of the emails appear to have originated with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The addresses in question end with "@dia.mil." Mr. Smith's posting of the email addresses clearly identifies two individuals at the DIA.

If verified, the use of official government email servers in communications to Mr. Smith would confirm that Smith is not a 'psycho' acting out a bizarre fantasy on the Internet. The Senior Intelligence Official's modus operandi often appears to involve Smith, which is strange given previous statements to Internet journalists that Mr. Smith's state of mind is questionable.

Smith posted a message to Park, apparently from the Senior Intelligence Official, that appears to confirm Dan Smith's role in the spy game:

"Dan received degrees from the University of Maryland in physics and philosophy. He occasionally provides pro bono counsel to the US Government, providing a representational perspective from the lunatic, scamming, and general fringe science communities. He currently appears to be too unstable to provide a valuable contribution but may recover over the weekend. I'll check with him and decide whether or not he should participate."

The latest spy fiasco, in what superficially appears to be a CIA family plot to coerce the rich and strange to sabotage government disclosure, has given Mr. Smith a bout of stage fright, causing him to withdraw from public forums to his personal blog:

"It was my contention that we were headed to a new level in the acclimation effort via the R&D protocol. But when I put Ron on the spot w.r.t. to a meeting with a known skeptical academic, he opted to cut me out of that meeting. I have not heard from him since. For the time being, I have removed myself from contention on the disclosure front."

R&D refers to "Ron," the Senior Intelligence Official at DIA, and Dan Smith. The academic referred to by Mr. Smith is Robert Park. "Ron" is well known for his interest in alternative scientific subjects, and for shutting down government programs rooted in pseudo-science.

In an email from "Ron" earlier this year, I was advised to refrain from "revealing methods and sources" and later received a request from a private investigator associated with "Ron":

"I am kindly asking that you please do as Ron requests and retract the obviously specious information Dan provided to you about him."

Smith has run afoul of a few of the birds from the AVIARY -- intelligence officers past and present, stigmatized by bird names once used to casually conceal their identities during the research phase of a Fox TV special about UFOs that aired in the late 1980s.

Without a shadow of a doubt, some members of the AVIARY appear to be under suspicion of more than spreading rumors of top-secret government liaisons with extraterrestrial lifeforms.

Allegations from one of "Ron's" associates, a former senior intelligence officer at CIA who continues to consult for the U.S Government, suggest "Ron's" actions over the past year are intended to 'out' a spy stealing government secrets. To catch a thief, "Ron" appears to keep Smith spellbound with the promise of government disclosure. But did "Ron" pick the wrong man?

Our foreign correspondent, Caryn Anscomb, who is based in the United Kingdom, told us that "Ron's" associate "seems a bit upset with it all."

A physicist known for his research in fringe areas, including psychic remote viewing and alternative energy sources, reacted to the allegation from Smith that the meeting with Robert Park was to discuss the waste of government funds for gravity wave research. Smith immediately posted the emails to the public forum at Open Minds.

Smith wrote, "It seems that the Soap Opera has been transmographied into a slight-of-hand act. It might also be called misdirection. By taking that ever so cheap-shot at [the physicist], and by having ["Ron's" associate] get on his High Horse to come charging to [the physicist's] defense, we have become a conspiracy of dunces or geniuses, depending on one’s PoV."

The physicist's response to Smith's allegations of misuse of government resources, "to accuse a scientist of fraud is legally actionable," triggered a reaction from "Ron's" associate, the former intelligence official:

"Indeed. As is publicly accusing a person with seven current contracts with the Intelligence Community, four classified...with a distinguished career in Intelligence to boot, and who is the current Chair of the Science Board for the Undersecretary of Defense for Chem/Nuclear/Biological matters...as being in the pay of a Foreign Power who is wittingly passing them classified material. Later denials that what was meant was that it might be a 'hypothetical' that was really meant is not exculpatory in a Tort Action for personal and professional libel. When written confirmation exists that the person doing the posting was doing it as part of an agreed 'Protocol' with a sitting Senior member of the DNI, by name...it becomes rather important for other reasons. Most courts would not see it as an innocent 'mistake' when the identical pattern is repeated three times in one year."

Smith appears to be suffering from vertigo as he assails the heights of counter-intelligence, in his quest for a cosmic lifeboat. In the process, his goal of moving government disclosure to the forefront of Washington politics has receded into the horizon, revealing the precipice beneath him.

My advice for Mr. Smith: be careful with your next step. If you slip the drop can be murder.

As for the spies, they continue to chatter past each other over the web, like strangers on a train, destined to stare out the rear window at the receding landscape of the real world.

Bon voyage!

Note: I was included in the some of the original emails from Smith. The replies were later posted at Open Minds Forum.

They are reproduced at the Spies, Lies, and Polygraph Tape blog, without comment:

www.starpod.org

I confess a bit of hesitation in bringing this tale to the general public, having earned a notorious reputation for not obeying the rules of journalism when it comes to anonymous sources. Once you enter the spy game, you are always under suspicion of being a secret agent, no matter how young and innocent you appear on the surface. One thing I have learned from the lessons of others caught up in the shadowy tales of intrigue and real-life espionage: when you become involved in spy games, you should always tell your wife.