Something Strange Happening in Sunspot New Mexico

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: Something Strange Happening in Sunspot New Mexico

Postby Cordelia » Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:35 pm

Sounder » Thu Sep 20, 2018 12:38 pm wrote:That reads like a cover story. So they shut the whole place down to catch a janitor downloading child porn, and reportedly, with several other observatories being closed at the same time?

It's still strange.

Although, if it can set a precedent in case law, maybe it can be used to shut all government down.


I don’t think the FBI closed down the Foreign Service Institute (https://www.state.gov/m/fsi/) in Arlington VA in July when they arrested a (typical) State Department employee named Skydance MacMahon.

Image
Skydance Macmahon, in the character Nightwing, takes a selfie at the DC Awesomecon comic

Image

A U.S. State Department employee has pleaded guilty to producing child pornography, in part by using his work-issued cellphone and a secret camera.

Skydance MacMahon of Alexandria, Virginia, worked with a woman in Canada to shoot explicit photos and videos of five children inside her home, federal prosecutors say. MacMahon had the woman set up a clock with a hidden camera in her bathroom. While he was at work at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia, he streamed live video from that camera of the woman and her 9-year-old daughter.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/loca ... 60371.html


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, July 2, 2018

State Department Employee Pleads Guilty to Producing Child Pornography


ALEXANDRIA, Va. – An Alexandria man pleaded guilty today to production of child pornography.

According to court documents, over at least a two year period, Skydance MacMahon, 44, conspired with an adult in Canada to produce over a thousand sexually explicit images and videos of minor children in Canada. These images and videos were produced at the direction of MacMahon using Skype and hidden cameras. MacMahon distributed these image and video files to other users and consumers of child pornography by providing access to the files on his cloud storage services and also by directly sending the files to other users. In addition to the child pornography images and videos MacMahon himself created, he also received and possessed thousands of images and videos of child pornography.

During the time he committed these offenses, MacMahon was a Digital Media Administrator at the Foreign Services Institute of the U.S. Department of State in Arlington.


MORE... https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/st ... ornography


:backtotopic:
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Something Strange Happening in Sunspot New Mexico

Postby Pele'sDaughter » Fri Sep 21, 2018 7:39 am

The exact same thing occurred to me when I heard the excuse last night. Never in all the child porn bust new stories I've ever read has it been said that an entire operation was shuttered at any time. It's still not making sense but I guess they figure who's going to question it now, because "think of the children". :shrug:
Don't believe anything they say.
And at the same time,
Don't believe that they say anything without a reason.
---Immanuel Kant
User avatar
Pele'sDaughter
 
Posts: 1917
Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2007 11:45 am
Location: Texas
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Something Strange Happening in Sunspot New Mexico

Postby liminalOyster » Sat Sep 22, 2018 12:30 pm

Kind of amazing how much the FBI wanted that laptop.

Too bad it didn’t involve UFOs
By Matthew Reisen / Journal Staff Writer
Published: Friday, September 21st, 2018 at 11:25pm

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — As a kid, I was nothing short of obsessed.

I collected stacks of UFO books – both fictitious and, allegedly, true – knew all about Barney and Betty Hill, watched “Fire in The Sky” and the “The X-Files” religiously.

I’m now 30 years old. A crime reporter, I depend on certainties – motives, evidence and background.

So when my editor plopped a story on my desk about the mysterious evacuation of an observatory at Sunspot, in southern New Mexico, I treated it like any other.

One of the solar telescopes at Sunspot Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico. (Nick Pappas/Albuquerque Journal)

In a nutshell: Someone showed up two weeks ago at the National Solar Observatory at Sacramento Peak, near Cloudcroft, and told employees to pack up. They were being evacuated, along with residents who live nearby and a clerk at a post office on the site.

Nobody was told why this was happening, outside of the vagueness of “security concern,” or when they could return.

By the time I started working on the story, it had been out there a week.

There were still no answers as the story – or lack thereof – crept across the pages of small papers and murmurs of a conspiracy dotted internet message boards.

But like a weed, the murmurs grew into something bigger, wilder, as esteemed national newspapers including The Washington Post wrote grounded pieces on the closure and tabloids tickled the whimsy of fanatics with phrases like “geomagnetic storms,” “Chinese hacking” and “alien saucers.”

The Sunspot observatory website said the facility, whose motto is “Staring at the Sun Since 1947,” was closed due to “unforeseen circumstances.”

I called the FBI, which referred me to the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, or AURA, an agency that oversees the observatory.

In a prepared statement, AURA said it decided to “temporarily vacate” due to a “security issue” and was working with “proper authorities,” whom it declined to name.

From there it got a little weird.

A spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service told me he was waiting for a call – from whom he didn’t know – to tell him when the post office could reopen.

Otero County Sheriff Benny House told me the FBI was involved before his phone cut out. I tried to reach him 10 more times.

An employee at the nearby Apache Point Observatory, who would speak only anonymously, said Black Hawk helicopters had been hovering in the area, along with nameless authorities reluctant to talk to anyone.

So I wrote the story best I could and filed it for a Page One spot in the paper.

I thought it was over, but the next day my story was picked up by DrudgeReport.com, online views rose to over 40,000 and the emails began pouring in.

Some were simple and supportive, thanking me for grasping at the straws of truth. Others asked, “What did I really believe?” and said that if I knew anything I didn’t report – they could keep the secret.

I was sent pictures of a saucer-looking object seen during a recent eclipse by a woman in California. I received links to hourlong discussions on conspiracies and eerie YouTube videos of drones flying over – and people strolling into – the abandoned observatory.

A radio station in Canada wanted to interview me on air about the “mystery” in Sunspot.

In an effort to quiet the masses, I pressed the FBI spokesman to confirm that UFOs and/or aliens did not prompt the closure. I got an email back that said, simply, “no extraterrestrials.”

Then the observatory announced it was reopening.

And, at the insistence of my editor, I was preparing to travel the four hours to Sunspot when I got a news alert from KRQE-TV: “Sunspot observatory closure linked to a child porn investigation.”

In disbelief, I found the 30-page FBI search warrant, and sure enough, it says the whole ordeal started with a janitor downloading child porn on the observatory’s Wi-Fi. The FBI had traced the signal to a janitor’s laptop and seized it from the observatory without notice.

When the janitor returned to find his laptop missing, his behavior escalated from whining about “lax security” at the site to spreading the word that a serial killer was loose in the area and would one day “execute” an employee, according to the warrant.

It wasn’t the child porn, but these subsequent threats, that made AURA decide to evacuate and shutter the observatory and nearby post office.

Ironically, the story turned out to be on my crime beat after all.

Did the revelations stop the theories floating across the internet or put an end to the emails filling my inbox?

No.

According to some of our readers, my article – backed by a federal search warrant – was “B.S.,” “a cover-up” and a case of the media “spinning its wheels.”

I partly blame this resistance to the facts presented by authorities on the silence of those same authorities that followed, and continues to follow, the closure. By saying nothing, they left the public to fill in the blanks with any amount of nonsense and speculation they saw fit.

With no proof, who is to say anyone’s guess is wrong?

Often the truth is disappointing.

From the bottom of my heart, I want to apologize to my newfound fans and my younger self, with his hopeful eyes peering into the vastness of space.

I let you down with just another story that’s all too familiar – of people being rotten.

It wasn’t aliens, but I sure wish it had been.

https://www.abqjournal.com/1223961/too- ... -ufos.html
"It's not rocket surgery." - Elvis
User avatar
liminalOyster
 
Posts: 1873
Joined: Thu May 05, 2016 10:28 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Something Strange Happening in Sunspot New Mexico

Postby Elvis » Sat Sep 22, 2018 2:26 pm

liminalOyster wrote: I found the 30-page FBI search warrant, and sure enough, it says the whole ordeal started with a janitor downloading child porn on the observatory’s Wi-Fi. The FBI had traced the signal to a janitor’s laptop and seized it from the observatory without notice.

When the janitor returned to find his laptop missing, his behavior escalated from whining about “lax security” at the site to spreading the word that a serial killer was loose in the area and would one day “execute” an employee, according to the warrant.

It wasn’t the child porn, but these subsequent threats, that made AURA decide to evacuate and shutter the observatory and nearby post office.


Hmmm... and the nameless janitor was not arrested for downloading child porn? He just returned to work to find it missing? Seems to be a lot missing here.

Here's more, see link for whole article:

The observatory was reopened on Monday.

The person has not been arrested or charged, and no arrest warrant has been issued, according to the FBI.

Frank Fisher, a spokesman for the FBI field office in Albuquerque, told Reuters that the case was still under investigation.

The warrant issued by a U.S. magistrate in Las Cruces, New Mexico, showed that on Sept. 14 agents removed from the man’s home three cell phones, five laptops, one iPad, an external hard drive, 16 thumb drives, 89 compact flash disks and other material.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-new- ... SKCN1M001P
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
User avatar
Elvis
 
Posts: 7411
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:24 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Something Strange Happening in Sunspot New Mexico

Postby liminalOyster » Sat Sep 22, 2018 3:43 pm

89 compact flash disks and other material.


Spooky ....
"It's not rocket surgery." - Elvis
User avatar
liminalOyster
 
Posts: 1873
Joined: Thu May 05, 2016 10:28 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Something Strange Happening in Sunspot New Mexico

Postby Harvey » Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:12 pm

And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


Eden Ahbez
User avatar
Harvey
 
Posts: 4165
Joined: Mon May 09, 2011 4:49 am
Blog: View Blog (20)

Re: Something Strange Happening in Sunspot New Mexico

Postby DrEvil » Sun Sep 23, 2018 3:32 pm

Even though he's one bump on the head away from being a Bond villain, I hope Bigelow was right. He claimed to have insider knowledge that the criteria for contact was that we have a permanent presence off-planet (the ISS apparently doesn't count), so build that damn lunar base already!
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
User avatar
DrEvil
 
Posts: 3971
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:37 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Previous

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 42 guests