I am not surprised that the CIA has a penny stock investment arm. Leonardo DaVinci was a similar gamble. He didn’t eat much, and if his parachute and tank and flying machine were not the Star Wars of the 15th o
r 16th century, his “looker” worked just fine. That rudimentary telescope allowed the Medici’s to spot inbound ships and buy or sell short before the competition even knew new shipments had arrived. But when George Tenet created In-Q-Tel Inc. in March of 1999, he could not have known that in two years the Medici would creep into the White House, a collection of greedy, voracious, grasping, gluttonous bastards who had one failing the Medici’s did not share; they were also inept.
*
In-Q-Tel was supposed to invest the paltry sum (by Washington standards) of $35 million in start ups in the highly speculative penny stock market.
Employees (mostly ex-CIA workers) were looking for concepts that might benefit the nation, and as an incentive they also received shares in the various firms In-Q-Tel invested in. This was supposed to be a “blind” investment, of course, but it seems that was not so, because in March of 2005 about 50 In-Q-Tel employees decided to unload their trust shares in one company in particular; Ionatron, Inc. Did these ultimate insiders know something the average investors did not know? Nobody is talking because since 9/11/2001 In-Q-Tel, Inc. has become a black box project.
*
The new man in the spotlight was Ron Howard, the man who invented the dot-matrix printer. In 1984 he founded Howtek, to market his color jet printers and scanners (another invention), and in 1987 he and his son founded Presstek, to produce and market a one step laser guided color printing technology. In 1994 Howard was fined $42,000 by the S.E.C. for giving insider information to a friend and 1997 he was fined $2.9 million for making “false and misleading statements” hyping Presstek while they were negotiating a partnership with a German printing company. In 1999 Howard stepped down as Pressteck’s chairman and in June of 2002 he incorporated a brand new company, Ionatron, which shortly thereafter crossed paths with In-Q-Tel.
*
Ionatron wasn’t interested in printing, but they were very interested in lasers, the kind of lasers that guide a “pulsed energy weapon”; Buck Rogers, science fiction stuff. And within a year Ionatron had hired the powerful Philadelphia law and lobbying firm of Blank Rome, whose chairman, David Girad-diCarlo, was a power in the Republican Party. It was Blank Rome (with a $200,000 payment) that opened a lot of Washington doors to Ionatron, specifically the door of Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman, Thad Cochran, who “penciled in” a special “earmark” for Ionatron for $18 million. And shortly after that Ionatron became a favored investment for In-Q-Tel. And Senator Cochran got a $9,000 campaign donation and Ionatron has promised to move from Tucson to the Senator’s home state of Mississippi.
*
According to the company’s web site, Ionatron is selling “man-made lightening”, LIPC, laser-induced plasma channel technology. A femto-second (1 billionth of 1 millionth of a second) laser burst heats a narrow corridor of air i
nto a plasma, which is then used to transmit an electrical charge as if it were a “virtual wire”. That charge can then scramble a warhead, a guidance system or a soldier’s central nervous system. Or, it has been proposed, set off the detonator on an IED.
*
The Improvised Explosive Devices became an issue of import in October of 2003 when the General in charge of Iraq, General Abizaid, wrote a memo, calling them the greatest single killer of American soldiers in Iraq. By 2006 that memo had become JIEDDO, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization., with a staff of 360 and a budget of $ 3 billion. All they needed now was a method to defeat the IEDs.
*
Ionatron’s technology had not originally been designed to combat IED’s, but, as is preached to junior Army officers, you should never turn down a combat assignment. What Ionatron came up with looked like an oversized “Battling Bots” robot with a hook jutting out from the nose, instead of a hammer over its head. It is designed to be “…driven in front of a military convoy or operated separately…has a remote-control console that troops can use from a safe distance, directing it like a radio-controlled car. A metal boom that extends from the vehicle's chassis emits high-powered electric pulses…”
*
According to official military circles the IED killer was a smashing success, disabling 90% of the practice IED’s it went up against. And yet “…only about a dozen…units have been produced.” And despite repeated “leaks “about bots deployed and or “married with their combat units”, the system remains merely a test bed. What’s going on? Well, you’ve got a stockholders’ lawsuit, a plummeting stock price, and still no plant in Mississippi to build this mini Star Wars solution to a home made bomb.
*
More, tomorrow.
- 30 -
r 16th century, his “looker” worked just fine. That rudimentary telescope allowed the Medici’s to spot inbound ships and buy or sell short before the competition even knew new shipments had arrived. But when George Tenet created In-Q-Tel Inc. in March of 1999, he could not have known that in two years the Medici would creep into the White House, a collection of greedy, voracious, grasping, gluttonous bastards who had one failing the Medici’s did not share; they were also inept.*
In-Q-Tel was supposed to invest the paltry sum (by Washington standards) of $35 million in start ups in the highly speculative penny stock market.
Employees (mostly ex-CIA workers) were looking for concepts that might benefit the nation, and as an incentive they also received shares in the various firms In-Q-Tel invested in. This was supposed to be a “blind” investment, of course, but it seems that was not so, because in March of 2005 about 50 In-Q-Tel employees decided to unload their trust shares in one company in particular; Ionatron, Inc. Did these ultimate insiders know something the average investors did not know? Nobody is talking because since 9/11/2001 In-Q-Tel, Inc. has become a black box project.*
The new man in the spotlight was Ron Howard, the man who invented the dot-matrix printer. In 1984 he founded Howtek, to market his color jet printers and scanners (another invention), and in 1987 he and his son founded Presstek, to produce and market a one step laser guided color printing technology. In 1994 Howard was fined $42,000 by the S.E.C. for giving insider information to a friend and 1997 he was fined $2.9 million for making “false and misleading statements” hyping Presstek while they were negotiating a partnership with a German printing company. In 1999 Howard stepped down as Pressteck’s chairman and in June of 2002 he incorporated a brand new company, Ionatron, which shortly thereafter crossed paths with In-Q-Tel.
*
Ionatron wasn’t interested in printing, but they were very interested in lasers, the kind of lasers that guide a “pulsed energy weapon”; Buck Rogers, science fiction stuff. And within a year Ionatron had hired the powerful Philadelphia law and lobbying firm of Blank Rome, whose chairman, David Girad-diCarlo, was a power in the Republican Party. It was Blank Rome (with a $200,000 payment) that opened a lot of Washington doors to Ionatron, specifically the door of Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman, Thad Cochran, who “penciled in” a special “earmark” for Ionatron for $18 million. And shortly after that Ionatron became a favored investment for In-Q-Tel. And Senator Cochran got a $9,000 campaign donation and Ionatron has promised to move from Tucson to the Senator’s home state of Mississippi.
*
According to the company’s web site, Ionatron is selling “man-made lightening”, LIPC, laser-induced plasma channel technology. A femto-second (1 billionth of 1 millionth of a second) laser burst heats a narrow corridor of air i
nto a plasma, which is then used to transmit an electrical charge as if it were a “virtual wire”. That charge can then scramble a warhead, a guidance system or a soldier’s central nervous system. Or, it has been proposed, set off the detonator on an IED.*
The Improvised Explosive Devices became an issue of import in October of 2003 when the General in charge of Iraq, General Abizaid, wrote a memo, calling them the greatest single killer of American soldiers in Iraq. By 2006 that memo had become JIEDDO, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization., with a staff of 360 and a budget of $ 3 billion. All they needed now was a method to defeat the IEDs.
*
Ionatron’s technology had not originally been designed to combat IED’s, but, as is preached to junior Army officers, you should never turn down a combat assignment. What Ionatron came up with looked like an oversized “Battling Bots” robot with a hook jutting out from the nose, instead of a hammer over its head. It is designed to be “…driven in front of a military convoy or operated separately…has a remote-control console that troops can use from a safe distance, directing it like a radio-controlled car. A metal boom that extends from the vehicle's chassis emits high-powered electric pulses…”
*
According to official military circles the IED killer was a smashing success, disabling 90% of the practice IED’s it went up against. And yet “…only about a dozen…units have been produced.” And despite repeated “leaks “about bots deployed and or “married with their combat units”, the system remains merely a test bed. What’s going on? Well, you’ve got a stockholders’ lawsuit, a plummeting stock price, and still no plant in Mississippi to build this mini Star Wars solution to a home made bomb.
*
More, tomorrow.
- 30 -
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