▲ 37 r/SpecialAccess
The Space Review: Deep Black on the West Coast (part 3): The many missions of the Air Force's Special Projects office
thespacereview.comu/Galileos_grandson — 4 days ago
r/SpecialAccess
▲ 24 r/SpecialAccess
UK Air Defence Region (Project Condign) - Volume 2, Working Paper No. 9, Black and Other Aircraft as UAP Events
archive.orgu/457655676 — 6 days ago
▲ 139 r/SpecialAccess
What Was The “Jellyfish-Like” Drone Swarm The Downed F-15E Pilot Reportedly Saw Over Iran?
twz.comu/super_shizmo_matic — 12 days ago
▲ 127 r/SpecialAccess
Analysis of United States Of America v. John Norman Sims. A Deep Dive Into One Of The "Most Classified Organizations" In The U.S Air Force, and the Civilian Contractors & Planes That Supported It
In 2001, u/therealgariac made an interesting post on his website. On a chance encounter, he spotted a military UV-20A/PC-6, a military CN-235, a private Cessna Caravan 208, and a private Cessna Caravan 208B at "Base Camp." According to the Special Nevada Report, September 23, 1991, "Base Camp is used as a staging and support area for field personnel and as a recreation area for military and contractor personnel," in the vicinity of the Tonopah Test Range and the Nellis North Range. Both military planes were registered to the "427th Special Operations Squadron." After researcher Andreas Parsch filed a Freedom of Information Act request, the Air Force said the unit exists to "provide Short Take Off/Landing (STOL) aircraft and tactically qualified crews to support training requirements for the U.S. Army Special Operations Forces community, providing SOF personnel opportunities to train on various types of aircraft for infiltration and exfiltration that they may encounter in lesser-developed countries in which they train or provide training."
The two Cessna Caravans were registered to a firm known as One Leasing Inc. One Leasing had an interesting past. On February 13, 2003, a Cessna 208 (registration N1116G) leased by One Leasing crashed in Colombia. After the crash, one American and a Colombian aboard were killed by FARC rebels, and three Americans, among them Marc Gonsalves, a former Air Force intelligence officer, were taken hostage and held by FARC for more than five years before being freed in a 2008 Colombian military rescue. When ABC News and others dug into One Leasing, the incorporation papers listed AAS Inc. of Hampton, GA, also known as Atlanta Air Salvage, as the incorporator, with Ronald B. Powers as its president. The men aboard were eventually established as contractors for California Microwave Systems, a Northrop Grumman subsidiary, conducting aerial drug and guerrilla surveillance under a program called the "Southcom Reconnaissance System."
Shortly after these events, N403VP, one of the Caravans seen at Base Camp, passed to Worldwide Aviation Service LLC (33 S Last Chance Gulch, Helena, MT, a lawyer's address used by a number of aircraft linked to CIA "rendition" flights) and flew to Pope AFB on several occasions in 2003, the same base where the 427th Special Operations Squadron is a tenant unit. After this, Ronald B. Powers lived in relative anonymity until his arrest on August 8, 2013. In a Department of Justice press release titled "Former Air Force Employee and Two Contractors Charged with Bribery, Theft of Government Funds, Fraud, and Making False Statements Relating to Air Force Contracts," the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Florida announced that a federal grand jury had returned a 34-count indictment charging three men with conspiracy, bribery, theft of government funds, disclosing or obtaining contractor bid and proposal information, honest services mail fraud, money laundering conspiracy, and making false statements.
According to the indictment, the three defendants engaged in the following scheme. John N. Sims, a retired USAF officer working as a contractor and later a civilian Air Force employee, accepted bribes from George G. Cannady and Ronald B. Powers. In exchange, Sims steered USAF contracts to companies controlled by Cannady and Powers, using insider information he supplied, including Air Force operations, acquisition, and pricing data, to help them win work in support of a "USAF activity." Powers used his expertise and ability to locate, lease, and provide the equipment and items the activity required, while Cannady used his to obtain the contracts. Separately, Sims unlawfully retained classified national-defense information. Ultimately, Sims would lose his military pension for retaining these classified materials, under the Hiss Act, the federal statute (5 U.S.C. § 8312) that strips federal annuities from employees convicted of certain national-security and disloyalty offenses.
Many of the court documents related to this trial were sealed. This case was so secretive that a SCIF had to be constructed in the Pensacola courthouse. According to the prosecutors, the defendants believed that the USAF would face "a Hobson's choice of either prosecuting the defendants and risking the disclosure of significant classified activities that could jeopardize the National Defense, or not doing anything about the fraud." However, the USAF chose to prosecute anyway, stating that "the USAF, through this prosecution, has agreed to place this extremely sensitive, classified program at risk" to send a message.
Now, what on earth is this "USAF activity"? What were these contracts? What was the classified information Sims retained? The press release doesn't say. So I had to dig deep. I pulled the entire docket on PACER and read through hundreds of pages of court documents.
First, let's discuss Sims's background and a little of his history in the USAF, as I believe it offers some of the most detail into this program. According to LinkedIn, after around 12 years in the Air Force, Sims attended the School of Advanced Airpower Studies (SAAS) from January 1997 to January 1999. (The school was later renamed the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, hence the modern "SAASS" acronym in the quote below.)
According to their website, "SAASS creates warrior-scholars with a superior ability to develop, evaluate, and employ airpower within the complex environment of modern war. Upon completion of all requirements and with faculty recommendation, graduates receive a master of philosophy degree in military strategy." Sims's thesis, in attainment of his master's degree, was titled "Shackled by Perceptions: America's Desire for Bloodless Intervention."
Sims's essay begins with the line "Conventional wisdom holds that Americans eschew casualties," and this is the basis for his core argument. The conventional wisdom that the American public cannot tolerate losses is wrong, and it is dangerous to base military doctrine and policy on that premise. If we advertise this doctrine to adversaries, we teach them that it is possible to inflict a handful of losses on troops and paralyze American action, putting adversaries at an asymmetric advantage.
If this timeline is accurate, Sims was assigned as Chief of Air Force Strategy Development shortly after finishing SAAS. In a 1999 SAAS thesis by Maj Thomas Deale, the author cites "Maj John N. Sims, HQ USAF/XOCI, Bullet Background Paper on the Halt Phase, September 1998." This would indicate that Sims was assigned to USAF/XOCI from 1997 to 1999.
What is USAF/XOCI? Results on Google are sparse. However, a DTIC search reveals the following citation: "Background Paper, HQ USAF/XOCI, C2ISR Integration Division, subject: Effects Based Operations [EBO]," listed in yet another academic paper, Constraints, Restraints, and the Role of Aerospace Power in the 21st Century. There are a few references to USAF/XOCI in the public domain, mainly academic citations to internal DOD memoranda, and many of these relate to the development of strategy in relation to EBO.
Let's touch on EBO, because it may help shed light on Sims's later classified work. According to Air Force Magazine, EBO posits that the purpose of a military operation is to achieve a desired strategic, operational, or tactical effect, such as neutralizing the enemy or holding him in check, but does not in every instance require the destruction of the enemy force, especially at the expense of high casualties. The article explains that EBO originated in the Air Force in the 1990s and was a hot topic for war colleges and military journals until the term was disavowed by order of the commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command in 2008.
According to "Transforming Warfare with Effects-Based Joint Operations," C2ISR enhances capabilities by "dramatically reducing, and in some scenarios, even eliminating the need for US land forces to engage powerful enemy army units in close combat." C2ISR lets EBO work, and Sims was posted to the division building it.
Sims's 1997 thesis warned that American casualty-aversion was a weakness. An adversary who understood it could inflict a handful of losses and paralyze American action. EBO offered a way out. If you can win by effect instead of attrition, you never take those casualties in the first place. Sims would spend the next two years at XOCI helping to build the doctrine designed to close the gap his thesis had identified.
In 1999, Sims left USAF/XOCI. As far as I can tell, there are no publicly available references to Sims, or to what he did, between 2000 and 2013, which is the first date that appears in court documents pertaining to his activities at the Air Force. In AFOSI photographs of Sims's personal belongings, we can see several farewell messages penned to him. One reads, "Good luck in your next assignment and try not to forget us little people." Another appears to say, "Seriously, have fun being back in the cockpit and command."
In 2004, personnel documents describe Sims's role as a "Supervisory Intelligence Operations Specialist," with a GS-0132-14 pay grade. The position-classification standard maintained by the USAF Civilian Personnel Office states that this occupation includes intelligence research and analysis, along with the organization of activities for the collection of raw intelligence and the dissemination of finished intelligence. As the title indicates, Sims's position was supervisory in nature.
The documents explain that Sims was "Chief of Special Projects," heading the Special Projects Flight. This program executed tasks directed by the Secretary of Defense. Sims served as a senior advisor to the unit commander and was required to communicate with the Department of State, DCA, DoD, AFOSI, DIA, NSA, and the FAA for the planning, coordination, and execution of exercises and mission tasking. Sims was required to possess a TS/SCI clearance.
The personnel document states that the employee must be able to integrate aircraft movements to achieve a tasked objective, including the development of aircrew mission set-up packages and [redacted] training and [redacted] communications plans approved by NSA. It states that they must have knowledge of [redacted] operations doctrine and DIA [redacted] policies, to include domestic and overseas command relationships. It also states that Sims was responsible for deception planning to protect the integrity of missions.
It proceeds to state that failure to meet aspects of the mission could place U.S. lives in danger and sacrifice multi-million-dollar resources. It states that the employee is the primary expert in [redacted] plans and one of the leading authorities on [redacted] planning. According to a memorandum submitted by the unit commander, from a component of USAF HQ that is redacted in the memo header, out of the 29 applicants on the Air Force Candidate Referral Certificate only Sims had the experience critical to fulfilling the position.
In a separate memorandum for the approval of "uncontrollable" overtime, it states that Sims was selected as a Supervisory Intelligence Specialist for [redacted] Command's most classified organization. I believe the redacted text is "Air Force Special Operations Command," and I'll explain why shortly. This memorandum also goes over some of Sims's duties, activities, and initiatives from March 2007 to June 2007. These include a three-day meeting at the Department of Transportation, a nine-day course taught in Portland, OR, and a two-day [redacted] meeting in DC on a classified topic. He also wrote classified air plans, audited Presidential (POTUS) policies for protecting [three-letter redaction] against [redacted], formulated CONOPS, and reviewed upcoming classified GWOT (Global War on Terrorism) plans.
The personnel document also states that the organizational location of this position was the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, SAF/AAZS. I have not been able to find any information on SAF/AAZS. According to the Air Force Historical Research Agency, SAF/AAZ was formed in March 2014 for security, special program oversight, and information protection. According to a document released by Steven Aftergood, SAF/AAZ is responsible for overseeing and implementing SAP (Special Access Program) policy within the Air Force. Given the nature of Sims's work, I suspect SAF/AAZS had similar duties to SAF/AAZ, or is possibly a predecessor. The court documents themselves go no further than describing a "classified Air Force program" and never use the term "special access program." I would be very interested to hear if anyone has more information on this office.
This personnel document, as well as separate court documents, states that Sims was first hired as a contractor. The documents present a work order similar to the one he was hired under, a "SETA IV" work order. We'll come back to this detail shortly, because it supports the claim that Sims was part of a classified organization under AFSOC.
During Sims's sentencing, his defense attorney went into more detail about his role. He stated that pictures were shown to the court of Sims returning from Iraq and various other countries in service of his country. He also stated that Sims had been "detained" in the service of his country, but did not go into further detail because the facts were classified. The defense also submitted two letters from Lieutenant General Hester attesting to Sims's work for the Air Force. Sims himself described spending two and a half hours with General Hester during his 2010 resignation from the program. Sims's own description of the mission was that he was "hired as a contractor to implement a vision that was very difficult, had never been done before... hired to try to take a program into the future and to replace legacy tactics, techniques, procedures, capabilities, operational support, [and] infrastructure with very little guidance on how to do that."
This formed one of Sims's justifications for his actions, a claim during sentencing that Powers and Cannady provided a unique set of abilities, expertise, and equipment to support the USAF, and that Sims acted altruistically in setting up these contracts. It does not, however, excuse the fact that he took bribes and concealed his involvement from the USAF.
I believe I have now covered most, if not all, of the details relating to the organization to which Sims was assigned that are contained in the unsealed court documents. We will now turn to the actual contracts awarded in support of this classified activity, the companies set up to obtain them, and a little more about Powers. Unfortunately, I do not believe I have enough information to determine what this classified activity actually pertained to, but I will provide enough evidence to make an educated guess.
According to the Statement of Facts that Sims signed when he pled guilty, the scheme moved roughly $5.5 million in USAF contract money in total, of which about $4.2 million flowed through Company A between 2005 and 2009. For his help, Sims received 35 payments from Cannady between December 2005 and April 2009, totaling exactly $193,601.96, the figure his own attorney would later round to "$193,000 over five years" The court documents identify three companies, Company A, Company B, and Company C. The documents do not disclose their identities, but I will explain what we know about each, so we can hopefully use the power of deduction to uncover them.
Company A
- Created by Powers in the early 2000s. Sat dormant.
- In November 2004, all three signed a share-purchase agreement for equal shares. (Private document, not filed publicly.)
- In January 2005, Sims drafted the USAF contract requirements that built in the use of Company A.
- First contract awarded in September 2005, a month after Company B was secretly formed.
- In February 2005, Powers gave Company A to Cannady, who became the sole owner.
- Won a series of contracts worth about $4.2 million (2005 to 2009), including a 2007 aircraft lease-service contract worth approximately $420,000.
- Cannady also used Company A to renovate and lease an aircraft hangar to the activity. The USAF paid for the renovation up front via a $50,000-per-year rebate over eight year
Company C
- Created on September 27, 2007, by Powers and Cannady.
- Used to obtain a further contract worth approximately $900,000 in USAF work, with insider information provided by Sims.
- Powers obtained the contract in or about September 2007.
Company B
- Incorporated in a state outside Florida (Nevada), founded in August 2005 as a 50/50 partnership between Sims and Cannady.
- Became the sole owner of Company A via an operating agreement signed in the spring of 2006. (Private document, not filed publicly.)
- Existed to conceal the arrangement.
First, I signed up for OpenCorporates and searched for all three individuals, coming across the following companies. I performed an exhaustive search for companies owned by John Norman Sims and found no responsive results. I believe it is possible that if Sims created a company, possibly Company B, it may be impossible to discover, since he may have used a registered agent. Since we know the companies were established in the early 2000s, August 2005, and 2007, we should be able to whittle down the list.
Assuming Powers and Cannady established these firms under their real names, we are left with the following. Companies established between the early 2000s and 2007 by Powers include AIR QUEST, INC.; ATLANTA AIR LEASING INC.; and ATLANTA AIR RECOVERY & STORAGE, INC. For Cannady, these include CENTURION AVIATION CORPORATION (Nevada), INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT SUPPORT (Nevada), GLOBAL OPERATIONS GROUP, and ATLANTA AIR SERVICE. I will not include the rest of these companies, as one was founded in 2013 and the others in the early 1990s or late 1980s.
Let's start with Company A. Immediately, we notice ATLANTA AIR SERVICE, owned by Cannady. This naming scheme also appears to be popular with Powers. Recall that Company A was established in the early 2000s, was created by Powers, sat dormant, and Cannady became the sole owner in 2005. It also obtained a lease for a hangar, and the cost was paid up front by the USAF. Let's bring up the Georgia business entity database and view the articles of incorporation.
First, we see that Atlanta Air Services, Inc. was established in 2002 (the early 2000s), and that George G. Cannady is the CEO, CFO, and Secretary. Let's dig deeper, pull up the filing history, and pull the 2003 Annual Registration.
Bingo. The CEO in 2003 was Ronald B. Powers. A closer look at the Annual Registration reveals that Powers last appears as CEO in 2004, and Cannady appears as CEO in March 2005. According to the court documents, Cannady became CEO in February 2005. This is a strong candidate for Company A.
Next, I performed a comprehensive search for Atlanta Air Services, Inc., hoping to find information related to the hangar lease arrangement. It was not hard to find. In the Horry County Council regular meeting minutes, I found the following text:
"Second reading public review of Ordinance 198-05 authorizing the administrator to execute a lease agreement with Atlanta Air Services, Inc., for Hangar 359 on Myrtle Beach International Airport premises. Mr. Hardee moved to approve, seconded by Mr. Worley. There was no public review. Sheryl Schelin spoke on the revised ordinance stating that Atlanta Air Services had requested the removal of a guarantee provision of performance of a lease and in lieu of that they be allowed or mandated to pay annual rent in advance. Mr. Barnard moved to amend to remove the guarantee provision of performance of a lease and add a mandate to pay annual rent in advance, seconded by Mr. Schwartzkopf. The motion to amend passed."
This reveals that Atlanta Air Services, Inc. executed a lease in 2006 for Hangar 359 at Myrtle Beach International Airport. It also reveals that Atlanta Air Services requested that they be allowed or mandated to pay annual rent in advance, although it does not mention that they set up a rebate to be paid to Cannady, or that the USAF paid the lease up front. I am currently in the process of obtaining these lease documents. So now we can establish the following about Company A:
Company A
- Created by Powers in the early 2000s. Sat dormant.
- In February 2005, Powers gave Company A to Cannady, who became the sole owner.
- Cannady also used Company A to lease an aircraft hangar.
I cannot verify the rest of the details. I have performed a diligent search for these contracts and I am not able to find any match. I believe this is because they were classified contracts. For instance, if you search Atlanta Air Services, Inc., you will notice that it has a CAGE code. CAGE codes are identifiers used by the U.S. federal government and NATO to identify business locations and contractors. In other words, Atlanta Air Services was set up to do business with the federal government. Yet despite holding a CAGE code, it has not obtained any contracts that I can find after a diligent search of SAM.gov and Loren Data's SAM Daily, and a search for all aircraft leasing contracts issued by the USAF during the dates the court alleges the contracts were obtained returns no responsive match. It is worth mentioning that a company that is registered to do federal business but shows zero public contract records is what a classified contracting relationship looks like from the outside.
Unfortunately, I was also not able to find a candidate for Company B or Company C. Cannady does have two companies that were established in Nevada, International Flight Support and Centurion Aviation Corporation. However, neither of these companies was established in 2005. I believe this company was possibly established using a registered agent, with representatives, possibly lawyers, sitting as officers, making it impossible to identify the company using either name alone. I was also not able to find a company established on September 27, 2007, by either Cannady or Powers.
Next, let's discuss the evidence which suggests the organization Sims belonged to, and that the contracts were provided in support of, was under AFSOC. First, Sims own LinkedIn admits that he was apart of AFSOC. Sims lived in a residence in Florida located about a half-hour's drive from Hurlburt Field, which serves as headquarters for AFSOC. Second, we mentioned the SETA IV task order. SETA contracts are typically umbrella contracts. The government issues a master contract that defines the scope of work and pre-approves vendors. When a specific agency needs technical assistance, it issues a task order under the umbrella.
If we perform a search for SETA IV on SAM.gov, we find the parent solicitation, FA0021-09-R-0004, and the notice itself states in plain text that "Headquarters Air Force Special Operations Command (HQ AFSOC) at Hurlburt Field, FL" was the issuing command.
However, the "Special Mission Support" Performance Work Statement disclosed in the court documents is only an example of a similar task order. It cannot be the exact work order Sims was hired under, because Sims worked as a civilian from 2007 to 2010, and the work order in evidence is dated 2010.
However, if we view the list of vendors under this contract, we see the name "WinTec Arrowmaker." If we look at LinkedIn, we see that Sims worked for WinTec Arrowmaker from 2004 to 2007. WinTec is therefore an AFSOC SETA prime, and Sims's own employment history places him inside it. If we perform a search for the earlier SETA III vehicle, we find a similar contract issued by AFSOC to WinTec Arrowmaker in 2005 under SETA III.
The dates do not line up perfectly with Sims's 2004 start, but the presolicitation was issued in 2004, so he could plausibly have been hired under it. The Statement of Facts states Sims was "hired by an United States Air Force contractor" from April 2004 to February 2007, so it is also possible that he worked under WinTec Arrowmaker for a short period before the contract was actually approved.
Now let's discuss Powers's background. Powers's Sentencing Memorandum contains a wealth of information, though it is worth remembering that the memorandum was written by his defense.
Powers's attorneys admitted his involvement in the Colombia mission, stating that "in the early 2000s, Mr. Powers' company assisted the Department of Defense with a surveillance mission in Columbia by providing modified aircraft." The memorandum also includes a letter supporting Powers's character from Thomas Howes, one of the three Americans held by FARC for more than five years after the 2003 crash. Howes was captured aboard an aircraft leased from one of Powers's own companies, and yet he wrote in support of Powers, praising him from "their 17 years of work together in aviation."
The memorandum also includes a letter from Joseph Fluet, a retired U.S. Army helicopter pilot who, according to the filing, "purchased several aircraft from Mr. Powers for use on a crucial U.S. Government program overseas," a relationship his lawyers describe as "multi-year, multi-million dollar." It also quotes a June 13, 2007 letter from the Department of the Air Force, on a redacted letterhead, signed by Mark D. Pruitt, Lt Col, USAF. Writing to apologize for a "mishap" involving Powers's aircraft, Pruitt states that "the aircraft that you provide for us are a crucial part of the training that we provide pilots before they are sent overseas to execute operations." According to RocketReach, "Mark Pruitt brings experience from previous roles at L3 Technologies, Air Force Special Operations Command and United States Air Force,"
The document also contains photographs of Powers's challenge coins and patches. Units typically hand these out to contractors who work with them. They include a patch from Big Safari, a secretive Air Force organization responsible for modifying aircraft for special reconnaissance and special-mission use, one from the 66th AOS, and one from the 427th Special Operations Squadron. The 427th is the same unit whose aircraft appeared at Base Camp in the Nevada desert. You can find these patches on a post I recently made on r/area51.
Finally, let's recap what we know about these contracts. They were issued in support of a classified activity run by what one memo called a Command's "most classified organization," likely Air Force Special Operations Command. The activity used planes owned by civilian contractors, operating from civilian airfields. According to the personnel document, the aircraft involved communications plans approved by the NSA. Sims, the "Chief of Special Projects" and head of the "Special Projects Flight," was the officer who drafted the requirements and administered these contracts. He came to this role after serving as a Chief of Air Force Strategy Development at USAF/XOCI, which was responsible for Command, Control, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance integration. Powers, who supplied the aircraft, had previously provided similar civilian aircraft for surveillance flights over Colombia, and may have a connection to Big Safari, which modifies aircraft for special-mission use.
Simply put, I believe these aircraft were used for a clandestine aviation program that relied on civilian aircraft to do things the U.S. does not want attributed to the U.S. military. I do not believe this particular unit was tied to the Colombia operations. The statements that photos of Sims in Iraq were shown to the court, and that he had been "detained" in the service of his country, lead me to believe this was an international program. The involvement of the NSA and DIA leads me to believe it may have supported SIGINT for the Air Force using civilian planes.
I have created a Google Drive containing of all of the files I acquired from PACER. I am working diligently to obtain more information about this program and I will update the community when I learn more.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-mR0YLgcwkdfup9cDmEvGBIVZ8P1CubN?usp=sharing
u/DragonfruitCalm261 — 11 days ago
▲ 133 r/SpecialAccess
Can’t find the watermarked source but what’s everyone’s thoughts? Definitely looks like canards under there. No way they’d be this dumb though. AI?
u/WagonsNeedLoveToo — 12 days ago
▲ 106 r/SpecialAccess
Condign Report Vol 2 'Black Aircraft As UAP' BLACK MANTA "photograph".
u/DragonfruitCalm261 — 12 days ago
▲ 135 r/SpecialAccess
Unredacted Condign Report Vol 2 'Black Aircraft As UAP' With Photograph
u/DragonfruitCalm261 — 13 days ago
A Tale of Two Davids
u/Father_Chris_St_Mary — 13 days ago