Ohio Cyber Security Expert Says 2004 KingPin Attack Benefited Bush

OhioNewsBureau

with John Michael Spinelli

Columbus, Ohio: A Key witness for a lawsuit alleging the presidential vote in Ohio was stolen in 2004 filed a declaration Wednesday identifying the KingPin Attack, as perpetrated by SmartTech , a Republican-led computer consulting company, as the method used to compromise state computer systems and deliver a second term to President George W. BushPresident George W. Bush, who won the state despite loosing the vote to his challenger Democratic Sen. John KerryJohn Kerry.

Spoon Dishes on Ohio KingPin Attack

OhioNewsBureau received a declaration filed by Stephen Spoonamore , of Wooster, Ohio, as part of the federal court lawsuit known as King Lincoln Bronzeville vs. Jennifer Brunner. This lawsuit, originally filed in August 2006 against Ken Blackwell, who was Ohio Secretary of State for the 2004 and 2006 elections, seeks to learn whether Ohio election systems were compromised in 2004. Lawsuit lawyers have subpoenaed Mike Connell -- a long-time IT handyman to the Bush family who worked for the Blackwell in 2004 and 2006 and serviced other Republican special interest front groups -- to tell what he knows about vulnerabilities to "cyber attacks upon the integrity of the 2008 election."

Spoonamore, a data security expert who is aiding plaintiff lawyers, said the KingPin -- or Intelligent Man In the Middle-- attack requires a computer to be inserted into the communications flow of an IT system. The advantage of this attack is that the computer placed in the KingPin position has the ability to change information at both ends of an IT system.

Spoonamore said that, at the time of the 2004 election, he was dismissed for suggesting that a wide divergence in results reported from the limited group of Ohio counties now referred to as the "Connally Anomaly," that he witnessed for himself while tracking the election on his computer late in the evening of Election Night.

"As early results showed Kerry ahead, at about 11PM, I noticed a trend in a very few counties that began reporting radically different ratios o Kerry to Bush votes. All in favor of Mr. Bush," he said of when it occurred to him that something wasn't right with vote reporting.

The Connally Anomaly occurred in 12-14 Ohio counties, and is defined as counties where the results of a down-ballot judicial race indicated wildly different voter preferences than the race for president.Spoonamore , whose data security company services world-wide clients like Visa and MasterCard and banks, said other experts in voting and statistics claim its "impossible...1 in a Billion" to believe that tens of thousands of voters are recorded as having voted for an extremely liberal minority judge -- Democrat C. Ellen Connally -- who had done no campaigning in the county, but cast no vote for Kerry.

Reviewing documents provided by the Ohio Attorney General that shows the system architecture four- and two-years ago, Spoonamore said his analysis now, as it was then, confirms his conclusion that SmartTech, which was hired by then-Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a conservative, Evangelical Republican who was the co-chair of the Bush/Cheney campaign in Ohio, had set up a KingPin attack that flipped votes from Kerry to Bush.

Clifford O. Arnebeck, lead plaintiff attorney, believes the computer set ups used in the two previous elections may be in place this year in Colorado and New Mexico and other states.

The system set up by SmartTech that is used in criminal acts against banking or credit card processes would have also worked to alter votes , Spoonamore said in his declaration.

"The computer system at SmartTech had the correct placement, connectivity, and computer experts necessary to change the election in any manner desired by the controllers of the SmartTech computers," he wrote.

Providing his scenario about how this may have worked, Spoonamore, a Republican who supports John McCainJohn McCain for president, said any tabulator with a known IP address connected to the Internet at the county level could be addressed by the SmartTech computer. He said the SmartTech computer would as the results of the evening proceeded be able to know how many votes Bush needed to steal from Kerry, and flip enough votes on the desired county tabulators to reverse the outcome of the election.

The facts, according to Spoonamore, confirms his understanding that the theft of the election happened on election night. He said it also confirms and is "fully consistent" with and "factually explains" the so-called Connally Anomaly.

Like Sherlock Holmes tracking arch rival Dr. Moriarity, Spoonamore said a forensic analysis of the complete county tabulator system in these counties -- especially their hard drives -- would, along with complete monitoring and address logs, would be the only way to detect theKingPin set up.

Saying such a system wouldn't meet the rugged requirements demanded by banking or credit card functions, the cyber data security expert said the attack set up was not designed with any security or monitoring in mind.

"They are systems which will work easily, but are based on the belief all users and the system itself will be trusted not to be hacked," he said, adding that "there are obviously many parties willing, with motivation, and able to hack an election for a desired outcome."

Offering his own security procedures, Spoonamore, casts himself as an expert in fraud detection and infrastructure protection systems, said that to minimize the chances of what he thinks happened in 2004 from happening in 2008, each county should completely disconnect all vote tabulators from any connectivity before, during and after the voting. "The tabulators should not be touched or accessed by any one or any electronic system," he said, underscoring that they should also have no "wireless, IR, Blue Tooth or other connectivity."

He also warned that election night shenanigans could come from preprogrammed hacks or sophisticated attacks. In a questioned outcome,Spoonamore said that only a qualified forensic analysis by qualified experts can reveal how the "manipulation has occurred."

"I believe on election night 2004, due to my long expertise and work in computer attacks on Banking, Government and Communication systems reversed the outcome of the 2004 Ohio Presidential Race was subjected to a KingPin attack reversing Kerry votes and making them Bush votes. All information that has come forth since then has further confirmed this belief, and the actions of some parties, notably Triad in removing Hard Drives which would have shown these actions and the refusal of Mr. Connell to testify about what he knows about the SmartTech KingPin set up, further confirms my professional opinion."

Triad Corporation, which was responsible for programming the central tabulators many Ohio counties used in 2004, is again entrusted for processing voter registration databases by 55 counties. In 25 of these counties, Arnebeck writes, Triad is "actually hosting these databases on its computers."

OhioNewsBureau has written previously about Mr. Connell and his attorney's claim that he cannot be deposed before the election because he is too busy working on it for the John McCain campaign.Connell's attorneys have stated that revealing trade secrets, as could happen if he were to come forward and be deposed, would result in the disclosure of certain trade secrets that someone else, likeSpoonamore, could use to compete against him.

Spoonamore labeled that reason as "absurd" and said he is as unlikely to compete for jobs with Mr. Connell as a siding contractor would compete for work an electrician is trained to do. "I am not aware of any work Mr. Connell does that I, or my firms would be interested in working on, " he wrote, adding that he and Mr. Connell have in fact referred business lead to each other and "mutually contributed out skills to proposals for projects in International Freedom Initiatives."

Ohio Lawyers Chase Connell for Sit Down

On the issue of trade secrets, Arnebeck wrote in his motion to the court to oppose the quashing of his subpoena to Mr. Connell that "information about election fraud and the law does not accord trade secret protection to criminal activity." In July Arnebeck asked US Attorney General MichaelMukasey to hold e-mails of Karl RoveKarl Rove, a kingpin of his own among Republicans, who was identified by as the "principal perpetrator of a pattern of corrupt activity" as defined by the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act.

Jennifer Brunner, who used Blackwell as a political battering ram to win office in 2006 and who is waged in a war with Ohio GOP officials over voting registration and voting in this year's hotly contested race for the White House, agreed in September to allow Arnebeck and his team to pursue the deposition of Mr. Connell. So far Mr. Connell has resisted being deposed and filed a motion to quash Arnebeck's effort to bring him in for questioning.

Arnebeck says that deposing Connell now is key to learning what might happen this year. Arnebeck and others involved in the case fear that Karl Rove, a long-time political confident of President Bush and Republicans including John McCain, has intimidated Connell to not testify for fear that Connell's wife would be criminally prosecuted if he (Connell) "implicated Rove in the theft of the 2004 Ohio election." Arnebeck thinks Connell can shed light on whether Rove, as he suspects, is again ready to "electronically steal the 2008 presidential election."

Arnebeck told Judge Algernon Marbley that "Rove's reported blocking of Connell's testimony is an obstruction of justice, and this court can and should put an immediate stop to it."

With John McCain trailing his Democratic challenge Barack ObamaBarack Obama in most states by a widening margin, it seems suspicious that McCain is so confident he will win next Tuesday. McCain, behind in the polls, in fundraising, in early voting, has said with confidence that he has Obama "just where he wants him" in the final weeks of the election. McCain has told reporters he will win when the vote is counted, especially in a close election within the margin of error.

As reported previously by ONB, McCain has his own secrets to divulge. Inquiring minds, independents, Republicans and Democrats, want to know what does McCain know and when did he learn it about what will happen next Tuesday?

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