By Project Milk Carton Investigations | February 2026
Part 6: How Real Credentials Laundered Fake Intelligence
EDITORIAL NOTE: This article examines the role of retired military officers in lending credibility to Dennis Montgomery’s unverified claims. All individuals named are public figures who made their statements on the record, in broadcast media, in sworn testimony, or in published works. We distinguish throughout between what is documented, what is reported by credible outlets, and what we assess analytically.
The Credibility Problem
Dennis Montgomery had a problem. By 2017, when TheAmericanReport.org launched the “Whistleblower Tapes” series, his public record included:
An attorney who called him a “con artist” and his software “a sham”
A federal magistrate who found he committed perjury by “clear and convincing evidence”
NSA analysts who called his data “complete and total FRAUD”
A D.C. Circuit ruling noting he had produced “virtually no evidence of the software’s functionality”
A 6-count felony indictment for $1.8 million in bad checks, unresolved for a decade
NPR had titled their 2009 investigation “The Man Who Conned the Pentagon”
No rational person would stake their reputation on Montgomery’s claims based on this record. To reach people like Mike Lindell — who had money but no background in intelligence or technology — the claims needed to come from voices that sounded authoritative. Specifically, they needed military voices.
Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, USAF (Ret.)
The credential: Three-star general. Former Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Fox News military analyst.
What he did: On November 2-3, 2020 — during active voting — McInerney appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast promoting HAMMER and SCORECARD as real systems that were being used to flip votes in the presidential election.
What he admitted: McInerney stated on the record that all of his information about HAMMER and SCORECARD came from Mary Fanning. He conducted no independent verification. He did not request classified briefings. He did not consult former colleagues in intelligence. He did not examine the data himself. He repeated what one writer told him, on national media, during an active election.
What this means:
A three-star general lent the full weight of his rank and career to claims that originated from a single writer (Fanning), who got them from a single source (Montgomery), who had been independently debunked by eight separate government entities. McInerney’s rank made the claims sound like they came with institutional backing. They did not.
What we assess: McInerney’s Shapley value in the network is 0.05 — the lowest of any major player. This means his function (military credibility lending) was structurally replaceable. Any retired officer willing to repeat the claims could have served the same purpose. The network needed a general. It did not specifically need McInerney.
MG Paul Vallely, US Army (Ret.)
The credential: Two-star general. Former Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Army Pacific. Co-author of “From PSYOP to MindWar” (1980) with Lt. Col. Michael Aquino.
What he did: Vallely served as an organizational architect for the network. He founded or co-founded multiple organizations — the Legacy National Security Advisory Group (LNSAG), Stand Up America (SUA), the Citizens Commission on National Security (CCNS) — that provided institutional platforms for the network’s members and claims.
Why LNSAG matters:
The founding members of LNSAG included Admiral James “Ace” Lyons and Wayne Simmons. Simmons was subsequently convicted of fabricating 27 years of CIA service — he never worked for the CIA at all. His conviction raises a documented question about the vetting standards of the organizations Vallely created.
What we assess: Vallely’s role was infrastructure, not amplification. He did not go on cable news to promote HAMMER. Instead, he created the organizational ecosystem where retired officers, policy figures, and media personalities could reinforce each other’s claims with the appearance of institutional backing.
Admiral James “Ace” Lyons, USN (Ret.)
The credential: Four-star admiral. Former Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet. The highest-ranking military figure associated with the network.
What is documented: Lyons died on December 12, 2018. An alleged statement — “THE HAMMER is the key to the coup” — was attributed to him and used as the title of a 2020 book by Fanning and Jones.
What we cannot verify: Whether Lyons actually made this statement. The alleged deathbed statement is attributed by Fanning. There are no independent witnesses on record confirming it. Using a deceased four-star admiral’s alleged final words as a book title — and as evidence for the existence of a CIA supercomputer — is an extraordinary claim that cannot be independently verified.
What we assess: Lyons’ death made him the perfect validator. A living admiral can be questioned, deposed, cross-examined. A deceased admiral cannot recant. The attributed quote serves as permanent, unimpeachable endorsement precisely because it can never be confirmed or denied.
Kirk Wiebe, Former NSA Senior Analyst
The credential: NSA senior analyst. Whistleblower (legitimate — he raised concerns about the NSA’s warrantless surveillance programs alongside William Binney and Thomas Drake).
What is documented (2014-2015): Wiebe examined the contents of the 47 hard drives Montgomery turned over to the FBI. In on-the-record reporting, Wiebe called the data “complete and total FRAUD.” This was a credentialed technical assessment from someone with real NSA experience.
What is documented (2020): Wiebe reversed his position, calling Montgomery “an American hero.” He has not publicly explained what new evidence led to this reversal.
Why this matters:
Wiebe’s 2015 assessment was the strongest technical debunking of Montgomery’s data from a sympathetic source — someone who was not a government insider trying to cover up surveillance but an actual NSA whistleblower who examined the material and found it worthless. His unexplained reversal effectively neutralized the most damaging expert assessment against Montgomery.
What we don’t know:
What new evidence, if any, Wiebe examined between 2015 and 2020
Whether Wiebe had contact with Fanning, Montgomery, or others in the network during this period
Whether any financial consideration was involved
Whether Wiebe maintains his revised position today
Frank Gaffney, Former Asst. Secretary of Defense
The credential:
Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan. Founder of the Center for Security Policy (CSP).
What he did:
CSP provided an institutional platform that credentialed Fanning’s work. When TheAmericanReport.org articles were promoted through CSP channels, they carried the implicit endorsement of a recognized national security think tank rather than appearing as claims from an anonymous WordPress site.
What this means:
CSP’s involvement transformed the network’s output from fringe publishing to think-tank validated analysis — at least in appearance. The substance of the claims did not change. The perceived credibility did.
The Credibility Laundering Pattern
Across all five validators, the pattern is identical:
Montgomery makes a claim he cannot (or will not) substantiate
The claim is published by Fanning on TheAmericanReport.org
A validator with real credentials repeats the claim or allows their name to be associated with it
The audience perceives the claim as having been independently confirmed by a credentialed expert
The claim reaches financiers (Lindell, Byrne) who lack the expertise to evaluate it themselves but trust the validators’ credentials
At no point does any validator conduct independent verification. McInerney admitted this explicitly. The others have not addressed the question on the record.
What is documented:
Eight separate government entities have rejected Montgomery’s claims — the CIA (internal review), French DGSE, FBI, AFOSI, CISA, NSA (Wiebe’s original 2015 assessment), the D.C. Circuit, and every independent expert at Lindell’s Cyber Symposium.
Against these eight rejections, the validators offered: one retired general’s unsourced repetition, one deceased admiral’s unverifiable deathbed quote, one NSA analyst’s unexplained reversal, and one think tank’s implicit endorsement.
The Wayne Simmons Problem
Any discussion of the military validators must note Wayne Simmons.
What is documented:
Simmons was a founding member of LNSAG — the organization founded by Vallely that included Admiral Lyons. Simmons claimed to have 27 years of CIA service. He appeared as a CIA expert on Fox News.
In October 2015, Simmons was arrested. He had never worked for the CIA. He fabricated his entire intelligence career. He was convicted of fraud, making false statements to the government, and major fraud against the United States.Simmons sat with Admiral Lyons in the founding photo of LNSAG.
What this shows:
The organizational infrastructure that supported the Montgomery network’s validators included at least one person whose own credentials were completely fabricated. This does not prove that other validators’ credentials are false — McInerney, Vallely, and Lyons all had legitimate military careers. But it demonstrates that the vetting standards within this organizational ecosystem were insufficient to detect a total fraud sitting in the founding photo.
What We Know and What We Don’t
Documented:
McInerney admitted all his information came from Fanning — zero independent verification
Wiebe called Montgomery’s data “complete and total FRAUD” in 2015, reversed without explanation by 2020
Lyons’ alleged deathbed statement is unverifiable
Simmons, a founding LNSAG member, was convicted of fabricating his entire CIA career
Eight separate government entities have rejected Montgomery’s claims
Assessed:
The validators served a credibility laundering function — transforming a discredited source’s claims into apparently expert-backed intelligence
McInerney’s function was structurally replaceable (Shapley value 0.05)
Lyons’ death made him the perfect unimpeachable validator
Wiebe’s reversal is the most analytically puzzling event in the network’s history
Unresolved:
Why Wiebe reversed his technical assessment without new public evidence
Whether any validator received financial consideration
Whether any validator sought independent verification before lending their name
The full LNSAG membership roster and vetting procedures
SOURCES: On-the-record statements (McInerney re: Fanning as sole source; Wiebe “complete and total FRAUD” assessment), Simmons conviction records (E.D. Virginia, 2016), LNSAG founding documentation, D.C. Circuit (Montgomery v. Risen, 875 F.3d 709, 2017), CISA Director Krebs statement (November 7, 2020), NPR (2009), James Risen (Pay Any Price, 2014), Steve Bannon War Room broadcast records (November 2-3, 2020).
ABOUT THIS SERIES: “Constitutional Republic” is an investigative series by Project Milk Carton, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN: 33-1323547). This investigation was conducted using ARIA, our Autonomous Research & Intelligence Agent.
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