OPERATION FLICKER: The Time the Government Accidentally Caught... Itself...

When the government takes down a child predator website, obtains the customer list, and sees who those bad guys are, they come to some alarming realizations...

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This is part of a series, so if you missed Part 1, click here to go back and read this from the beginning: How Is This Legal? Wanna listen to this article instead of read? Here you go:

I came across this fantastic Steemit article written nearly a decade ago that received basically no views but should have, so I decided to edit it to make it better and add my own research.

Operation Flicker was a 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE/C3/CES) investigation into child pornography, which focused on Home Collection, a commercial website operated by an organized crime ring in Belarus and Ukraine. Investigators uncovered that the same company ran an extensive network of child pornography websites, each selling memberships which cost between $79.99 and $99.99, with payments made through PayPal. As detectives began digging into the email addresses belonging to Home Collection’s customers, they were alarmed to see some were official government email addresses. When investigators cross-referenced the PayPal records with a database of Department of Defense (DoD) employee email addresses, they made a shocking discovery.

Unfortunately, Operation Flicker is often misrepresented, leading some critics to scoff at its significance and to dismiss it as “fake news.” Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth.

To understand Operation Flicker’s scope and significance, one must dispel a few common misconceptions:

The results of Operation Flicker were not made public until 2010, and when they were finally publicized, numerous outlets erroneously reported that the investigation caught 5,200 Pentagon employees with child pornography. This is not true. That 5,200 number so often cited refers to the total number of domestic clients that had paid for subscriptions to Home Collection and its various associated sites. It does not refer to the number of Pentagon employees. Good news, right? Well, not quite…

The initial Operation Flicker report identified 264 Pentagon employees or contractors among the 5,200 domestic clients. Now you must remember, Operation Flicker was not an investigation into Pentagon employees and contractors. Those who dismiss the Pentagon staff netted in the operation claim that even 264 guilty parties among the tens of thousands of DoD employees and contractors would hardly be surprising since a similar percentage would be found in society at large, and even DoD employees are not immune from being flawed humans. Ok, but there is one glaring problem with this concept. As I have already said, Operation Flicker was not an investigation into Pentagon employees. It was one investigation into a single network of child pornography websites that just happened to find 264 DoD employees and contractors. Let that sink in for a minute. Let’s look at these figures more closely…

Of the 5,200 US clients discovered in a single child pornography investigation, investigators identified 264 DoD employees, accounting for 5.1% of the total perpetrators. Disturbing, no? It gets worse.

Pentagon employees actually did not represent 5.1% of the domestic clients. While having 5.1% of the perpetrators be DoD employees would be staggering, the true number will never be known because this information is being hidden from us. You must wonder why.

In 2011, Senator Chuck Grassley took a personal interest in Operation Flicker. According to Grassley, roughly 1,700 of the original 5,200 domestic clients were never even considered or checked for possible DoD connections. Of the 264 DoD employees identified in the Operation Flicker report, only 52 of them were investigated, leading to a scant 10 convictions. Several of the investigations were halted when ICE refused to cooperate and hand over evidence. Those remaining 212 DoD employees? They were never even questioned. All investigations were halted after just eight months due to a “lack of resources.” Yes, the Department of Defense says they have a lack of resources.

Under pressure from Grassley, the Pentagon promised to reopen the investigation and to pursue the already identified employees, as well as the 1,700 unchecked leads. Considering Grassley’s findings, those 5,200 domestic clients, minus the 1,700 leads that were not even considered, equals 3,500. Thus, the true percentage of ensnared DoD employees would be 7.5% (264 out of 3,500). To review, 32.7% (1,700 out of 5,200) of the potential leads in Operation Flicker were not even considered. Of the 264 confirmed DoD employees identified, 80.3% were never even questioned, and just 3.8% (10 out of 264) were charged. [NOTE: The precise numbers are sometimes reported as 302 identified DoD employees and 70 investigations. Trying to find the precise number from the official documents can be tricky due to the frequent redactions. Therefore, this publication relies on the more conservative and more cited numbers of 264 and 52.]

It is important to note the Pentagon employees ensnared in Operation Flicker were not average workers. Among those 264 confirmed DoD employees, nine had Top Secret security clearances, and a total of 76 individuals had “Secret” or higher clearances. Meaning, these were not janitors and secretaries. The culprits included NSA, DARPA, and DoD top staff.

Keep in mind, these 264 DoD employees were not caught clicking a random link or accidentally downloading child porn while actually intending to watch legal adult pornography. No, these people were caught because they subscribed to child porn websites and paid for the subscriptions with their own PayPal accounts. The only reason they were identified was because they purchased the child porn membership with either their actual military and government email addresses or some other public email the DoD had on file for the individuals in question. This means these were not accidents or even momentary lapses into perversion. Instead, these were legitimate pedophiles who were so desperate they risked using their own email addresses and PayPal accounts, even those addresses that were property of their employer, the US government. Alternatively, they were legitimate pedophiles who were so openly comfortable being predators that they had no fear of using their government-provided email addresses to engage in crime.

In 2015, the Daily Mail Online reported that Operation Flicker had caught eight NASA employees; however, the employees were never identified. NASA contacted the Daily Mail and stated that all eight employees no longer worked for the agency. Notice, there was no mention of prosecutions.

When FOIA requests were made in 2015 to access additional documentation regarding Operation Flicker, the DoD declined, noting that the requested documents involved open investigations. Since then, as far as the public is aware, no further arrests have been made, and there is no evidence of any ongoing investigations.

Is this a one-off incident that we can chalk up to being a really bizarre fluke? If you have read this publication from the beginning, you’re probably pretty skeptical of it being a one-off, but because I like to research thoroughly, I decided to look a little more.

ADDITIONAL STINGS

In 2006, ICE turned a report over to the military. This report outlined 1,700 suspects that ICE identified during an investigation. It sounds like these were most or all military folk or contractors caught in the sting. The military claimed they “lacked the skills to follow up investigative leads,” so nothing ever came of it.

The same year a San Diego police sergeant pleaded guilty to possessing over 600 files of child pornography, including videos depicting children as young as 6 to 8 years old. There are thousands of cases involving police officers, so I am going to skip most of these.

While that was going on, the DoJ launched an operation called Project Safe Childhood, which netted men who held positions of public trust, such as elementary school principals and State Department-affiliated special agents.

At least one NSA contractor holding a top secret clearance told investigators in 2007 he had been spending $50 to $60 on monthly fees for various sexually explicit websites for the past three years, according to a Defense inspector general report on the matter. After each session on the porn sites, he would wipe the browsing history of that system. The Pentagon investigation did not state who owned the computer.

In 2009, there was an investigation into one employee with a US government security clearance who had sexual contact with a 2-year-old and a 6-year-old. He had also extensively downloaded child sexual abuse material, including 63 videos of children between 8 and 16, using government Wi-Fi to do so. It turns out this wasn’t just some sick bastard looking to get his rocks off while viewing children being harmed. This man was a child pornography distributor. The government employee was fired, and the case was closed.

Another CIA employee purchased numerous sexually explicit videos of young girls which had been filmed by their mothers. This staffer was allowed to resign.

A third admitted to viewing roughly 1,400 sexually abusive images of children while on assignment, including videos of girls as young as 10 being abused by an older man. When the CIA finally got around to searching his computer, there were no images on it. There is no way to know what came of this case because the action the CIA took is redacted. It is unlikely any action occurred at all, but we will never know.

In 2010, a CIA contractor used an agency IP address to log into a chatroom and solicit sex with a child. Thankfully, the child ended up being an undercover FBI agent. After being busted, the contractor told the CIA he had an “obsession with child sexual abuse images.” Like the last case, when his computer was later seized under a search warrant, the hard drives were missing. It appears the case was closed due to “lack of evidence” despite the man being busted by the FBI themselves.

The same year, the Gambino branch of the Syndicate (mafia) was caught operating an interstate child trafficking ring. Only a handful of low-level individuals were arrested and charged. One of them, a police officer named Suzanne Porcelli, was almost immediately released on bond. I cannot figure out if she ever served time or not because there seem to be no further reports on this case. See, we are told the mafia was wiped out by good police work in the 1980s. We are taught gangsters like John Gotti were the last of them. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

In another case from the same year, Army Corps of Engineers official Michael Beeman was caught molesting minors. When police began digging into his past, they discovered this was by no means Beeman’s first assault. He had been sexually harming since the 1980s, when he worked in public affairs at Patrick Air Force Base. The Army man was also caught downloading child pornography while working. Daniel Payne, the director of the Pentagon's Defense Security Service, said in an interview, “The amount of child porn I see [on government devices] is just unbelievable."

As bat shit crazy as this sounds, in 2012, our government passed a law banning federal employees from watching pornography in the workplace. But despite the ban, there were 69 more cases of federal employees or others using federal networks to access pornography - and this is what was caught and became cases. Imagine how much isn’t caught or is caught but doesn’t become a case. It is simply mind-blowing that our own government would have to pass a law of this nature. Perhaps the next law should tell them not to murder people while on the clock? Even more dumbfounding is that, even with a law in place, they still chose to watch porn, including child pornography, while at work! Who on earth watches porn at work? Answer: A true addict. A sex fiend. There is no other explanation, and this point is very important.

One of the many to be caught was an employee at a VA Medical Center in Texas who regularly downloaded child pornography on his work computer during his shift. Another worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The government then extended the ban to stop the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) because the employees were spending “approximately 90 minutes each working day” using an office computer to view pornography and escort-related services. The entire thing is jaw-dropping.

In 2017, in Tallahassee, Florida, a police operation called Cupid's Arrow caught 12 child predators who were attempting to meet up with young girls. Arrests included a retired U.S. Army colonel and the messenger manager for the Florida House of Representatives. The messenger manager oversaw children as young as 13. Here we see that out of a dozen arrests, two worked for the government, which is equal to almost 17% of the total amount of men arrested!

In 2018, a US State Department employee was in a massive scandal that barely made the news. It began when a sex offender in Ohio admitted to sexually assaulting a 5-year-old girl. He told police that he used the Kik messenger app to trade sexual abuse images for other child pornography. He gave his phone to police, and on it they discovered Dropbox folders containing a wealth of child porn. Many of the images and videos showed a woman molesting a girl. The folders also included two non-pornographic photos of a man. Investigators subpoenaed Dropbox for the account information, including the users' IP addresses. One account was linked to an IP address at the US government’s Foreign Service Institute and a second IP address elsewhere. Law enforcement subpoenaed Comcast to learn the second location, which traced back to the home of a woman not affiliated with the government.

Through further investigation, police discovered the government employee was in a business relationship with the woman who had hidden a livestreaming camera disguised as a clock in the bathroom of her home. The livestream was transmitted to the government-owned cell phone of the employee who worked in the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia. He would then distribute the content to others. If what you have heard so far isn’t disturbing enough, guess what the Foreign Service Institute is?

It’s a training program for diplomats!

In 2019, the physical security specialist with the Department of Defense pleaded guilty to running an online group chat business that was dedicated to soliciting child pornography from other members. In this instance we have a child pornography business which was ran by two men, one of which was a government employee. That is 50%.

Also in 2019, Suzanne Porcelli, the same police officer who works for the Gambinos, was arrested again for being an operative in the mafia’s child prostitution ring. She told the judge, “I knowingly aided and abetted the transportation of an individual to engage in prostitution by answering a telephone and making appointments for customers, which I knew was unlawful.”

I again am unable to find out if she served time, but, despite this being her second offense in a decade, the maximum that she could have served if she got the full sentence the prosecutors recommended was a laughable two years.

In 2022, a California “Detective of the Year” was busted in a child sex sting for sending sexually explicit messages. To make matters worse, the detective would often text the decoy sexually graphic messages while he was on duty. Strangely, when the decoy contacted Orange County Crime Stoppers and informed them about messages she received from someone who claimed to be a police officer, the FBI stepped in, and who knows what happened after that. In this instance it is unknown what percentage of the men involved with this decoy were government employees, but for this specific case, it was 100%.

Also in 2022, investigators found an encrypted folder on the cell phone belonging to a US Department of Energy employee. These folders contained images and a video of a 5-year-old girl in addition to a plethora of other child materials accompanied by thousands of chats in which the staffer was soliciting photos and videos of minors engaged in sexual acts.

In 2023 an undercover human trafficking sting in Coweta County, Georgia, led to the arrest of 26 people, including a local man who has been identified as a top children’s education official with the Pentagon. The netted man was the chief of staff for Defense Department schools in the United States.

Unbelievably, the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office charged him only with pandering, which is a misdemeanor in Georgia.

The same year, a police chief in West Virginia was convicted for sex trafficking a minor. One of the incidents took place inside a high school, in a location of the school that was accessible to a limited number of people that included officials from the Gauley Bridge Police Department.

Months later, a Missouri police officer, plead guilty to sex trafficking and coercion, admitting to providing vape cartridges and cash to minors for nude photos and sexual acts, sometimes while wearing his uniform.

Also in 2023, a VA employee was nabbed distributing child pornography over public Wi-Fi at a Massachusetts VA hospital. When his house was searched, police uncovered child porn featuring toddlers.

In 2025, in New Mexico, a police officer pled guilty to child exploitation charges for recording child sex acts. The same year, a Massachusetts veterans’ affairs physician was caught with thousands of pornographic images and videos on his cell phone, many of which featured children.

Also in 2025, in Los Angeles, California, a federal contractor who worked as a caretaker long-term in an after-school recreation program was busted coercing 7-year old children into performing sexual acts which he photographed. He was ultimately charged with production of child pornography, but the last easily accessible update on the case says he was awaiting trial; therefore, it is unknown if he was convicted.

In another case from 2025, the founder and executive chairman of Govini, a software firm with deep Pentagon ties, was arrested and charged with soliciting sexual contact with a preteen girl. The last news update I see on this guy is that he was released on bond.

That November, "To Catch a Predator" host Chris Hansen went to Harford County, in Baltimore and caught a total of nine men looking to engage in sexual activity with a young boy. These nine included a federal employee with top security clearances, as well as an attorney and an owner of two daycare centers in Pennsylvania. One government employee out of nine total culprits is equal to 11%!

It came to light that of 10 cases involving CIA employees soliciting children or child materials, only one was prosecuted even though most were referred to the Attorney General for prosecution. Remember what we discussed previously: the AG is a fully controlled position. He is who is responsible for letting all of these pedophiles and traffickers off the hook, but only when they work for the government and the government’s criminal empire. If you or I were busted doing the same, and we were not an employee of Uncle Sam or an agent helping with Uncle Sam’s black operations, we would be given a harsh sentence because we are a business competitor in their eyes.

Even more shockingly, it was discovered that the Department of Defenses computer network was ranked 19th out of almost 3,000 nationwide networks on the amount of peer-to-peer child pornography sharing. Meaning, the DoD’s network and Pentagon-issued computers were being used to view, create, or circulate child materials; “peer-to-peer trading.” In fact, it was so bad that it was brought before Congress, which introduced the END Network Abuse bill to stop our protectors of society from using their computer networks to share or procure pornographic images of children. This bill was passed into law as part of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, but in the ultimate twist of fate, the bill allows for the government to partner with “qualified national child protection organizations” to “identify, investigate, and prosecute perpetrators of online child pornography,” so instead of stopping the problem, they will be bringing in more predators because these predators flock to these organizations.

In 2026, a longtime legal staffer at the Department of Justice was caught receiving multiple videos and images containing child abuse material. To these he responded, "That is SO HOT" and "It is beautiful and naughty." It turned out that catching this staffer was actually a complete fluke. The investigation was actually into Victor Blythe, a child psychotherapist at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, who was charged with distributing child pornography the year prior. Last we know, the DoJ employee was put on leave.

Then a DC Metropolitan Police Department officer was caught sex trafficking young girls in Washington, D.C., and Maryland. This officer would take his victims to have sexual intercourse with men in private VIP rooms at the club. Records show he collected over $10,000 in profits from one of the victims he exploited. Other victims were paid to recruit other minors, all under the age of 18, to work for him as commercial sex workers. Because he was sent to prison for 27 years, we can assume he was running this operation without giving the mafia a kickback.

And those are just a small sampling of the vast number of publicly known cases of government employees involved in sex crimes against the most innocent of society. Now we must ask, why are there so many government employees? So many that they tower over pedophile statistics. So many that a single sting operation held anywhere in the nation seems to net no less than 5% government staffers, often catching 15% or more? There are so many that, such as in the Victor Blythe (DC child psychotherapist) case, they weren’t even looking to catch anyone on the taxpayer’s payroll and accidentally netted a DoJ staffer. Why so many?

Well, you have to remember who is slotted to fill roles of importance in this nation and, more specifically, where they are pulled from, which is the highest ranks of the Freemasonic Lodges—and this isn’t even a secret. To understand this more, I refer you back to my book Police, Priests, Politicians, and Presidents. In this book I share testimony from one of the highest-ranking Freemasons in the nation, James Shaw. Shaw was one of the few who turned against the organization and outted a lot of the inner workings, which we would never have known of otherwise. Although he only delves into a single crime, which involved the Shriners committing fraud through their Shriner’s Children’s Hospitals, the importance of his book cannot be understated because in it, Shaw explains that, even when you invest your life into the brotherhood and make it to the highest level (33rd degree / KCCH), you are not at the highest level. You must then be hand-selected to advance further. The body that does the hand-selecting is located at the Freemason’s Washington, DC, headquarters. And, as is pointed out in the book, the DC meeting is not free. Upon reaching DC, the Freemason is blindsided with yet another fee. They are expected to pay thousands of dollars on the spot just to have the interview, with no guarantee that they will be chosen to continue to advance. All of these steps, and the physical and mental abuse suffered by candidates along their journey to the top, are designed to eliminate people who will not do anything and everything for the organization. So when people tell you their father, uncle, brother, or friend was a 32nd or 33rd degree Mason and they affirmatively state he never participated in anything illegal, ask if he was chosen to travel to DC for the interview. Chances are, he was not, because very few are ever selected for such. And if your friend still insists his uncle was in the top tier and did pass the DC interview, he is probably mistaken or lying because a man actively in the brotherhood at this level would not disclose his participation in this interview because it is a secret. We only know of it due to whistleblower Shaw.

Although not discussed in Shaw’s publication, the lodges in the top tiers have been proven to be involved in human trafficking and partake in homosexual and pedophilic activities. These activities are blackmail. When people are blackmailed, they are controllable. When they are controllable, they are inserted into positions of power, and this is why our government is overrun with criminals and pedophiles. Equally, this is why so few ever spend time behind bars: a Freemason judge cannot send his brother to prison, so his only option is to tank the case on a technicality or rule unjustly. It happens every single day, and the criminals are let back on the streets.

And if you are thinking, “Someone do something to stop this!” let me tell you that in early 2026, President Trump’s US Department of Justice slashed funding and training resources for law enforcement working on investigations and prosecutions of sex crimes against children.

According to the article, “Federal prosecutors are now operating under new “austerity” measures, put into place by the justice department, creating roadblocks to prosecuting alleged child predators.”

Yes, roadblocks have been put in place to make prosecuting predators more difficult… But does slashing funding matter when it is the government itself running the trafficking empire?

NEXT READ: PIZZAGATE, THE FINAL CHAPTER

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