Pentagon Cyber-PR Contractor Admits Dark Web Child Sexual Exploitation

At Booz Allen’s home, a former Air Force intelligence analyst claimed to work closely with the US Department of Defense Cyber ​​Command as he uploaded thousands of images of sexual abuse on children from the dark web.

Eight-year Booz Allen Hamilton PR specialist, who worked closely with the Pentagon’s US Cyber ​​Command, pleaded guilty to using the dark web to find child sexual exploitation material .

Brendan Kavanaugh, a 53-year-old former Air Force public relations official and photographic intelligence analyst, admitted he has been using the Tor network, which is used to access heavily encrypted websites on the dark web, since 2016 to visit “sites associated with child pornography,” according to a plea deal released last week.

Kavanaugh used the pseudonym HebeMom to chat with other people on these sites. “He knew that the material constituted child pornography and that many of the images he possessed concerned prepubescent minors and minors who had not reached the age of 12. Kavanaugh also knew he had material depicting minors involved in sadistic or masochistic behavior, ”the plea agreement reads.

A forensic analysis of an encrypted hard drive revealed that Kavanaugh possessed approximately 3,674 images of child pornography. He was arrested in December 2020 and is now awaiting his conviction, scheduled for February 2022. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Kavanaugh joined government consulting firm Booz Allen with a market capitalization of $ 12 billion in mid-2013, and “provided public affairs support and advice to senior management at the company. ‘US Cyber ​​Command’. According to government contract records, Booz Allen has been hired to work with US Cyber ​​Command since 2012, when he was awarded a $ 120 million contract. He signed various other contracts with the division this year, including a $ 165 million contract.

Working for another contractor, Kavanaugh claimed to have served as “strategic communications manager for the applications division of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)”. He also listed the National Air & Space Intelligence Center as a former employer.

Along with his long history of working closely with government intelligence and defense agencies, Kavanaugh also enrolled as a Freemason, Master Mason with the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Former Masons of Massachusetts.

Booz Allen had not responded to requests for comment. He has had issues with employees involved in illegal behavior in the past, albeit of a different type. After former staff member Edward Snowden stole files from the NSA and shared them with media organizations in the mid-2010s, another Booz employee, Harold Thomas Martin III, was accused of stealing files. documents to the intelligence agency. He was then sentenced to nine years.