When compared to the media circus that surrounded the pretrial investigation and ultimate trial and conviction of Scott Peterson in 2005 for the murder of his wife Laci and unborn child Conner, the recently concluded Neil Entwistle murder case doesn't even register a whisper. This is very curious. The Neil Entwistle case had all the elements necessary for a media circus"-a wife shot to death in her home along with her 9-month old daughter, plus an international angle where the suspect husband flees back home to England.
One would think that programs such as Nancy Grace, Anderson Cooper 360, Verdict with Dan Abrams and Larry King Live would have milked the tragedy for all it was worth as they had the Scott Peterson case or the still unsolved 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba incident, but there was no coverage. This silence is a story in itself.
Except for periodic coverage of the trial on Court TV, the only mention in the media of Neil Entwistle after wife Rachel and daughter Lillian were found dead were two curt dispatches announcing Neil's arrival back in the United States in February 2006 to stand trial, and his conviction on June 25, 2008. That's it! What caused this self-imposed media blackout costing valuable advertising dollars? Before we get to that story, let's first examine the many oddities that swirl around the Neil Entwistle case.
The first sign that something was amiss was Neil Entwistle's extradition flight back to the United States. Instead of flying coach on a commercial airliner as is usual in extradition cases, Neil, in the custody of United States marshals, was ""-returning to the U.S. on a private flight" according to British police.1 Hold on, though. The flight back to the United States gets even more interesting. It would seem not only were authorities in Massachusettes interested in getting Neil Entwistle back to the United States, and in a comfortable fashion no less, but so was the Central Intelligence Agency, because the "private flight" Neil flew back on was, according to former NSA officer Wayne Madsen, a "CIA Gulfstream"-previously used to fly "renditioned" Al Qaeda suspects around the world."2 Madsen reports "After questions were raised [from reporters] about the use of the Gulfstream, Massachusetts authorities claimed it had merely "rented" the U.S. government's aircraft for the sole purpose of transporting Entwistle."3 This explanation is, of course, ludicrous. Agency aircraft are not lent out. Such an action would constitute a serious security breach even if the temporary passengers were Americans.
The story gets even odder! After initially landing at "Bangor, Maine, to pass customs, [Neil Entwistle] then flew to"-Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, Mass."4 So instead of flying directly to Boston Logan Airport, first the CIA Gulfstream lands at Bangor, Maine to pass customs then proceeds to Hamscom Air Force Base. Of course, this round about process could have been handled more expeditiously by landing at Boston Logan Airport in the first place. Then again if Neil Entwistle had landed at Boston Logan Airport, reporters there would not have been so restrained in their coverage of his return as they would be on a military base. Madsen notes one aspect of the media's restraint at Hamscom as "TV footage of the aircraft [CIA Gulfstream] studiously avoided showing the plane's tail number."5
You're probably thinking to yourself this is one strange story, and it couldn't get any stranger. Wrong. Like a good thriller (or a bad thriller), the odyssey of Neil Entwistle goes seriously serpentine.
Madsen reports, "Entwistle's firm, Embedded New Technologies (ENT), reportedly had connections to the Braintree, Massachusetts-based firm P-Tech, which was investigated subsequent to 911 by the FBI for ties to Muslim Brotherhood financiers linked to Al Qaeda. P-Tech also had software contracts for the FAA, NORAD, Pentagon, and White House during the 9-11 terrorist attacks."6 Well, well, well, that would certainly explain the keen interest the CIA had in Neil Entwistle.
If you remember, during the 9/11 attacks FAA radar was continuing to pick up false contacts after the NORAD war games going on that morning were called off, confusing Air Traffic Control's response to the attacks.7 Was this the work of P-Tech who we learn had a software contract with the FAA during the 9/11 attacks? Before we answer that question, we need to know who was behind P-Tech - where did P-Tech get its financing - and how did P-Tech become such an influential provider of software to departments and agencies of the United States government?
A senior consultant to JPMorganChase and Risk, Indira Singh was tasked in April 2002 with developing a next-generation, operational, risk blueprint that "would proactively identify exposures, including money laundering, rogue trading, and illicit financing patterns."8 Indira reached out to the top people in her profession for recommendations on software companies that could assist her on the project. The responses Indira got were unanimous. P-Tech, a software company based in Quincy, Massachusetts, would fit the job Indira was told.
Indira invited representatives from P-Tech to pay a visit to her firm for a demonstration of the company's software. When they arrived alarm bells immediately started to go off in Indira's head. P-Tech hadn't brought the software to the demonstration, but assured Indira that they could develop the software on the laptop they had brought with them. All they needed to do was hook onto the Internet at the workstation Indira had prepared for the demonstration. This is a serious breach of standard operating procedure in the software business, for at the end of the day, according to Indira, "he's walking out the door and I don't have anything and he's walking away with pretty much enough of how we're thinking about doing operational risk. Operational Risk is about how to spot bad things that are going on in a financial institution, things like rogue trading, money laundering, and so on and so forth."9
With the P-Tech representatives still on site, Indira excused herself and called several colleagues who had initially recommended P-Tech to her. When she informed one individual that P-Tech was on site, the individual asked why she brought them to her work place. The individual advised Indira to watch them closely. These responses were not what Indira expected, especially from individuals who had recommended P-Tech to her. And so started an eight month odyssey where Indira learned from P-Tech employees and FBI agents that P-Tech was a "cutout", "a front"-a regular CIA front"-"10 Indira also learned that P-Tech's main financing came from Yassin Al-Kadi, a Saudi businessman, according to Jeff Goins, Vice President of Sales for P-Tech. With this information, Indira went online and discovered that Yassin Kadi had been placed on the FBI terror list in October, 2001.11
On June 28, 2002 Indira Singh was fired from JPMorganChase because she refused to stop investigating P-Tech and warning other businesses and clients of P-Tech's terrorist linked financing. On December 5, 2002 U.S. Customs, FBI, IRS, Secret Service, INS and the Massachusetts State Police raided the Ouincy, Massachusetts offices of P-Tech.12 The raid, however, was a fraud. The only reason P-Tech was raided was due to the incessant and embarrassing questions Indira was asking about the company and its terrorist linked financing. After the raid P-Tech changed its name to Go Agile, and the FBI investigation fizzled out.
One can now begin to appreciate the reason for the media blackout on the Entwistle case. P-Tech was a "protected" company used by elements within the United States intelligence community. P-Tech's software allowed the United States intelligence community to manipulate computer networks, such as placing phantom radar contacts on FAA radar monitors during the 9/11 attacks. Just the type of work Entwistle was involved with according to the latest from Wayne Madsen:
"[Madsen] has recently learned from knowledgeable U.S. Intelligence Community sources that Entwistle's contract for P-Tech involved "wiring backdoors" into the computer systems of the FAA, NORAD, Pentagon, and White House to bring about the operational collapse of the computer systems during the morning of 9/11."13
So did Neil Entwistle kill his wife? The forensic evidence supports what Neil Entwistle and defense council maintained at the trial, that Rachel Entwistle murdered her nine-month old child and then killed herself. The police found no gunshot residue in Neil's car,15 but did find gunshot residue on Rachel's hands.16
So why did Neil Entwistle flee to England? If he was innocent, certainly fleeing the country is a good indicator that he was guilty, one might conclude. Fleeing the scene of a crime, or the country where the crime was committed, is not proof of guilt. For instance, an innocent individual who witnessed a murder but didn't know the murder victim, or an innocent individual that witnessed a murder and did knew the victim, but knows that the authorities would have no reason to believe he/she witnessed the murder, flee such crime scenes all the time, and usually do so because the witness doesn't want to be wrongly implicated in the crime. Running in this instance, however, would present more problems for Neil Entwistle than remaining to face the authorities' questions. Since Neil Entwistle was the husband and father of the victims, there is every reason for the authorities to suspect that he was the murderer, and therefore there would be no good reason for him to run if he didn't want to compound the authorities' suspicions.
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