How The Tor Project Pays And Pays CIA Agents From Their USG.Navy Coffers

From the Tor Project's own timeline on their hiring and post separation payments to "former" CIA agent David Chasteen. Given the source, information presented as facts in this timeline may not be in concordance with reality. Interesting points bolded:

A sends:
Subject: David Chasteen Timeline
This is a timeline of events related to Tor's hiring of David Chasteen.
January 15th, 2011: David Chasteen attended a Tor hackday at MIT, while claiming to work for the State Department. There, he met Tor people including Jacob Appelbaum. Around this time, David Chasteen indicated he was interested in a job at Tor, but he was not hired.
October 5th, 2014: Roger Dingledine suggested adding David Chasteen to the tor-internal private mailing list and possibly hiring him as a project manager.
October 8th, 2014: Based on her previous experiences working with him, Karen Reilly sent an email to tor-internal advocating for David Chasteen to be hired as a project manager.
October 14th, 2014: David Chasteen was added to tor-internal.
November 5th and 6th, 2014: Operation Onymous
November 6th, 2014: David Chasteen's last day at the CIA after working there for 8 years.
November 7th, 2014: David Chasteen's first day working for Tor as a project manager. Along with Karen Reilly, he attended Freedom of the Press Foundation's Digital Security Conference in Washington DC. At the conference, he met with Xeni Jardin about writing a guest post on Boingboing about Tor hiring him. On this same day, David Chasteen disclosed to Roger Dingledine that he worked for the CIA.
November 9th, 2014: In the wake of media concerns stemming from Operation Onymous, Jacob Appelbaum sent an email to tor-internal calling for a more coordinated media strategy. In this, he asked if anyone paid by Tor has a clearance.
November 10th, 2014 13:30 EST: David Chasteen responded saying that he had a clearance, but it is no longer active. He further stated that, because all Foreign Service Officers and military officers have clearance, having a policy against hiring anyone with a clearance would be discrimination against veterans.
November 10th, 2014 15:21 EST: David Chasteen sent an email to tor-internal disclosing that he worked for the CIA for 8 years, explaining why he wanted to work for Tor, and discussing is plans going forward (including the Boingboing guest post).
November 10th, 2014: tor-internal IRC and mailing list discussion about how to handle the hiring of David Chasteen.
November 10th, 2014 18:21 EST: David Chasteen sent an email saying he was going to "bow out" because it did not seem like anyone was comfortable with the situation.
November 11th, 2014 18:51 EST: Jacob Appelbaum sent the #tor-internal IRC log to the tor-internal email list.
November 10th, 2014 22:44 EST: David Chasteen said he was going to unsubscribe himself from tor-internal. At 23:10 EST, Damian Johnson confired that David Chasteen was no longer on tor-internal.
November 16th: Andrew Lewman sent an email to tor-internal saying that David Chasteen hired a law firm and that members of the list should have no contact with David Chasteen or discussions about him.
December 2nd: Andrew Lewman told tor-internal that negotiations with David Chasteen were ongoing, reiterated his request that tor-internal members have no contact with or discussions about David Chasteen, and said he would report back with updates.
At some later date, David Chasteen settled out of court with the Tor Project.1


  1. This means the Tor Project paid their valiant CMU Tor Attack and Operation Onymous fall guy. Except where are the mentions that the CMU Tor Attack did Operation Onymous? Well, who needs those when you have a David Chasteen to play distraction.  

3 thoughts on “How The Tor Project Pays And Pays CIA Agents From Their USG.Navy Coffers

  1. Please excuse me while the conspiracy theorist in me runs wild.

    Is anybody starting to suspect that Appelbaum was the senior mole? In the leaked chatlog (assuming it is legit) he flies off the handle pretty spectacularly, which is just what I'd do if I discovered the project I cared about had just been infiltrated. But there's like eight other people on that chat in the exact same boat with the same passion for privacy and anonymity, and all of them are a whole lot more muted than him. So much so that Chasteen himself points out the disparity in reactions. Twice.

    Then Isis flees the USA while being pursued by the FBI. Less than three weeks later she leads the campaign to expose Applebaum's psychopathic sexual behaviors (I'm not doxxing her here, she admitted this on Twitter but I presume used the pseudonym to try to make it less personal) posting one of the stronger stories.

    The wacko conspiracy theorist in me speculates: this business about an FBI criminal investigation is hogwash, Isis was afraid of a lot more than professional retaliation, and the recent events were brought on by her being the first to figure it out… There aren't too many places where you have even a small chance of avoiding a CIA hit, but Germany, Russia, and China are probably them… at least those are the countries where they have the most difficulty operating. Explains why the FBI acted as if they were allergic to her lawyer.

    Le Carre, I think real life may have outdone you here…

    • Reference "psychopatic sexual behaviours", immediately lose any credibility.

      Move on.

      • Apparently the crippling flaw in my reasoning is the failure to insert the adjective "alleged".

        Qntra: I blame your edit-button-lackingness for this fail.

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