One of the best ways to gather intelligence and data against a rival, enemy or illegal operation is to infiltrate their ranks, gain the confidence of the upper echelon and even participate in the activities, wired to the gills in order to obtain as much evidence as possible to bring down the opposition.
Counterintelligence moles, DEA agents, and corporate case officers operate around the world at the behest of their superiors, employing coercive tactics such as extortion or blackmail to obtain what they need when simple clandestine infiltration is not enough...
...and with books published and films produced that effectively glamorize the dark, dirty and often dangerous world of intelligence gathering, most folks have a veiled misconception of what counterintelligence is all about. Spies are the worst of the worst, despicable human beings who are so skilled at manipulating their prey that they are routinely thought of as low-life scum.
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| Is Mike Kensil guilty of coercion? |
And the folks at the NSA and CIA will tell you that none of them can be trusted. Once a person is locked into the dark perversion of deception and dishonest practice, there comes a point where they must be turned loose or destroyed for the good of whatever entity employs them.
That seems a bit harsh for the purposes of the National Football League, though, as we've seen repeatedly, there have been those who have been labeled by public opinion as the aforementioned lowlife scum - but up until four months ago, Tom Brady was never counted among them.
Unless, of course, you count him so by association with New England Patriots' head ball coach Bill Belichick, who is universally despised by all who do not count themselves as fans of the team, including the fans of the other 31 NFL franchises and members of the media, Boston rags included. He has been under siege by the New York media and fans of their two football teams since he did a little mind-changing back in 1999, resigning as the "HC of the NYJ" after less than one day on the job...
...then came the hatred that comes with winning three world titles in the space of four seasons, followed by the SpyGate incident, which resulted in Belichick running up the score and humiliating his opponents ever since - not to mention the fallout from the evil Aaron Hernandez saga, culminating in his most tumultuous season at the reigns, being accused of illegal substitutions and formations by the Baltimore Ravens and then of deflating footballs.
So despised is Belichick outside of New England that he earned the moniker "Beli-Cheat" and his team the "Cheatriots". Undaunted, "The Hoodie" as he is known by his legions of regional supporters and pockets of closet admirers around the world, preceded to lead his team to four consecutive AFC Championship games in the last four seasons and one Super Bowl victory last February, and doing so while relentlessly thumbing his nose to the league offices.
So it is reasonable to assume that when the General Manager of the Indianapolis Colts contacted the league offices during the week leading up to their AFC Championship tilt against the Patriots, that Belichick's name was on the tip of the tongue of everyone who mattered at the NFL offices on Madison Avenue, most with ties to teams whom Belichick dumped on at one point or another - and all with motivation to finally nail Belichick to the wall.
So instead of those people contacting Belichick and team owner Robert Kraft of the suspicions of the Colts' hierarchy - as they had previously when footballs had been tampered with by other teams - Goodell's henchmen, with or without the commissioner's knowledge, set up a "Sting" operation to try and catch the team and Belichick red-handed.
How do we know this? Simply, by following a paper trail - or, in this case, the "copy to" line on the email sent from Colts' General Manager Ryan Grigson.
The email was originally sent to Senior NFL Vice President of Football Operations David Gardi and Director of Football Operations Mike Kensil, the latter forwarding the damning email to Director of Game Operations, James Daniels, who turned around and fired it off in may different directions, including to Alberto Riveron and Dean Blandino, both Senior members of the leagues officiating department...
...all of whom decided to approach referee Walt Anderson before the game to let him in on the accusations and, as Blandino put it, "To ensure that proper protocols concerning the footballs was followed."
Which is funny, since Blandino flatly denied knowing anything about the accusations until after the game. Things get murky after that, turning into a he said - she said litany of lies and misrepresentations, but what is clear is that the league had knowledge of the accusations, and instead of taking measures to preserve the integrity of the game, they instead took the opportunity to set up the Patriots.
Insert Admiral Shaffer's rant here: This was someone's unilateral wet dream, and not just someones, but none other than Mike Kensil.
Enter part-time, minimum wage ball handler Jim McNally, who became the focus and star witness for the NFL, his every move during the AFC title game scrutinized by an investigative team led by attorney Ted Wells, the independent investigator who NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had retained in past investigations.
The mainstay of the NFL's case against the Patriots in what has been dubbed "DeflateGate", has been the movements of McNally during the time immediately following the game officials pre-game duties of checking the PSI (Pounds per square inch) of the footballs - which is presumably done before any NFL game.
Once the balls were checked by the referee for the game, tenured veteran official Anderson, McNally left the official's room with two mesh bags - one full of game approved footballs and one full of game approved back up footballs. Left to his own devices, security cameras inside the stadium show McNally entering a one toilet bathroom, where he is alleged to have taken a needle and released some of the air pressure from the regular game-approved footballs.
He emerged from the head 1:40 later and preceded to the field, where the footballs were put into play and used throughout the first half of the game. What happened next was a flurry of activity, Anderson and his crew measuring the PSI of the Patriots' footballs, finding them below the legal limit of 12.5, pumped them up to 13.0 and sent them back out for the second half.
Once the footballs were measured, it is reported that Kensil immediately located and approached Patriots' equipment manager Dave Shoenfield, stating, "We weighed the balls at halftime. You are in big fucking trouble."
Regardless of how this looks for the league - trying to catch the Patriots in the act instead of stepping in to prevent it from happening in the first place - many would forgive them for their malfeasance simply because nailing Belichick in the act would justify all of the suspicions of cheating throughout the years.
But a funny thing happened along the way. Ted Wells, the independent investigator who NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has retained in the past, discovered early on in his investigation that Belichick had no knowledge of purposeful deflation of footballs and, in fact, found out about the accusations when he woke up the following morning.
That, in and of itself, is curious. One would think that if a league vice president approached the team's equipment manager at halftime to tell him he was screwed, isn't it reasonable to assume that said equipment manager would have approached the head coach - or duly appointed representative thereof - at some point before Belichick went home for the evening?
So either Belichick is lying about his knowledge of the accusations, or Shoenfield and McNally were under coercive orders to remain quiet - and since the Wells investigation bears out that Belichick had no knowledge, the circumstance falls back on coercion.
During the investigation, both McNally and assistant equipment manager John Jastremski handed over their cell phones to investigators, the text messages of which have been quoted ad nauseum, McNally trashing quarterback Tom Brady for his preference for inflation of the ball on the lower end of the spectrum - given that no evidence was ever given that Brady liked the footballs below the 12.5 threshold...
...and since Wells couldn't find one scrap of evidence that Belichick had been involved at all, the league's Sting operation was in danger of blowing up in their faces, so Wells issued the proclamation that Brady "More likely than not had general knowledge of the deflation of footballs." - a standard that would be laughed out of any court on a pre-trial motion, yet, combined with Brady's refusal to hand over his own personal cell phone as evidence, it was enough for the NFL to issue an indictment to the face of the league.
Up until that point, Brady had been looked upon as the lone redeeming factor that made Belichick's Patriots at least a little bit tolerable in the public eye - but with the indictment and subsequent four-game suspension handed down by NFL Discipline Czar Troy Vincent, there is now nothing that is sacred in Foxborough.
Is it possible that the New England Patriots have fallen victim to counterintelligence tactics? At the very least, appearances are that the league did indeed conduct a Sting Operation rather than follow protocol to protect the integrity of the game - and a case can be made for inside job as well.
How else does one explain how McNally was left to his own devices after leaving a room full of game and NFL officials, when all of the people present in that room knew of the accusations by the Colts. If protecting the integrity of the game was so important, would one consider that McNally would have been escorted to the field, and not allowed to enter the bathroom with the footballs in tow?
Given these facts, it is reasonable to at least ponder the notion not only that McNally knew what was going on (or at least had suspicion given all of the league officials in the room), but may have actually been coerced by the league into deflating the footballs in the first place, giving rise to all the evidence they needed to nail the Patriots in the act.
Ah, paranoia. How good of you to drop by and plunge every Patriots' fan on the planet into the vortex of anger and despair...
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