Original subtitles

Provided by explosiveskull https://twitter.com/kaboomskull

[brooding music]

[grandmother] This is Leann's and Paul's house.

This is the dining room, which is really nice.

And then this here,

the computer that Matthew plays on all the time,

spends most of his day on this thing here playing his war games.

[Paul] Matt grew up on the internet, we didn't.

Leann and I were raised...

She can speak for herself,

but we're similar personalities.

We're the kids in class that sit down,

and follow the rules, we color in the lines.

We're part of a system, that's who we are.

Matt's generation was different,

we raised him to think critically.

We raised him to be free.

[brooding music]

[grandmother] And there's my Matthew,

look at how big he his.

- Say hi, Matthew. - Hello.

[grandmother chuckles] Look at how big he is.

[brooding music]

[Leann] My son was a pioneer

in this activist group Anonymous.

Matt ran a server and he had connections with WikiLeaks.

And someone leaked information

and uploaded it on his server.

[brooding music]

That's, I believe, one of the reasons

why my son was tortured

and why he sits in prison now smeared with false charges.

[brooding music]

[crickets chirping]

[Leann] We didn't tell a single soul what we were planning on doing.

Uh, no one knew.

We set everything we could in order.

We packed in the middle of the night with lights out,

just playing music, in case they were listening to us.

[orchestral music]

We got rid of phones, and then we wrote on notebook paper

and burned it and flushed it down the toilet.

[orchestral music]

We packed our car with the few things

that we were gonna take with us under the cover of darkness,

and left early in the morning.

- [car door closes] - [engine starts]

[orchestral music]

[Paul] As we were approaching the border,

we bought large sunglasses that would fit over our glasses,

we bought hats that would fit on over our heads

so you couldn't do facial recognition,

and that's how we traveled

the last 20 miles or so, 30 miles.

[Leann] We went to a small border station at Fort Francis

and as we came through, we declared to them

that we were giving ourselves up

and we were Americans seeking asylum,

based on the convention against torture.

[door creaks]

- Good to see you. - [man] Good morning.

- Good morning, Matt. - [mumbles]

- Coming in? Okay. - I am, thanks.

[indistinct chatter]

[Lily] I was surprised by their profiles to begin with.

These are highly educated individuals that have all worked

for the American military at some point.

And the fact that they chose

to come here to seek that safety,

at first, I was wondering why Canada, why not go overseas?

But logistically, this was the first safe place that they could enter.

They came well documented, with medical records from the United States,

they had a large volume of court documents as well that I was able to go through.

And once you start piecing it together,

you see that something serious is going on,

and this is an important story that needs to be heard,

and these are also very vulnerable people

that need legal assistance in Canada.

[brooding music]

[judge] This is a hearing into the claims of Matthew DeHart,

Paul Joseph DeHart and Leann Christine DeHart.

My name is Patrick Roche and I will be deciding your claims.

So rather than have you all stand

'cause I know, sir, that you are impeded with the chains,

I'll just point to each one of you and just answer.

Do you solemnly affirm that the evidence

that you shall give today shall be the truth,

the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

- Yes, sir. - Yes, sir, I do.

- Yes, sir. - Okay.

We do have an observer who is not present in the room,

but is in a separate section and that's Mr. Adrian Humphries

from the National Post and he's observing

by video conference as per the order of May the 16th, 2014.

[Adrian] I first came across Matt DeHart's name

when he was the subject of a federal court decision

and I literally had the highlighter

and I'm whipping through this and it's like

Anonymous, child pornography, torture, US servicemen.

And it was all these key flags that I was highlighting

that I knew that this would be an interesting story

but also suspected that it would probably be a story

that would require a little bit of digging

to ascertain the truth behind

some of these broad statements and allegations of what was going on.

I didn't quite realize at that point, how bizarre,

how twisting and turning, and complicated

this story would really be.

What connection did you have to Anonymous or WikiLeaks?

I had been involved with Anonymous since 2006, basically since its inception.

In terms of WikiLeaks, I ran a server called The Shell on the TOR Network,

which is a hidden secret computer network.

It's used by free speech activists.

We had provided mirrors for WikiLeaks

so they could, in case their site was taken down,

they could host some of their material on their front page.

So this is a parallel type of site?

Well, imagine like a second internet but it's private.

The only way you can get to that site

is if you're running the software called TOR.

So it's essentially a way to get

into this secret parallel internet world?

Yes. they call it the deep web or the dark net.

[soft tense music]

[door shuts]

[indistinct chatter]

[woman] Hi, everyone, welcome to the last class of the semester.

Today we're gonna be talking about Anonymous

in light of anonymity and its history as well.

So just to begin, you know, this morning I decided to Google the dark web,

and these are the images that came up,

of the kind of hooded hacker, the green and black background.

Studying Anonymous already felt like

being part of an exciting spy story.

There was just a lot of mystery and mystique and paranoia

in the study of Anonymous.

But the Matt DeHart case just bumps that up

to a whole different level.

[soft tense music]

My first encounter with Matt DeHart was a package,

a mail package that was sent to my office.

And it was a packet of information compiled

by Matt DeHart detailing his case.

"Dear Professor Coleman, I've followed your coverage of the group Anonymous

and believe you are one of only a handful

of public leaders who understand its culture.

I'm hoping that your residence in Canada

will shield you from US government pressure.

I believe my story will interest you."

[dramatic music]

[Gabriella] He had been running this secret server online,

where someone had dropped off information,

a file, which he claimed had information

about a CIA operation that the FBI was interested in,

right, and they didn't want these files out in the world.

I mean, that alone is a bombshell. Right?

That's a bombshell if that's the case.

[brooding music]

This is the WikiLeaks era.

They became a really important clearing house

for taking information that people either had access to

or were stealing that people felt was in the public interest.

And so again, Anonymous activists were either acquiring that information,

they were given that information,

they were maybe hosting that information.

And because a lot of that information was acquired through illegal means,

or was politically sensitive

and the government didn't want it out in the world,

this was kind of the main reason that government officials went after the hacktivists

and the hackers and others who were part of Anonymous.

[upbeat music]

[Gabriella] Matt DeHart claims that in January 2010

because he had been tipped off by someone,

he takes the server offline and copies those documents

that were supposedly put on the server on USB drives.

Whatever information is on those drives

is absolutely the reason why all the problems

for the DeHarts potentially started in the United States

and it seemed like the government had a vested interest

in getting those drives and investigating what was on them.

[Paul] January 25th, 2010,

that's the day that everything changed.

I was at my church office.

I got a call from Matt.

I could tell, there was something in his voice.

He said, "Dad, you need to come home now."

[dramatic music]

I raced home, it was three or four miles, and, um...

everything in our house was tossed on the floor.

There were rubber gloves everywhere,

drawers were emptied, clothes were all over the place.

They searched everywhere.

They left a search warrant and it said they were looking

for evidence of child pornography

between Indiana and Memphis, Tennessee.

There's never been any suspicion

or anything like that to think that my son

had anything to do with child pornography. But you do ask.

And I remember my husband asking, "Matt, did you do this?"

And I remember my son looking him in the face with tears in his eyes saying,

"No, Dad. I didn't do this.

I don't know what they're talking about."

Two and a half, three hours in our house,

they found nothing that they could arrest him with on that day.

So you tell me what that's all about. I don't know.

Something's fishy. The minute it happened, we knew something was fishy.

Something's fishy. Something's going on.

So you're just left with questions,

is it just because my son was active on the internet?

Is it because we find out later he was involved with Anonymous?

You know, historically the FBI has used questionable methods,

um, in order to surveil activists.

This was certainly the case in the late '60s and early '70s,

uh, with certain government programs that were very secretive,

where the FBI used disinformation

and dirty tactics to go after activists.

[brooding music]

[Paul] Suddenly, the United States government has you in their crosshair.

If I could describe the feeling that I could see on him,

it would be like looking at your chest and seeing a laser there,

knowing at the other end of that laser... I'm speaking metaphorically...

but at the other end of that laser there is a gun

that could shoot a bullet into you.

Which they certainly had the power

to do anything they wanted to him.

So he needed to drive, and he drove

and he ended up in Mexico.

[bright music]

Matt had two USB drives that had evidence

of what was on his server, The Shell.

[brooding music]

Matt DeHart has claimed that he sent the copies to someone in the UK.

[brooding music]

If they do exist in any way,

they absolutely verify his claims,

which he's made very, very consistently.

[siren blares]

[Leann] I don't know how easy it would have been

for him to live down there for any length of time.

And so we decided as a family,

we were going to fight this together

and prove that, you know, they had made a terrible mistake.

Little did we know that it doesn't matter.

Truth does not matter.

It doesn't matter.

My name is Brett Kniss, I worked at the Franklin Tennessee Police Department

from 1999 to 2012.

During that time, I was a detective for eight years

and five of those years I was on the FBI Cyber Crimes Task Force

with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

The beginning of the Matthew DeHart case was the victim's mother,

who was a private investigator at the time,

had made a report to the police department

that her at the time 14-year-old son had been groomed

and was solicited for sexually explicit photos

and videos of himself masturbating for the camera.

[automated voice] Floor nine.

[elevator dings]

I'm Carrie Daughtrey. I'm Assistant United States Attorney

here in Nashville, Tennessee.

I am the Project Safe Childhood coordinator,

which means that I prosecute child exploitation cases.

And I've been doing it for a little over 15 years.

[keypad beeping]

What happened in this case is that

the defendant was on a very popular game called World of Warcraft

and met these two individuals who were minors.

And he began grooming them.

He represented himself as being the son of a mobster

and represented himself as being

in a prestigious school in New Jersey.

Um, so really coming across to these boys

as just being a really exciting,

you know, different kind of person,

and he represented himself as being a teenager as well.

[bright music]

[Brett] According to the second victim,

Matthew DeHart, under the alias of Matthew DiMarco,

drove down to Tennessee to meet with the second victim.

He snuck out of the house and went down the street.

Matthew DeHart picked him up,

took him out for dinner,

took him to a gun range in another town,

and gave him an Adderal, and provided him with a beer.

It's a classic example of grooming of the victims.

At some point, he brought into the mix,

um, what he "identified" as two teenage girls that were friends of his.

Um, but, in fact, it was him pretending to be these girls.

And it's through these, um, uh, online identities

of the teenage girls that he was able to convince

the two boys to send him images of themselves.

[Brett] So the victims and their families were very scared

when I started this investigation.

They knew that he had guns,

and they were afraid that he was gonna come down

and potentially harm the families

and the victims themselves.

It took a lot of convincing to get them

to believe that Matthew DiMarco, this mobster's son,

was actually Matthew DeHart, the son of a minister,

who lived with his parents in Indiana.

Don't I look wonderful?

[Paul] It's Matthew, the handsome guy in his suit.

Turn around, Matt, you can be mister model.

No, turn around normally.

[soft piano music]

Let's sing a song of America

Of her shaded woodlands And sun-washed shores

Of the glow of prayer Through the gloom of fall

Of liberty standing At her golden door

[Leann] We were patriots, all of us.

We all believed in serving the country.

I joined the army right out of high school

and I was a linguist.

Paul had joined the army

and after he served a few years,

went into the Air Force and was commissioned as an officer.

I started off as Leann did in the army as a linguist.

So we were trained to intercept foreign communications.

In my case, it was German,

so we were trained to listen to East German,

primarily military communications.

When I got out of the army, I went to college,

and to help pay for that, I went through Air Force ROTC.

And of course since I had a linguist background,

it made sense for me to go into the same career field again.

I already had a security clearance before,

it was easy to update that,

and so I was assigned to NSA at Fort Mead, Maryland.

[bright music]

While we were there, Matt was born,

Walter Read Army Medical Center.

And then with part of my work center

we transferred to Hawaii.

[bright music]

When the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union fell apart,

they started paring down the forces

and they offered an early retirement option.

And I still wanted to go into ministry.

And so when the opportunity came to retire early,

I retired and went to seminary

and then started working in ministry.

- [indistinct chatter] - [upbeat music]

I met Matt through his dad, Paul.

I attended the church that he was preaching at.

[bright music]

Matt, my little brother, and I, we hit it off pretty good.

We all got along, we all had a nerdy sense of humor,

video games, things like that.

Threw around a few big brother ideas every once in a while,

but nothing past like tin foil hat conspiracy type things,

just silly stuff.

[upbeat music]

Matt DeHart is absolutely best described through stories.

And I guess the best story

that really will help you understand who he is was

when he ran for Student Council President, back in high school.

He came to me and another friend of ours and he enlisted our help.

And I'm like, "Oh, what do you need help with?"

And it was to be bodyguards. Like Secret Service.

And so we had to dress up in black suits

and he gave us like ear pieces and wires

and he'd make us walk him down the hallway

and I think we gave him a codename, I'm pretty sure,

and we'd talk into our wrists.

[bright music]

He would walk through the hallways like he owned the building,

and you had hall monitors,

teachers, sitting out there and they would say,

"Let me see your pass."

And Matthew, I mean, in this very deep male voice,

without a single smile on his face,

would just stop in his tracks and turn to them and say,

"You don't need to see a pass." And he'd just keep walking.

[bright music]

He wore a black trench coat before all that stuff was there.

His hair was big, he had big afro-looking... [laughs]

[bright music]

Are you willing to stand up to authority for a just cause?

I was not a part of his Kaos computer club,

but, yeah, this is how he got people involved.

[upbeat music]

There were times when we thought, "Okay, we're just gonna cut the computer off."

But for him that wouldn't have worked.

For other kids, maybe you could have pulled the plug and said,

"No computers. Get down. Study your books."

And, you know, "Sit down and shut up."

That would have never worked for Matt.

[bright music]

Losing the election resulted in a dead fish being put

in the ceiling of the Student Council office.

Matt wanted it to fester in the summer heat.

He claimed that it was a rigged election

and that was Matthew's revenge for losing the election.

[bright music]

[Adrian] He was clearly a smart guy.

He very much knew technology

and computers to a level far exceeding my own knowledge.

Um, and frankly he liked showing that.

He really showed that he loved teaching me,

he loved being the smart guy in the room.

If you watched the show, Leave It To Beaver as a kid,

there was a character on there named Eddie Haskell.

Now Eddie wasn't all that smart,

but he could charm any adult

to get away with pretty much anything.

Hey, Wally, you get that crazy flat tire

back on the car before your old man caught you?

- Hello Eddie, what's new? - Nothing, Mr. Cleaver.

It's not important and I think I hear my mother calling.

He can talk himself into any situation, good or bad.

He can also talk himself out of almost any situation.

We lived in New Jersey from 1996 to 2001.

2001, we moved to Pennsylvania,

so he ended up homeschooling the last year.

2003 to 2005, we lived in Elmira, New York,

and then 2005, we moved to Indiana because Leann's mom was there.

And while Matt was there, he was doing different kinds of work.

[brooding music]

According to Matt DeHart's own timeline,

he seems to have moved in tech

and geek circles for many, many years.

[Michon] One day on the way home from church,

my youngest said, "Mom, have you ever heard of Anonymous?"

I said, "It means that they don't know who you are. It's anonymous."

He said, "No, not that. A group on the computer."

- He said, "Matt told me about it." - [ominous music]

[Josh] I could absolutely imagine him being a part of Anonymous.

But Matt was also very conservative,

just in the way he carried himself. And I mean, like...

He loved guns and, you know, I mean, he was such a person

that spanned the spectrum of personalities.

[Leann] He wanted to do something challenging

and meaningful, I think, he wanted to serve his country.

He, um... Both his parents, Paul and I had,

so he joined the Air National Guard.

[soft tense music]

I know that he got a top secret security clearance,

just as Paul did and just as I did when we were in,

and that his interest was in the drone program.

But what he was doing and what he was gonna do,

that was something we chose not to discuss.

The details of what he did or didn't do,

obviously, I come from a security background

and so I wouldn't ask him questions about those things

and he didn't talk to me about exactly what he did,

but his AFSC was all source intelligence analyst.

[soft tense music]

[Leann] He was diagnosed with depression,

and it didn't stop him from getting in.

But after he received his security clearance,

which everything went fine, it wasn't too long after that

he was called in and told that they would exit him

with a honorable discharge because they were afraid of the depression.

[Paul] He challenged this discharge,

but eventually they ruled against him,

and then the raid on our house on January 25th,

and that's when the whole building came tumbling down.

[ominous music]

[bangs]

[muffled explosion]

He's curled up at the bottom of our bed on the floor, shaking, twitching.

I can't let that happen.

I can't let that happen, Something's gonna... I don't know what's gonna happen to him,

but that right there for the next three or four days, he'll die.

He'll kill himself or something will happen to him.

That's not gonna happen. We've gotta do something.

When he says, "Here's what I wanna do,"

I'm saying, "Oh, you're right. Okay, fine."

[eerie music]

[Paul] I drove him to near the Russian embassy.

There was two feet of snow everywhere, we drove straight through.

Matt slept most of the way.

Thankfully, he finally got some sleep.

[brooding music]

[Larry] When did you take a visit to the Russian embassy?

[Matt] The middle of February 2010.

[Larry] Where did you go and visit the Russian embassy?

[Matt] Washington, DC.

[Larry] Why did you go and visit the Russian embassy?

Because I believed the United States was going to charge me

with national security offenses, um... eventually.

And I was seeking asylum for protection.

[birds fluttering]

No one who hasn't been through this would ever understand this.

They would say, you know, "You're a retired Air Force officer.

You're a pastor of a church. You're just this average American person

and now you're driving your son to the Russian embassy.

What's that all about?" Of course the FBI would say. "You're a mole."

But who are you gonna go to?

Where can you go to protect yourself from the United States of America?

If the United States of America has you in their crosshairs

and you think it's for something that you didn't do

but they're gonna come after you anyway,

where do you go? North Korea?

[Larry] Why did you believe in February 2010,

that the United States was going to eventually charge you

with national security offenses?

Because I was aware of what was uploaded to the server in late 2009.

And that search warrant was executed at my parent's place in January.

I believe that was their true intent to find evidence of that.

[Larry] As this whole case evolved,

you know, I did ask myself from time to time,

"Is this just a matter of people being paranoid,

or is the system really out to get them?"

[brooding music]

[Paul] We said a prayer before he got out of the car,

and we exchanged "I love yous."

And I thought that would be the last time I'd see him.

If they granted him asylum.

I drove off, cried all the way back to wherever I was going,

you know, saying I can't believe this is what it's come to.

[Carrie] It was in February of 2010

that his father took him to DC

and dropped him off near two different embassies,

the Russian embassy and the Venezuelan embassy,

for him to go in and defect.

Um, and I don't know what he did when he got into those embassies,

but I certainly can understand why the FBI became interested in that.

Did you give the Russians any information?

I told them a few things.

What kinds of things did you tell the Russians?

I told them my unit was a drone unit, a UAV unit.

I told them that I have expertise in computer networking.

I told them that most of my friends do as well.

Um, stuff like that.

[Adrian] Almost every step of this story is emerging

from some secret, shadowy world.

When it became even larger, and I didn't know it at that point in time,

but when it involved the Russian embassy and the spy world...

um, again a very shadowy world.

So secrecy, secrets and shadows

were everywhere on this story.

And so it was extraordinarily hard as a journalist

to find documented, accurate, confirmable information.

[brooding music]

[Leann] I did get a call from Paul and he said, you know, "Everything's okay."

It was short because we were very careful

about what we said on our phones.

And then, you know, you find out later on

that they have audio of him and Matt talking in the car.

They have pictures of Matt, you know, at the Starbucks coffee shop.

So they were being surveilled the entire time.

[Paul] So they were supposed to contact him

and they didn't call him,

so he assumed it was a no answer.

[upbeat music]

He originally was gonna take a bus back.

But he chose to rent a car.

So he rented a car from BWI airport,

he was driving back through the mountains

of West Virginia on interstate 64.

[upbeat music]

[horn honking]

[car crashes]

[dramatic music]

[Paul] He spun out in the car and the car was totaled.

What else is gonna happen? Can we add anything else to the stress level?

Is there another thing that can happen?

You know? But he survived.

It is certainly one of the most unusual cases

that I have handled, um...

And certainly I can say that I've never seen

a defendant or his family go to the extremes

to avoid prosecution as happened in this case.

We thought, "Well, if there's any problems,

he won't get a passport."

I mean that makes sense, right?

So he got a passport.

All right, so we applied to this language school in Montreal

in his name, you know, everything up and up on the credit card.

Anybody who wants to look can find it.

Go up to Plattsburgh, New York,

goes across the border, no problems at all.

What stands out in this case to me

is the United States government's reaction

between August 6th and August 20th, 2010.

On August 6, 2010, Matthew's up in Canada,

he's studying French,

and his student visa in Canada is about to expire.

And in order to reset it,

he needs to cross into the United States

and then go back into Canada.

It was a Friday, and he was coming across to get his visa stamped,

and soon as he did that and turned around and walk back over,

he was supposed to Skype us

and, you know, let us know that everything went okay

and we'd come up and see him during the semester break.

And we didn't hear from him.

And we... you get that dark heavy feeling

and you know something's terribly, terribly wrong.

[Larry] You're detained on August 6, 2010,

and you're eventually told at some point

that very day that the FBI's interest in you

is in regards to national security matters,

- is that correct? - Yes.

I was brought into a detention cell,

held for less than an hour

and then brought to a medical examination room

where I was given an IV.

I had refused it at first and they just said,

"Well, you have to do this, it's part of our procedure."

Um, there was two FBI agents working there,

um, as well as I believe a doctor.

And were you told what was being given to you?

[Matt] No, I wasn't. And I was brought back to the detention cell.

I said, "Can I talk to my lawyer now?"

Because they were just staring at me.

They said, "No, it's a national security case."

[Gabriella] It was only recently when one of a number of documents was declassified

that actually gave total credence

to that story, it verified that story.

[Tor] He's explicitly detained at the border

because of an espionage investigation.

That's one of the few things we know about this case.

[Leann] It wasn't that we disbelieved Matt,

but there's a level of belief,

and then there's the level of actual confirmation.

There's a relief in that, okay, yes, this is true,

but there's also a heartbreak that says

this really did happen to my kid,

this is what they did to him.

Not long thereafter, I was brought up to a conference room.

It's a large conference table,

one FBI agent's on the right, the other's on the left,

sort of at the corner of the table.

The FBI agent to my left asks me,

"Do you know what this is about?"

- Okay, and? - I said, "No, I don't."

And then he said, "How about Deal?"

Deal was an individual in my Air National Guard unit.

He was also in my World of Warcraft guild.

What's your relationship with them now?

- [indistinct chatter] - [dramatic music]

You know all this information...

[Matt] They expanded their questioning

to ask about the visit to the Russian embassy,

what I spoke to the Russians about.

But they always came back to Deal.

I don't know if you know anything about computers...

[Matt] They thought Deal had leaked information,

posted it to my server called The Shell,

and then further leaked it to WikiLeaks.

And yes or no, were you aware of what information

they were speaking of?

I believed I was.

I had a copy of that on a flash drive I brought to Canada with me.

[Larry] Matthew came to the Canadian border

with this magic pen drive where he had a lot of his supporting evidence

and naively gave it up to Canada border services officers.

That pen drive became this little battle, um,

'cause we never got it back,

and I kept applying to have it returned

because there were files on it that were gonna corroborate

some of, you know, Matthew's allegations,

and God knows where it is.

If it's not with CBSA, I believe there's a possibility

that it may have been returned to the US government,

but that's pure speculation on my part.

[Larry] Has this information, as far as you know,

ever been exposed publicly?

No, I believe it's part of WikiLeaks insurance policy,

they call it; should their site be shut down,

they would leak a certain quantity of information

that would be damaging to certain governments.

Tell us the Russians, Venezuelans,

anybody could just do this in the United States.

I don't think so. I think only people with specific capabilities

and specific intents can do this.

[Gabriella] By the time this interrogation happened,

a lot of military secrets had been given to WikiLeaks,

most famously the video Collateral Murder

by Chelsea Manning,

which showed a video

of US military gunning down journalists in Iraq, right?

And so I could just only imagine that the FBI

was really desperately trying to find evidence

of people within the military possibly giving over information to WikiLeaks.

So basically, you're detained in regards to national security allegations.

How do we go from there to you being indicted

on two counts related to child pornography allegations?

[Carrie] We were aware that the defendant wasn't in the US

but got a call from the FBI up in Maine

who had seen that there was an FBI investigation in Nashville

involving this case,

and let us know that he had come across the border

and wanted to know if we wanted to proceed with any charges.

They called down because they had nothing to hold him on.

Mind you, they had nothing to hold him on.

This moribund complaint from parents in Tennessee

was sort of dusted off and opened up

and then used as a blunt instrument to investigate

what appears to be the true interest and focus of the government

and that's national security, espionage.

[dramatic music]

[Brett] Up until that time, I had just previously

finished the majority of the forensic analysis

on the computer that was seized, or computers

that were seized at Matthew DeHart's residence.

At that time, I was able to have enough probable cause

to have several charges of him against...

for the distribution, production, and solicitation charges.

So we didn't want to let him go.

If they only had eight hours to detain him,

um, then he could have crossed back into Canada

or gone wherever and disappeared.

So at that time, I had enough probable cause

to submit, uh, obtain a arrest warrant

and he was detained on my child pornography charges.

[Matt] He said, "Here, we have this now.

You're gonna start telling us about what we wanna know,

otherwise you're gonna face this."

It said production of child pornography on it.

I said, "I have nothing to do with that, this is BS."

The FBI agent told me, "I know that. It doesn't matter.

You need to answer our questions."

At that time, I was feeling more groggy,

it was when I first thought I was drugged.

- [agent 1] Tell us, Matt. - [agent 2] Answer his questions, Matt.

[agent 1] What were you doing at the Russian embassy?

What's your relationship with WikiLeaks?

[Adrian] We were literally on the verge of publishing

when I'm saying, "No, we have to put the breaks on this

because I've just learned that the FBI documents

on one of the times he was interrogated alleged

that he had contacted the Russian embassy,

offered to sell them secrets."

And that the Russian embassy official told him

that we can't operate right now within the United States,

you have to move to Canada to contact our spymaster at the embassy in Ottawa.

Eventually what emerges is this picture of Matt

and some of his fellow Air National Guardsmen conspiring

to sell government secrets.

[soft tense music]

According to the document, Matt told the FBI of one member of his unit

who could remotely access a Department of National Defense portal

and get some information through that.

And that Matt allegedly offered to act as a bit of a middleman,

that if his colleague could get the information,

then he would maybe find a buyer for it.

[ominous music]

In the document, it seems like he's, you know, selling out his friends,

giving over their names to the FBI,

kind of snitching on them.

[brooding music]

When you pump somebody full of drugs,

you're gonna get all kinds of stuff.

You're gonna get them to say things you want them to say.

Of course we have no audio recording of the interviews,

so we don't know if Matt really said this,

and then if he did say this, he also claimed

that he had been forcibly drugged by the FBI

and tortured and so that the information

is not reliable for that reason alone.

[Carmen] I got a call that I needed to go downstairs in intake

and process a person who came in

who did not transport well.

I remember the disheveled look.

I remember the pale appearance,

I remember the bizarre, um, behavior,

the emotions all over the board, and the non-compliance.

I'm just... was not complying with the officers

as far as like standing up, sitting down, processing,

[dramatic music]

I wasn't sure if he had taken drugs or coming off of drugs,

so to play it safe I sent him out

to the emergency room just to get an evaluation done.

[Tor] He's interrogated so intensely

he ends up in the emergency room at 1:00 a.m.

And he's evaluated by the ER doctors

who say that he's paranoid and delusional.

I think they say at one point, this is in the public record, that he had a psychotic break.

Because he's telling them that he's being interrogated

by the FBI on matters of national security and espionage,

which is of course the classic paranoid delusional thing

that crazy people say.

Except in this case it's actually true.

Looks like the Thorazine was started on August 9th.

[Ralph] "Our clinical opinion,

and the purpose of this letter to you,

is the concern about the impact

of an old major tranquilizer referred to... called Thorazine.

That has never been indicated for use with Matthew,

based on our clinical diagnostic impressions of him.

He has no history whatsoever of a psychosis,

therefore no clinical justification

for the use of any antipsychotic medication,

and especially Thorazine that has always

had the potential for major side effects.

And this would especially be significant

if this medication was started early in his arrest."

His doctor confirmed that

that's what they used years and years ago,

they would use amphetamines mixed with Thorazine,

which makes a "beautiful" truth serum from what I understand.

[Gabriella] One of the most surprising set of documents

have to do with the consent to assume online identity.

And it's very clear, in capital letters here it says,

"Consent to assume online identity."

And basically, what he is allowing the FBI to do

is to change the password so he doesn't have access

to these accounts anymore,

uh, but the FBI has access to these accounts

and can assume his identity

so that people who are interacting

with these accounts think that they're interacting with Matt DeHart.

And what's incredible about this is first of all,

I just didn't even know this was like an option,

I guess I was like, "Oh, I guess this is something

that the FBI would of course want for investigations."

And then it's just surprising that he would give this consent.

You spoke earlier of having been tortured, while in detention,

so would this have been during the period

- of August 6th to the 20th or 21st? - Yes.

[Larry] So do you wanna tell us what happened?

- [door slams] - [Matt] I was put in what's called a dry cell.

I... This was probably Monday,

or it must have been Sunday, I'm sorry.

[door bangs]

They were knocking on the door every 15 minutes or so so I wouldn't go to sleep.

- [man yelling] - [Matt] I had no bedding, it was just a concrete slab.

They took my suicide smock away from me,

so they left me in the cell naked.

And I had to go to the bathroom, they wouldn't let me out.

So I soiled myself.

They threw bleach water all over me and all over the cell.

Um, I was freezing.

And now, um, pretty much the whole time

the FBI is coming every day to interrogate me

for about five or six hours a day, I would guess.

Um, and then I collapsed in the courtroom.

[phone ringing]

[phone rings]

The judge allowed his lawyer to put the phone up to his mouth

so that he could talk to me the first time I heard him, and he sounded like a zombie,

[imitates slurred speech] "Dad, they say I'm spying for the Russians."

And that's it.

Tuesday was the first day

in the submission chair, I think.

It's a chair with leg restraints and arm restraints.

I was sat in there naked.

It's such a strong reaction from the FBI,

from the Department of Justice, you have to ask why they were freaking out.

Because I think it's indisputable

from the record that they were freaking out.

[Matt] I had a canvas bag over my head and I couldn't breathe.

I was screaming that I couldn't breathe.

And I felt like drips of cold water on my arm.

And then I got shocked...

- [electricity sparks] - ...like tased.

And I'm screaming and spitting and stuff.

[Roche] Why don't you take a deep breath, it's okay.

Just take a deep breath.

[Roche] Pause for a second.

- Don't be in a rush to talk. - Can you shut that off for a second?

[indistinct chatter on recording]

There is a mask that they will use

in a submission chair if you do spit.

And it does look like what beekeepers would wear,

working in the fields.

But there is a mask that they will put over

for the officers' safety.

[brooding music]

[indistinct chatter]

[Leann] The fact that he was tortured and all of this stuff,

it was extremely overwhelming.

And I have to be honest with you.

My first thought is, "Is my kid, is he out to lunch?"

And then when I saw what was on the drives

and what we did to people,

and what we still do to people, it all made sense,

why people would want to cover up things.

And why they would destroy people's reputation

if not destroy them.

It made all the sense in the world.

[brooding music]

[Tor] The only way to make the facts in this case make sense

is to entertain some kind of wild conspiracy theory.

Which is fucked up because I am not a conspiracy theorist.

I'm a former corporate Wall Street lawyer.

But the only way I could make the government's reaction make sense

is if I make some kind of assumption

that he's got his hands on some crazy information

that they just did not want to get out there.

[brooding music]

[Leann] The day before we sought asylum in Canada,

my son was concerned that he would lose his life over this,

and he wanted one other person to be able to see

what was on those files that he had,

and I'm the other person that went through those files.

That was it for me.

I knew what this was all about.

I knew what this was all about.

And I thought, "We're dead, we're dead."

During the time in 2001 when there was the anthrax scare

and several people had died,

it was blamed on other parties outside of the country,

and my son discovered that it was indeed

perpetrated by the CIA and covered up by the FBI.

Obviously, the information that was downloaded

or dropped on his server was meant for WikiLeaks,

it was a leak for the world to know

that the anthrax attacks were not

by some Middle Eastern group at the time.

It was perpetrated by the CIA

in order to drum up support for Bush for the Iraq War.

[train brakes squeak]

[dramatic music]

[Gabriella] I do feel like the information

that was supposedly placed on his servers

is the big missing key to all of this.

No one has seen these files, right?

If they do exist in any way,

it would be essential to really prove or disprove what Matt

and his family have been saying all this time.

[dramatic music]

[Tor] Do I know where his thumb drives are?

The government's got one.

But they haven't decrypted it as far as I know.

And I think there's some in Europe.

But do I know exactly where they are?

No. And if I did, I wouldn't tell you.

[Assange] I'm not gonna be playing 20 questions on our sources.

I'm sure you understand, Allen, as a source protection organization,

we're not going to be inscribing circles around

who our sources are, how we communicate with them,

any properties that might be used to arrest them

or criticize them in some future process.

- [automated voice] This call is from... - [Matt] Matthew DeHart.

[automated voice] ...an inmate at a federal prison.

[Matt] Hello?

- Hey, buddy. - Hey.

[Matt] Hey, what's up, how are you guys doing?

Good, how are you?

I'm okay. I just got a few letters done today.

Otherwise Friday's are pretty uneventful.

- Good, quiet is good. - [Matt mumbles]

Oh, yeah, we used to watch movies,

but we're not allowed to do that anymore.

- Okay. - Oh, that's too bad.

Everything went okay today, so we're good.

- With the doctors, yeah, it's all good. - Okay.

Excellent. Very good. All right sounds good want to say a prayer?

Yep. Lord, thank you for today and everything given us,

continue to watch over us, protect us,

keep us safe from all harm, Lord.

Bring us back together as soon as possible,

- we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. - Amen.

We ask that you just work this whole situation out,

have mercy, Lord, have mercy on people

that are in rough situations, help us spearhead it, dear Lord,

and just work this whole situation out.

Thank you for all your blessings.

- Amen. - Amen, amen.

So you guys are good?

- We're good. - We're good, buddy, we're good.

Okay, sounds good. You guys have a great evening and have a great day tomorrow.

And, Mom, I love you very much.

I love you very much too, buddy. God bless you.

- [phone beeps] - [dramatic music]

[Leann] Sometimes it's very off-putting.

We live in the woods because we don't wanna be bothered,

and we wanna... we always thought, you know, stay out

of the view of people you don't want watching you.

So sometimes when people just kinda show up out of the blue,

it is a little disconcerting,

[sighs] to say the least, anyway.

[dramatic music]

I'd like to think it's just people doing their job,

but the last years has taught me that

never take anything for granted.

Always be aware of your surroundings.

Because there are people who are not

who they're supposed to be.

[dramatic music]

[Leann] No FBI agent has talked to me formally.

They went to my 80-something-year-old mother,

spent three hours, and asked her how many languages I knew,

what I did in the military,

how often did I travel,

and was I loyal to this country.

What does that sound like to you?

It sounds like a blast out of the past

from somewhere else, doesn't it?

[footsteps thudding]

[helicopter whirring in distance]

It'll be interesting if he comes back.

That would be interesting.

We can't say that we're not being watched. I mean,

we know from experience. So just as we're standing here a helicopter flies over,

a plane flies over, a car pulls up at the end of the driveway

which I've never seen before and stops.

But it's not that you have to have a little guy in your backyard,

they don't have to have a monitor,

just the fact that they know

that you think you're being monitored is enough,

because that keeps everybody in line.

[dramatic music]

Good morning. We're here on United States vs. Matthew Paul DeHart.

We have Carrie Daughtrey and Lynne Ingram

for the government and Mark Scruggs for the defendant.

I came on the case in approximately February or March of 2012.

Matthew had been in custody since August of 2010.

So I think the first focus was to try

to get him released on some kind of bond

or some kind of supervised release

so he that he could get out of custody.

Detective Kniss, is it your position that victim one

has ever actually met this man personally one on one?

From my interviews with victim one, yes, he has met him.

[Mark] Okay. And yet victim one couldn't pick him out of a lineup, correct?

- That's correct. - One of the victims, the second victim, was able

to positively identify Matthew DeHart

from a driver's license photo immediately in a photo lineup.

Um, the first victim who had met Matthew DeHart,

probably a year and a half earlier in the dark,

wasn't able to identify him.

One of the victims' phones,

upon which this was supposed to happen,

was given back to the victim without being analyzed.

Cell phones at that time were flip phones.

They weren't the smart phones like we had today,

so they didn't retain a lot of information and data.

And that data, once they delete it, was easily overwritten.

So with the technology,

the forensic technology we had back then

it was not able to recover any evidence

that we could use in this case.

One single detective analyzed the stuff

that was on Matt's computer, Detective Kniss,

and as far as we know, there's no indication

that we ever saw, that Matt ever saw,

that anything was found on his computers.

I found images of the first victim

on Matthew DeHart's computer hard drives.

We don't have a single bit of evidence saying

this picture was sent with this time stamp

to this place and was received at this time.

That does not exist in Matt's case at all.

I found still images of the victim masturbating

and was able to positively identify

it was the victim by showing a sterilized image to the victim

and he was able to identify certain features in his bedroom

through those images.

We also found multiple days' worth of chat fragments

where Matthew DeHart was portraying himself

as a teenage female to solicit these victims

for these images and videos.

[Adrian] The government basically typed out an alleged chat

that Matt had online with minor number one

and minor number two and so forth.

But they were never reproduced in the form they were allegedly found.

We changed the screen names to depict victim number one,

or suspect, or Matthew DeHart when we... as part of the...

changed the screen name from his screen name to Matthew DeHart.

That's the only alterations we did.

And we did that to protect the identities of the victims.

The overall arching theme for us

is this makes absolutely no sense.

This doesn't follow standard rules of criminal procedure.

This doesn't follow constitutional law.

Something else is going on here.

So you'd say this doesn't make any sense.

The only thing that ever makes any sense is

somebody was interested in him

for national security purposes,

and this is what he said in court from the beginning.

It was a ruse to get ahold of his computers

for national security stuff.

The question became just why was he being prosecuted on the pornography

when it seemed to me the focus of the investigation

was his connections or alleged connections

with "WikiLinks" and Anonymous?

[Adrian] He was making an argument to his lawyers

that all of these allegations were trumped-up allegations

as part of a national security investigation.

And behind closed doors, the judge

was allowed to see some of the secret information

that the government had in regards to it.

And she came out and in open court

said that she understands why Matt DeHart would be far more concerned

about the national security allegations

than he would be about any of the child porn allegations

and that the weight of the evidence was not as firm

as she thought it was.

And that's when... probably the moment

that I started to feel much more comfortable in knowing

and believing and thinking that there was something

far more to this than mental health

or an immature kid trying to avoid responsibility

for a horrible allegation,

that there was something very real here,

there was something potentially very wrong here,

and that this was a case that the world needed to know about

and the world needed to have answers to.

And the fact that an impartial judge

who had more information than the rest of us have

is skeptical of the firmness of those charges

and, in fact, allowed Matt DeHart to be free on bail,

this is a really big deal to me.

Had she decided otherwise,

it would have put a different kind of spin on the story.

[brooding music]

[Mark] Matthew is a very intelligent person,

he's also, you know, pretty hyper.

Uh, and he wanted

the direction of the defense to go in one way

and I felt like it should go in a different direction,

so we came to, I guess, a parting of the ways

to the extent that I felt like

a particular strategy should be pursued

and he didn't want to do that, and so I withdrew from the case.

- [dramatic music] - [Paul] So Matt was let out on bond in May of 2012.

And Matt's given a lawyer from a pool.

And we went down and met with him.

It was in an office in Nashville, Tennessee.

I remember as clear as day.

Very big office, big windows.

We walked in and the first thing...

He was sitting at a table, he was sitting back at a table like this.

He had a couple of assistants, his other colleague was here,

maybe there were two people they later introduced as private investigators.

And he said, first thing he said was,

"It's very unusual for someone who's 26 years old

to have his parents with him." Um...

"You can stay at this meeting, but from now on you're not welcome

in our meetings with your son."

What I recall as being the boundary,

the point where we, my partner and I, my law partner and I,

decided that this was an unusual circumstance

and that we had to exclude the parents

from our client relationship actually occurred

in the room I'm in now, a conference room in our office.

And my memory is Matthew and his parents were there,

my law partner was there,

and I believe our paralegal was there.

And at this point, I had begun to be concerned

about Paul and Leann DeHart

and about their understanding of their son's circumstance

and particularly about their control over his decisions.

And Paul DeHart had begun to articulate

and advance an idea that the federal government

was listening to our conversations.

And he pointed to a window in this office

and asked if we had seen the window move, vibrate.

And he asserted that he had seen the window move,

and that meant that the government

was listening to us at that moment.

[dramatic music]

It wasn't long after that

when we reached the conclusion

that it was in Matthew's best interest

to undergo a full psychological evaluation.

And then he told his parents.

When a judge and a doctor says

that someone is mentally incompetent,

they can put you away forever in prison

as mentally incompetent, and they threatened Matt with that

in order to get him to plea.

[Leann] One day, Paul said, "I can't let this happen to my son."

He had just seen what had happened to Aaron Swartz,

and he said, "I don't wanna come home,

and find that that's happened to my son too."

A co-founder of the social news

and entertainment website Reddit has been found dead.

Police say 26-year-old Aaron Swartz

killed himself yesterday in his Brooklyn apartment.

Swartz was facing a federal trial on computer fraud charges; he had plead not guilty.

My one thought is, "I need to protect my son's life."

That's how I felt about it.

I can't describe it any other way.

My son is in danger and I am in operation mode.

And I'm gonna protect him and unfortunately,

it's protecting him from our own government,

the government that we swore to support and defend.

[brooding music]

[Brett] He cut off his ankle monitor and threw it in the weeds

and went to Canada the second time.

[car engine starts]

[brooding music]

[Michael] That morning, we were scheduled to be in court.

When I woke up, I had a voicemail,

I believe, actually from Paul DeHart,

that was in the middle of the night,

saying that he and his son and his wife were in Canada

and they weren't coming to court.

And we informed the court that we believed

that Paul DeHart was unstable and dangerous.

Paul, with the active support of his wife Leann,

controlled their son, their adult son,

and ultimately took him to Canada.

[Adrian] By the time I met Matt in person,

he had been released on bail.

Probably on the tightest bail condition restrictions

that Canada's immigration refugee board

had probably ever issued.

Um, he could not leave the very small apartment

that he shared with his parents.

He had a GPS monitoring bracelet,

he had to check in every week.

It was extremely minor interactions

he could have with the outside world.

Matt sent his parents out

so we could have a one-on-one private conversation.

And there in his bedroom he started to tell me

the first draft of his version of events

of what he went through.

And we spoke for hours.

I was very cognizant of the fact that he had a very firm grip

on how he's presented to the world.

Like, for instance, I had a photograph

of him provided to me from the US authorities

and it was his mug shot in his orange prison uniform.

Clearly, it looked like he had been crying,

his eyes were all red and watery,

and he didn't want us to use that mugshot

and asked through his lawyers to provide us

with an updated photograph of him.

And of course it's him smiling, friendly,

and he was even wearing a hockey T-shirt,

you know, as like a message to Canadians,

"Look at me, I like hockey,

I'm not a threat to your country. I should be welcome here."

And as a journalist who's being impartial to the facts,

I was aware of the spin that he was giving me,

as well as the spin and the reluctance

that the various governments

and agencies were also giving me.

[piano music]

[Gabriella] It was a multi-part story.

It was an incredibly important piece,

to kind of confirm that, you know, the more important case here

is the espionage case.

And it was through the reporting of Adrian Humphreys

that we started to see that picture a little bit more clearly.

[piano music]

And more so that other journalists started

to follow the case.

[Adrian] WikiLeaks describes him as an alleged WikiLeaks middle man,

but when he found that secret document,

he didn't publish it, he didn't release it,

and to this day, he's not allowed me to read it,

or others to read it.

So at this stage of his trajectory,

I'm a little uncomfortable saying he's a whistleblower,

um, other than the fact that he's certainly trying to blow the whistle

on the way the US government treated him.

[dramatic music]

[Michael] There was, I think, about 15 months

of seeking asylum in Canada,

and the parents were very, very active

in looking for support wherever they could find support

for the idea that Matthew

was a WikiLeaks-type whistleblower

who had been unfairly accused by the United States.

And one supporter they found was a lawyer in Brooklyn.

Matt, when he came up here, was free and out on bond,

but because of a kind of ludicrous technicality,

Matt DeHart is now in a maximum security prison in Canada.

They actually had their hands clamped on his,

and I said, "You cannot do that, he has PTSD."

[Tor] Can I ask you where he got that?

Yeah, from being tortured, that's where he got PTSD.

- [Tor] And who tortured him? - The FBI tortured him.

[ominous music]

[Michael] Tor Ekeland was in the videos,

joined in the promotion,

and people came to their support.

The Courage Foundation supports whistleblowers,

truthtellers, journalists,

anyone with courage to stand up for the truth.

One of the first people

who were probably, um, beneficiaries

of the Courage Foundation would have been Chelsea Manning

and Edward Snowden.

And along the way over the years, other people were added

and supported and became beneficiaries

and my son was selected as one of those beneficiaries.

[dramatic music]

[Carrie] It certainly was coincidental

that his story was evolving

as the Manning case and the Snowden case,

as they came out into the media.

It did seem like he was sort of riding on the tails

of that kind of investigation that was going on.

[Matt] By late 2009, someone had uploaded a file to The Shell,

which is a server which I operated the front end of.

Matthew DeHart wants to portray himself

as this whistleblower to make him appear to be the victim.

[Matt] I consider myself to be an information freedom activist

and a political prisoner.

He can say what he wants to to get people to follow him,

all I gotta say is they haven't looked

at both sides of the story.

[Matt] The timeframe that my prosecution occurred

was after our government started going after whistleblowers,

or potential whistleblowers,

so that means my prosecution was politically motivated.

[bright music]

When all of this media was being generated,

we were prohibited by court rules and local rules

and ethical rules and DOJ policy from talking to the media. Um...

So it was interesting to see the perspective that they were putting out

and it certainly wasn't a well rounded story about what was going on at all.

It was a little frustrating.

[dramatic music]

They put up Facebook pages, held news conferences,

they put up GoFundMe pages,

they tried to raise money by promoting

the Anonymous conspiracy theory.

[Carrie] I can only imagine how difficult

it must have been for these victims

and their families to see Matthew DeHart

and his family billing him as being

a victim of the system when, in fact,

they were the ones who were victims

and were being victimized again by DeHart

and his family in the media.

[soft piano music]

[reporter] A former American soldier allegedly turned hacker

who was seeking asylum in Canada has been deported to the US.

Thirty-year-old Matt DeHart claims he is being persecuted

by the United States government for his political beliefs

as a hacker and whistleblower

involved in leaking sensitive government information.

His claim for refugee status in Canada

was denied and so was a similar claim made by his parents.

Joining us this morning, Paul and Leann DeHart.

He wanted to stay here, you wanted to stay here and now you may have to leave?

We, we are under a departure order.

We have to leave by April 1st.

[ominous music]

[Larry] It ended with the claims for asylum being refused.

Because the board member ruled that at the end of the day,

we hadn't presented sufficient evidence to show that, um,

uh, the United States government

was unable or unwilling to offer Matthew

and his family the protection that they needed.

[dark music]

[Tor] They brought him across the border at Buffalo.

And then I went up to the border to meet Paul and Leann

because they had a legitimate concern that they were gonna get detained.

I'm in Canada right now with the DeHarts.

They're about to cross back over to the United States.

[Paul] Certificate of departure from Canada.

We pulled over by the fence, I opened up the two tool boxes,

I thought, "Okay, we'll have the inspection and go in and talk to them."

And he handed us our passports back

and Leann said he told him, "Now we'll just be on our way."

And I'm like, "That's it, really?

We're just driving, there's no questions? There's no..."

So that's... it's a tremendous relief. Um, I... I can only...

um, imagine that the reason why this went so smoothly

was because the world is watching,

and I appreciate everybody who's been following

our story, so, yeah, that's it.

It's a story that I thought needed to be told.

I appreciate that. I appreciate the way you did it.

- Okay, all the best, sir. - [helicopter whirring]

[piano music]

[Brett] Him fleeing to Canada,

and this whole national security investigation

gave us an opportunity to submit an external hard drive

to the FBI to decrypt

and from there, I was able to start my analysis

on that encrypted hard drive

and that's where I found the images of the second victim.

He soon plead guilty after that.

[eerie music]

[Carrie] After all these years of outlandish claims he's made,

and all the resources that the government

has had to expend to deal with this case

and to deal with these claims, he did plead guilty.

He admitted that he had exploited children

and justice was done in the case.

Yes, I plead guilty to something I did not do.

You have to keep in mind all the power

in the US court system lies with the prosecution.

It's what they decide to show you,

what they decide to show the judge,

and especially if you're sitting in county jail,

you have almost no negotiating power.

If that went to trial, all you would have to do

is show one picture of a naked kid

and everybody in there in Tennessee

or anywhere else in our country would say "guilty."

And all you would have to say is, "Oh, and by the way,

this young man went into the Russian embassy."

And every single one of them would say, "Hang him."

[somber music]

[Matt] I didn't consider 90 months to be unacceptable.

I had already been incarcerated for close to five years.

Uh, with good time, I'd only be spending

about two and a half years in prison.

Compared to what I was being threatened with

if they had sent me to DC to be prosecuted,

which was something like 30-50 years.

Um, and I wanna see my family again

and I wanna be able to live a normal life again.

[somber music]

[Leann] It's not like he just waltzed up and said,

"Okay, yeah, I'll plea to this nasty stuff that I didn't do."

No, it didn't work that way,

he was threatened, we were threatened to go to prison,

if he didn't take the plea deal.

We're a very close family and we would all die for each other.

We're here on the sentencing

in the United States vs. Matthew Paul DeHart.

Are there any witnesses today for the government?

[Ingram] No witnesses, Your Honor,

but we do have victim impact statements.

We hope you realize the great truth of your conviction.

These charges you have confessed to are not bogus,

they are real.

You are finally exposed

and the lies you were living are no more.

The seven years we have awaited justice

has taken a great toll on our family.

Watching you and your mother and father in Canada

try to build your case of lies

was even more painful.

Thankfully, Canada has sent you back to face us all.

We're the real victims of the web you spun

to trap our children.

My son initially thought you were a friend.

A fiend is more like it.

You undermined our core Christian beliefs.

I honestly believe that you thought this was a game.

You got away with it for quite a while,

but the game is over.

You have lost.

You are captured and have admitted your wrongdoing

only after many delays and manipulation of the courts,

the press, and anyone else who would listen to you.

You are answering to this court today,

but one day, I believe you will stand

before the judgment seat of God.

[somber music]

[Leann] At the end of my son's plea,

the judge made the effort to say,

"What about this national security case?

Is this still open?

Can Mr. DeHart be charged with this?"

And the government said, "Well, yes, he could."

We're looking forward to the day, September 11th, 2018.

Strange date they picked to release him.

And we fully expect,

it would not surprise us at all,

if they don't come by with some vans and arrest him,

for something else.

So we never know, you never know.

[somber music]

[Matt] The plea that I had to sign included

my Canadian credit towards my sentence.

And that was the deal,

it's a binding contract between the defense

and the federal government.

And evidently they can break a contract with impunity,

and that's lawlessness.

It's very frustrating.

It's almost like somebody in DC

or somebody is still extremely upset and worried

about the information that Matt came across.

And if I was paranoid and conspiracy-minded,

I would say that somebody was trying to send him a message.

And that message is,

"Be careful, we can still fuck with you.

And this isn't over yet"

[whirring]

[Leann] This is gonna be Matt's room. Um...

I started putting some things in his bureau for him, um,

his clothing.

Uh, I have to buy him new clothing,

he lost a lot of weight in prison, and that's okay.

And so I'm just trying to get things ready

and organized for him when he comes home.

This is, um, Guy Fawkes, and my son,

I think he's had this mask since like 2005,

so I keep that.

[somber music]

[somber music]

I had been at the second victim's house,

and this is in the evening, um,

taking some... getting some additional information

when the phone rang and it just so happened to be,

I think the caller ID said

- it was a law firm out of New York city. - [phone rings]

[Matt's voice]

Um, n-no, about what?

[Brett] The second victim had informed Matthew DeHart

that the police were involved at this stage.

And so Matthew DeHart, portraying himself as a lawyer

from a law firm in New York,

said he's trying to get everybody to stop contacting his client,

which is actually him, from further investigating these allegations.

[Matt's voice]

Pre-texting?

- [Matt] Phone pre-texting. - Okay.

As I was doing the forensic analysis of Matthew DeHart's computers,

I found a transcript that was typed out by Matthew DeHart as to what to say.

He had done a little bit of research

into certain United States statutes about phone calls

and certain legal responses.

He made a whole script as to what to say

so he wouldn't get off script.

So he could make it sound authentic.

[Matt's voice]

[woman] Uh-huh?

[Matt's voice]

No. I don't know what you're talking about.

- [Matt] Thank you. - Okay, you're welcome.

[Brett] Today's date is the 8th of January,

I'm here with... and his mother.

- Uh, you identify his voice as being Matthew's? - [man] Yes.

The first conversation you played

sounds very much to me like it was Matt DeHart.

After that call was finished with the victim's mother,

the suspect, Matthew DeHart, called back wanting to speak

to the second victim to try to find out

from him what was going on.

I can get my mom if you want me to.

[Matt's voice]

[sighs] I'm not really sure right now.

Like, I don't know whether you're the age you tell me you are

or I don't know, Matt.

The victim was very scared at that time

'cause at that time, the victim still believed that

Matthew DeHart was Matthew DiMarco,

the son of a infamous mobster out of New York or New Jersey.

And it was very apparent that this victim was scared

and did not want to talk to Matthew.

[Matt's voice]

Yes.

[Matt's voice]

Yes, I'm in a tough situation right now.

[Matt's voice]

Fifteen minutes after that phone call, Matthew DeHart calls back

and wants to speak to the victim's mother again,

and the victim's mother had a conversation

which I was also present for and recorded.

[Matt's voice]

Wait, your aunt and uncle called your dad...

[Matt's voice]

...saying your aunt and uncle are being harassed?

[Matt's voice]

Yeah?

[Matt's voice]

Uh-huh.

[Matt's voice]

And that's Matt supposedly impersonating...

[Matt's voice]

Uh-huh.

And so does your cousin have the same name as you or something?

[Matt's voice]

So two different last names, but you're both Matthew?

And that's where the confusion...

[Matt's voice]

Okay.

- [Matt's voice] - And...

What's your dad do?

I don't know what your dad does.

[Matt's voice]

It sounds like this has just become

a very desperate situation for him

'cause I think he knew he was gonna get in trouble.

[dark music]

[Brett] Through my investigation, I was able to find out

the name of another individual somewhere in the United States.

That victim was interviewed and I was given a report on the conversation

that the investigator and the other victim had.

And through that, it was learned that

there were other things going on other than just the exchanging of images and videos.

And that's according to the victim.

[Adrian] If the government had this evidence against him,

I would have liked to have seen it in court.

It boggles my mind why the government left...

the police force left all of these things dangling.

It's just something I don't know.

It's, it's very disturbing,

and, uh... if true,

it's despicable behavior and sad to hear about.

The victim had... did not wanna come forward

as far as prosecution was concerned

unless this was to eventually go to trial.

In resolving any of these cases,

we're always talking to the victims

to make sure that they are comfortable

with whatever resolution it is that we're trying to come to,

and sometimes the defendants end up getting to plead to lesser charges

or less time in an effort to avoid, uh,

having the children testify.

[somber music]

[Michael] When Paul DeHart told us the government

was listening to us and that he observed the glass move,

was that part of a plan

to create something that didn't exist,

and was it calculated?

Mexico, Russia, Venezuela, Canada, all those things.

Were... Were they done because they believed

that he was a target of the United States

and that there was a conspiracy to harm him?

Or did they do that because they couldn't accept him

for what Matthew is?

You know? And did their own beliefs,

their own fundamental Christian beliefs,

laid on top of a military background,

cause them to create and promote

a concocted conspiracy

rather than act in the best interest of their child?

B-Because of the level of secrecy,

uh, from all ends involved in this case,

um, there's really no firm way of...

that I can find of truly knowing where the truth lies.

Matt's probably the only one that really knows.

[somber music]

This case is a microcosm... [stammers]

It's one case in a world

where we are all suffering

from the promotion of lies as truths.

We... we...

Everyday, we are subjected to circumstances

where if someone says something that's not true,

and says it enough times,

it will find support and eventually be accepted

by other people as true.

[light music]

[Gabrielle] I think we often establish stories and narratives

with incomplete information,

and then activists and advocates take a stance,

um, just hoping that's the right thing.

And then stories get written,

and Wikipedia pages get written.

And, yeah, it takes a life of its own as being truth.

If we ever want to live in a world

where we can trust the truth,

it also means having to reevaluate evidence

as new things come up and maybe change your mind.

[somber music]

[dramatic music]

Provided by explosiveskull https://twitter.com/kaboomskull