Stalking Linkin Park

Until late 2006, Devon Townsend worked as a computer tech in a classified area of Sandia National Laboratories, a nuclear weapons research facility located at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. Townsend had a Q-level security clearance in the technology and manufacturing group that allowed her access to nuclear material. It's unlikely that any other holder of a Q-level security clearance at Sandia could match Townsend's enthusiasm for the rock group Linkin Park, and in particular for the band's lead singer, Chester Bennington.

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We can assume this with a high degree of confidence because, according to a Defense Department criminal investigator's affidavit (excerpted below and on the following nine pages), Townsend regularly used her computer server, located in "a secure area … requiring a coded passcard" (Page 5), to read Bennington's e-mails and to listen to his voice mails by hacking into PayPal, AOL, Yahoo!, and Bennington's cell-phone billing records. (The entire affidavit can be read here.) Townsend also phoned and e-mailed the singer and his wife repeatedly (Page 9). On one occasion Townsend changed the Bennington family's Verizon account password to "Who is doing this to you?" (Page 4)

When a private investigator hired by the Benningtons finally caught Townsend in November 2006, her computer desktop at Sandia contained photographs of the rocker's children and hundreds of bootleg Linkin Park audio and video files (Page 8). According to an article by David Kushner in the June issue of Wired, Townsend said she cyber-stalked the singer and his family because she was bored: "Her job at Sandia took about half an hour a day, and she was looking to pass the time." Since the end of the Cold War, the national labs have been groping to establish a post-nuclear role for themselves. The novel direction that Townsend explored for Sandia must be judged, in the final analysis, a false start. Townsend's felony plea hearing is scheduled for June 29 (Page 11).

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