U.S. federal judge retroactively seals court documents, hiding joint American-British covert action in Iran
In response to this publication's reporting, Judge John L. Badalamenti on Monday sealed four sections of documents from an ongoing lawsuit between British and American information warfare contractors.
U.S. federal judge John L. Badalamenti on Monday signed an order to retroactively seal four occurrences in previously public court filings of a table of covert programs conducted in countries such as Iran and Syria by the UAE-based and British-led information warfare contractor International Advisory Services (IAS) on behalf of U.S. Government agencies such as U.S. Special Operations Command.
IAS was described by its former executives, the former SCL Group employees Alexis Everington and Richard White, as a “shell company” acting on behalf of the Austin, Texas-based information warfare contractor Madison Springfield, Inc. (MSI), as part of IAS’s ongoing, multi-year legal battle against MSI founder Timothy J. Riesen for a larger cut of MSI’s mid-2022 covert acquisition by the San Francisco-based gig-work information collection company Premise Data. (Both Premise and MSI were subsequently acquired by the Alexandria-based special operations contractor Culmen International last year.)
This publication has closely followed Everington and White’s lawsuit against Mr. Riesen since August, as well as the since-finalized False Claims Act suit filed against Mr. Riesen by a former MSI president, and Riesen’s own lawsuit against Premise Data. This publication’s coverage on January 23, 2026 of a bevy of codenames, target countries, and date ranges of IAS-led covert surveillance programs in countries such as Iran led to Judge Badalamenti’s sealing order on Monday.
Perhaps the largest revealed program, BEOWULF, was described as targeting 10 Iranian cities between at least August 2019 and September 2020, with a total price of $4,497,786.77, according to former MSI president Ingrid de la Fuente’s False Claims Act suit against Riesen. IAS’s enactment of covert information collection programs such as BEOWULF, as a subcontractor to MSI for U.S. Special Operations Command, was repeatedly noted in the legal filings to be a continuation of Everington’s previous relationship on Middle East surveillance programs with Riesen, when the two were respectively working at SCL Group and Archimedes Global. The methodology for Everington and Riesen’s covert activity in Yemen, through Project Titania, was first revealed by The Grayzone in 2018.
“It has recently come to the undersigned’s attention that a journalist is mining this court’s docket and has recently published this sensitive information,” wrote Everington and White’s counsel, Cynthia C. Sonnemann of SISCO-LAW, in an unopposed motion to seal in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida on Monday.
“On November 17, 2025, Defendant [Timothy J. Riesen] filed a motion to compel, attaching Plaintiffs’ interrogatory answers that contained a chart of highly sensitive information (Doc. 93.1, pp. 8-10 and 93.3, pp. 7-9),” prefaced the motion, adding that, “On January 19, 2026, Defendant filed another motion to compel, attaching Plaintiffs’ interrogatory answers that contained a chart of highly sensitive information (Doc. 114-3, pp. 10-13 and 114-4, pp. 12-15).”
All four page ranges refer to different copies of the same chart of codenames, target countries, and date ranges of IAS covert surveillance programs cited by the author on January 23, and Judge Badalamenti quickly granted a sealing order for documents 91-1, 93-3, 114-3, and 114-4.
“Within seven (7) days of the date of this Order, Defendant [Timothy J. Riesen] shall file properly redacted versions of the documents,” stated the docket text for a sealed motion to seal on Monday, which further stated that, “Defendant is reminded that each exhibit must be refiled in its entirety with proper redactions.”
In response to Monday’s sealing order, full copies of documents 93 and 114 were retroactively embedded in this outlet’s triggering January 23 publication of the U.S. Special Operations Command-sponsored covert action campaign codenames. The documents, as well as Monday’s unopposed motion to seal, are also embedded in this article.
Great reporting Jack!!
tyfys