Who are the Cyber Ninjas?
CNN - Politics  By Bob Ortega, Kyung Lah, Stephanie Becker and Anna-Maja Rappard, CNN  In recent weeks, GOP lawmakers from at least 16 states have flocked to Phoenix for a first-hand look at a controversial, partisan audit of the 2020 vote in Arizonas largest county. The visits look to be a harbinger for similar exercises yet-to-come in those other states  and a potential revenue stream for, among others, the Arizona efforts main contractor: Cyber Ninjas. You are not alone. Though the Florida-based cybersecurity firm has existed in some form since at least 2014, before last Novembers election, it hadnt done election auditing, nor been in the public eye. But then, there hasnt been much of it to be in the public eye. Cyber Ninjas exists mostly in virtual reality, with its chief executive, Doug Logan, also serving as, well, pretty much everything. On recent calls to the companys automated answer line, pressing 3 for sales led to the answering message for Logan. So did pressing 4 for human resources. And pressing 5 for purchasing. And 6 for the general mailbox. Go to the address for Cyber Ninjas Legal Department, listed on its audit contract with the Arizona Senate, and youll wind up at a rented mailbox in a UPS Store in Sarasota, Florida. The companys business address registered with Floridas Secretary of State, also in Sarasota, was sold last December, and now sits empty. Logan himself has strenuously avoided speaking to reporters since taking part in an April 22 press conference just before the audit began. At that conference, he refused to answer questions about how hed repeated and amplified various debunked election-fraud conspiracy theories on social media, such as this retweet unearthed by the Arizona Mirror, for example: Im tired of hearing people say there was no fraud. It happened, its real, and people better get wise fast. Hed also provided, in a Michigan election lawsuit, an affidavit alleging vulnerabilities in one countys system for tallying votes; state and county officials disagreed, identified a slew of problems with the analysis. And Logan repeated disproven claims in a paper he wrote for Republican US senators objecting to Congresss Jan. 6 certification of President Joe Bidens election win. But Logan, and the Arizona Senates audit liaison, Ken Bennett, argued at that press conference that Logans own opinions dont matter, and that people should trust in the integrity of the audit process hes overseeing. Logan declined interview requests from CNN. An emailed statement from his spokesman, Rod Thomson, stated that Mr. Logan recognizes President Bidens results were certified and accepted in accordance with the Constitution. Mr. Logan remains committed to restoring integrity and trust into our election system, which he is demonstrating through the work he is performing here in Maricopa County.  But thats a tough sell, even to Logans friends. Its hard to say anything bad about the guy. Hes a lovely person. Hes just nuts now, said Tony Summerlin, who has been friends with Logan for 15 years, and said he helped him win a cybersecurity contract with the Federal Communications Commission five years ago. Its scary; because if someone like him can turn into this, who cant turn into this?  Summerlin said that in all the years hed known Logan, before the Arizona audit, we never, never had a single political conversation; thats what stunned me about this He said, theres definitely something there. I said, based on what? He said, itll come. I said, you sound like the My Pillow guy. '  Another friend of Logan, who asked not to be named because she works with both Republicans and Democrats in Washington, DC, and feared blowback from being linked to him, described him as very smart, very competent in cybersecurity, and politically nave. Doug may not have thought it all the way through, she said. Logan, 41, graduated from Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., in 2002, and quickly became involved in cybersecurity work. Summerlin said he first met Logan in 2005 or 2006. He was in DC trying to get business with the government for his firm, which at that point was him. He seemed like a smart guy.  In 2010, in New York, Logan competed in the first US Cyber Challenge, a national program to identify and develop cybersecurity talent. He went on to become a Cyber Challenge instructor, and helped develop a workshop for the curriculum, according to a person familiar with his work at the program. In March 2014, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that Sarasota Countys Economic Development Corporation was helping Logan relocate his company, Cyber Ninjas, to the city, with plans to eventually add eight to 10 employees. The paper said Logan was moving there from Bloomington, Indiana, where hed also worked for the software security company Cigital. Logan and his company have a trail of positive reviews posted on his LinkedIn page for cybersecurity consulting work in the private sector. He and Cyber Ninjas also received a three-year, $101,000 federal cybersecurity contract with the Federal Communications Commission in 2016, and subsequently, Summerlin said, worked for the Universal Services Administrative Company, a private-public partnership under the FCC that provides broadband services to underserved communities and schools, among other work. None of that previous consulting appears to have any ties to election-related matters. In April 2020, Cyber Ninjas received a Covid assistance loan for $98,322, saying in its application it then had five employees. Logan, in materials for a cybersecurity conference in Chicago last November, described himself as a father of 11 children and a Follower of Jesus Christ. But also in November, within days of Trumps election loss, Logan was messaging Ron Watkins. The recent HBO documentary Q: Into the Storm, pointed to Watkins as either being Q or at least a key promulgator of the QAnon conspiracy theories that helped animate many of those who stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6. Watkins is the former administrator of the internet message-board website 8chan, now 8kun, effectively QAnons home base. In a series of archived tweets from a now-deleted account between Nov. 12 and December, first reported by The Daily Beast, Logan messaged Watkins, Id love to chat if you have a chance; asked Watkins for links to original source documents; and tagged Watkins on his exchanges with attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, who filed numerous lawsuits challenging Bidens victory and baselessly claiming electoral fraud. Wood also told a reporter for Talking Points Memo that Logan had visited his home in South Carolina to meet with others working on the investigation into election fraud.  Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, who hired Cyber Ninjas, dismissed concerns about Logans tweets and other indications he might be biased as tiny little things.  Some others dont see them as quite so tiny. Douglas Cobb, owner of Paper Forensics, a Savannah, Georgia-based document examination firm, shared emails with CNN showing he was approached in April by another Cyber Ninjas subcontractor, Haystack Investigations, of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, to join the Arizona audit. The emails were first reported by the Arizona Republic. Cobb said he was asked to provide up to 20 people for 14 days to examine the ballot paper, at a rate of $600 a day plus expenses per person and $800 a day for himself. That total, just over $179,000 plus expenses, is more than the Arizona Senate contracted to pay Cyber Ninjas for the audit as a whole: $150,000. As CNN has reported, private partisan sources heavily invested in casting doubt on Bidens election victory claim to have funneled more than $1.6 million to the audit. Neither Fann, nor the Senate, nor Logan, have said how much in private funding Cyber Ninjas has received or spent. At the April 22 press conference, Logan said he didnt know how much his company was being paid, and didnt want to know, because I dont want to be influenced.  Cobb had planned to work on the audit  until his son looked online into the people hed be working for. I withdrew once I found out a little more about who was involved, Cyber Ninjas and Logan and his conspiracy theories, Cobb said. Logan didnt answer questions from CNN about who is accounting for funds received and spent for the audit; about whether hes been approached by legislators from other states to do similar work; about whether his company has an actual office or any full-time employees; about how he and his company came to Fanns attention; or about whether he still believes the conspiracies he touted months ago to GOP US senators, such as debunked allegations of fraud in counties in Georgia and Pennsylvania, or debunked claims that Dominion Voting Systems core software originates from intellectual property of Smartmatic, and is linked through Smartmatic to Venezuelas long-dead former president Hugo Chavez, among others. Questions about Logans beliefs continue to surface. On June 3, when conspiracy theorist and Overstock founder Patrick Byrne released a trailer for a film about the Arizona audit, claiming the election was stolen from Trump, several Arizona reporters immediately pointed to an anonymous speaker, identified only as an ANON, Application Security Analyst, as sounding exactly like Doug Logan. Summerlin, too, said he recognized Logans voice. On the trailer, the speaker says, if we dont fix our election integrity now, we may no longer have a democracy. Shortly after several reporters tweeted about Logan and the trailer, a re-edited version of the trailer was substituted on YouTube with the voice for that speaker digitally altered. Logan didnt respond to queries about whether that was his voice on the trailer, which has now been removed for violating YouTubes community guidelines. The last time he spoke publicly about the audit, on April 22, Logan told reporters, I know you guys want to paint me like some bad guy in here. Im involved in this and putting everything on the line with my company because I care about our country. Every individual that walks into any election integrity thing gets butchered by everybody.  Summerlin said Logan recently contacted him to ask for his help, saying that the Universal Service Administrative Company had terminated Cyber Ninjas contract. Neither Logan nor the USAC responded to questions from CNN about the alleged contract termination. He said, its wrong theyre terminating me,' Summerlin said. I said, dont be an idiot, of course theyre terminating your ass, you work at will. I said, if you get a government contract any time after this, Ill be amazed.