11:32
- ABC News
- September 22, 2020
The men behind QAnon
Experts and researchers said the key to "Q" is hiding in plain sight.
11:32
Watkins has vigorously defended his imageboards in the past. Prior to his testimony in the House, Watkins released a lengthy statement outlining his defense of 8chan.
Watkins contended that \"8chan is the only [online] platform featuring a full commitment to free speech -- a one-of-a-kind discussion board where anonymous users shared tactics about French democracy protests, how to circumvent censorship in repressive regimes, and the best way to beat a classic video game. In this hodgepodge of discussion, down-home recipes are traded, sorrows lifted, and a small minority of users post hateful and ignorant views.\"
Watkins said in the statement that \"moderation is mostly done by volunteers.\"
\"There are no algorithms for content moderation in place. All 8chan moderation relies on human volunteers and one automated 'bot' account ... to remove illegal content or spam, automated or human, based only on keywords,\" he wrote.
Watkins said that by the fall of 2019, when his statement was composed, 8chan had banned nearly 48,000 users, deleted more than 132,000 posts and 92 discussion boards -- which organize discussion topics by subject matter. The letter also noted that 8chan had complied with 56 U.S. law enforcement requests at that point in 2019.
'Bingo'
James Watkins was born in November 1963 in Dayton, Washington, according to public records.
He grew up on a family farm north of Seattle, the son of a mother who worked for the aerospace giant Boeing and a father who worked for the local phone company, according to an interview he and one of his executives gave in 2016 to news site Splinter, then a Fusion Media Group website.
Watkins joined the U.S. Army at 18, serving in the Army Reserve from 1982 to 1985 and the U.S. Army from 1985 to 1999, according to military records. He first worked as a helicopter mechanic and later as a recruiter. He was promoted to sergeant first class in 1994.
Watkins told Splinter that the Army sent him in 1987 to computer training school in Virginia, and while still working for the Army in the 1990s he launched what a fellow executive described in the interview as a pioneering Asian porn website.
Watkins noted in the interview that he informed the U.S. Army at the time that he was launching a website but did not specify what kind.
Business filings show that N.T. Technology Inc. was founded by 1998 in Washington state by Watkins and two Japanese men, Yoshihiro and Yumiko Nakao. The firm initially sold advertising and later expanded into web hosting. The corporation lapsed in 2003 and business filings for the company appeared again in Nevada in 2005, where the company is currently headquartered. He launched a second company, Race Queen Inc., in Manila in 2005, according to corporation filings.
Tom Riedel, N.T. Technology Inc.'s current president, told the digital site Splinter in a 2016 email that Watkins was a porn pioneer, who \"figured out a loophole in Japanese censorship rules,\" according to Splinter. \"Adult material in Japan has to be censored, but ... Japanese people could access content that resides outside of Japan. Bingo.\"
Riedel and other N.T. Technology executives did not respond to ABC News requests for comment.
An Army spokesperson did not dispute that Watkins was sent to computer training school -- but said that no immediate record was available.
Philippines immigration records obtained by ABC News indicate that Watkins arrived in Manila in October 2001, weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks and has lived there ever since.
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/qanon-rally-gty-ps-20916_1600289969320_hpEmbed_3x2_384.jpg\")
In the wake of growing controversy last fall surrounding the El Paso mass shooting, the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Philippines National Police (PNP) both launched investigations into Watkins, as first reported last year by WIRED magazine.
An NBI official told ABC News last week that the bureau's investigation into Watkins was closed, and the findings turned over to the PNP. Philippines police officials said their investigation into Watkins remains open but has not to date resulted in any criminal charges.
Yet, in a previously unreported development in January, the Philippines Bureau of Immigration's (BI) Investigations Division determined that James Watkins was a risk to the public interest, a designation called an \"undesirable alien,\" according to Philippines immigration records obtained by ABC News.
Watkins \"is the owner and operator of 8chan, a hate filled forum/website which hosts trolling and serves as go-to resource for violent extremists and white supremacists,\" the bureau of immigration's charging sheet states.
The designation is administrative, not criminal and \"it basically means you're deportable,\" said Jathniel Shao, an Ohio-based immigration attorney with an office in Manila.
\"Being deemed undesirable by the [Philippines] Bureau of Immigration is not uncommon,\" Shao said. \"Even if you do something stupid when you're drunk or get in a fight with the wrong people, anyone can file a claim with the BI about any alien. It's the BI commissioners' discretion whether to pursue further action.\"
Immigration documents show that Watkins sought authorization to return to the U.S. and was given a travel window of Aug. 27, 2020, through Jan. 31, 2021, before he is expected to return to appeal the undesirable alien designation. He departed for the U.S. on Sept. 4, though it's unclear where he is currently living. Benjamin Barr, Watkins' U.S. attorney, did not reply to an ABC News email last week requesting information about Watkins' current whereabouts.
Reached earlier this month at Watkins' home in a gated community in the Pasig City section of Manila, a man who identified himself as Watkins' brother-in-law confirmed to ABC News that Watkins had returned to the U.S., following his son Ron's earlier return stateside. The brother-in-law also said that in June, Watkins sold the pig farm south of Manila where he'd been living with his family for years.
While officials with the bureau of immigration declined to specify what prompted the Watkins investigation, Brennan told ABC News last week he thinks he knows what happened.
\"Wow, it worked,\" Brennan said, when notified of Watkins' immigration designation.
He went on to explain that after Watkins filed a cyber-libel complaint against him last fall, Brennan hired a local Manila attorney to accompany Brennan's wife to repeatedly complain in person about Watkins to one of a handful of commissioners at the bureau of immigration's Manila headquarters, arguing that Watkins' history of web hosting Asian pornography and anonymous forums like 8chan from the Philippines should compel his designation as an undesirable alien.
\"We were basically playing his own game back at him, because he chased me out of the country first,\" Brennan said.
Brennan said he bets Watkins stays in the U.S.
\"I would be shocked if he really ever returns now that this immigration case is going,\" Brennan said.
\"If you're a foreigner there you really have to prove you're not undesirable,\" he said. \"The bureau of immigration can deport anyone for any reason or no reason and the only person who can overturn it is Duterte.\"
\"And that'll never happen.\"
Immigration records show that Watkins must return by Jan. 31, or he would be placed on a blacklist and barred from reentry to the Philippines.
ABC News' Nicholas Tucker contributed reporting from New York and Luis Martinez contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.
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