Bliss JTF North Naval Officer Arrested On Child Porn Charges

A non-commissioned Naval officer stationed at Fort Bliss has been arrested and charged with conspiracy to distribute child pornography.

Command Master Chief Robert E. Cuff had been serving as a senior enlisted leader at Joint Task Force North at Fort Bliss since October 2009. He was arrested at his home last month, according to ICE officials, and is now being held in Louisiana.

“This operation targeted hundreds of individuals in countries around the world,” Attorney General Eric Holder said.

Holder called it “Operation Delego,” which has been investigating more than 500 people around the world since December of 2009 on a private, members only online bulletin board created to promote pedophilia.

“Utilizing sophisticated techniques in an attempt to avoid detection, Dreamboard’s members allegedly traded graphic images of adults molesting children, often violently,” Holder added, “and created a massive private library of images of child sexual abuse.”

Cuff was one 72 people arrested. He has been the Senior Enlisted Leader of JTF North for the past 21 months.

“Some of the children featured in these images and videos were just infants,” Holder said, “and in many cases the children being victimized were in obvious and also intentional pain, even in distress and crying.”

Cuff, a career Navy Seabee who enlisted in 1983, allegedly made 43 posts on Dreamboard, achieving VIP status on the site.

“Membership status was upgraded for those who produced or showed their own child porn and videos,” said Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security.

According to the indictment, Dreamboard was the vehicle for up to 123 terabytes of child porn, or roughly 16,000 DVDs.

“Digital images recovered from the targets arrested in the U.S. alone has been found to contain over 1 million images of child pornography,” Napolitano added.

Holder said for the children victimized, “this was nothing short of a nightmare.”

According to the indictment, Cuff’s screen name on the Dreamboard site was “slapalot.” JTF North officials say he is still assigned to JTF at Fort Bliss for administrative purposes only.