ActBlue former IT boss disappearance: Decklin Foster & Debian, Harvard suicide lab, Chris Gleason is wife, whistleblower or both?
ActBlue is the online fundraising platform used by US Democratic party candidates. It is the subject of a major scandal that has gripped the congress. It has been linked to Debianism, another disappearing developer and in a parody of other Debianism scandals, there are possibly two people using the same name, one being the wife of the missing developer and the other being a US Senate candidate who claims to have exposed the ActBlue scandal.
These Github screenshots confirm that Decklin Foster was affiliated with ActBlue and vanished in 2018:
Accusations have been made about the concealment of illegal foreign donations and deception of Congress.
Chris Gleason has nominated to represent Florida in the US Senate. Gleason registered using a post office box and created a domain name, voteforgleason.com using an anonymous service in Iceland. Gleason's profile on X/Twitter has no photo while their Facebook profile is completely disabled.
A similar web site has been created at https://chris4florida.com/
The phone number on voteforgleason.com and chris4florida.com goes to a pharmacy rather than a campaign office.
Nonetheless, I was able to verify Christopher Gleason submitted a nomination that is registered with the state officials.
Gleason's web site tells us:
Chris Gleason built the forensic tools that exposed ActBlue's billion-dollar money laundering operation. His evidence ...
Therefore, the candidate Gleason is not a pharmacist.
So far, Chris appears to be male, intermittently using the name Christopher and the masculin pronouns like His.
At the height of the Debian suicide cluster, shortly before Adrian von Bidder-Senn died on our wedding day ( detailed report), another Debian Developer, Decklin Foster put all his packages up for adoption.
Up to 2016, we can see that Decklin Foster was listed in the public filings of ActBlue Civics, Inc as either a senior engineer or at one point, as Director of Information Technology.
Decklin Foster's activity on their Github profile stops abruptly in May 2018.
ProPublic shows the last salary payment to Decklin Foster's bank account was in July 2018.
Decklin Foster disappeared at almost the exact same time as Arjen Kamphuis, author of the book on Information Security for Investigative Journalists. I was one of the last people to see Arjen before he vanished. Remarkably, Arjen had even asked me for protection.
On 1 January 2015, Decklin Foster's PGP key was removed because it was only 1024 bits. Most developers had created stronger keys before this mass removal of insecure keys took place.
In 2019, the Debian Account Managers asked the keyring managers to completely remove Decklin Foster from the Debian keyring. There was no Statement on Decklin Foster so far.
Clicking the links to see the statements about the removal does not work. An error message tells us the messages about Decklin Foster's removal from debianism are all private.
Foster's web site address is https://www.red-bean.com/decklin and it is currently reporting "The requested URL was not found on this server.". Thanks to the Wayback Machine we can find a snapshot from 2019 which reveals an inconvenient truth:
If you’re interested in me, I have started using Google Plus. If you’re interested in my work, I’m on Github. I was a Debian developer for some time, but I’ve mostly given that up. I currently work for ActBlue and live in Cambridge, MA with my wife.
Clicking on "my wife", we find the web site of Chris Gleason at http://cgleason.org/.
Reading Gleason's about page, we find the pronoun "they":
chris gleason is a graphic designer, zine creator, and print maker in chicago, illinois. they love ...
Therefore, the Debian Developer ( What is a Debian Developer?) who was Director of Information Technology for ActBlue was married to a female or transgender Chris Gleason. Is this the same person as the elusive male Chris Gleason who is now running for the US Senate in Florida on claims about corruption at ActBlue? Or is it simply a bizarre coincidence that two people so closely connected with this scandal share the same name?
Remember the case of Francois Thiébaud, the pimp who usurped the reputation of the legendary boss of Tissot SA? They both have the same name too but they are different people.
In 2017, the Trans Women Writers Collective published the book Nameless Woman, written by trans women of colour. In the credits, the trans women thank Decklin Foster.
This anthology was made possible by the generous support of hundreds of people. In particular, we would like to thank Annaya Youkai, Kieran Todd, Sadie Laett-Babcock, Adelaida Shelley, Jaime Peschiera, Kai Cheng Thom, Talon Wilde, David Cope, Alex Meginnis, Decklin Foster, and Eli Nelson for their help.
Here are photos from the respective online profiles of Decklin Foster and Chris Gleason.
Decklin Foster
Chris Gleason
They don't look too similar but who knows. Anything is possible in America today.
In 2017, Bitch Magazine included Decklin Foster in a list of donors.
In 1999, at the time Decklin Foster was recruited by Debianism, they had a home page at http://members.home.com/decklin/.
Shortly after, the page moved to http://www.red-bean.com/~decklin/ and that eventually evolved to http://www.red-bean.com/decklin/. The last good capture of the site at the Wayback machine was 11 October 2019. It looks like they disabled the web site after that date.
On 22 July 1999, Raphael Hertzog, known for the Freexian scandals wrote a message asking people to do unpaid work on orphaned packages in the hope that their application to become a Debian Developer would be approved more quickly:
To: debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org, debian-devel@lists.debian.org, debian-qa@lists.debian.org, debian-mentors@lists.debian.org Subject: [New maintainer] Working for Debian and becoming a registered Debian developer From: Raphael Hertzog <rhertzog@hrnet.fr> Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 18:06:26 +0200 [ Large crosspost to start the discussion, please reply to debian-devel only. Simply respect the reply-to. ] Hello everybody, you may or not be aware that getting a Debian developer is quite long. I want to propose a solution to facilitate the integration of new Debian developers. It's quite simple. In order to fully learn how Debian works, the best solution is : - to adopt orphaned packages and correct their bugs - that your work should be checked by an official developer (I'll call it the sponsor). Of course, as long you're not a registered Debian developers you cannot upload your packages. The soluton is that the sponsor will upload the package you'll do. The official maintainer will be debian-qa@lists.debian.org. After all when you correct bugs on orphaned packages, you're doing Quality Assurance. This does also allow you to get new bugs in your mailbox. You just need to subscribe to debian-qa@lists.debian.org. You would be allowed to open/close/set the severity/forward the bugs since all debian-qa members can do it on debian-qa packages. If the sponsor finds that you've done a good job with the package, he will explain that to the new maintainer team in the hope that your application will be processed faster. And when you'll be official Debian developper, you'll be able to change the Maintainer field to your name. I'll propose myself to be a sponsor. We'll need more sponsor ... any volunteers ? Hopefully several people from debian-qa will accept to be sponsor like me ... All the future Debian developers interested should also reply ... Any input appreciated ! Cheers, -- Hertzog Raphaël >> 0C4CABF1 >> http://prope.insa-lyon.fr/~rhertzog/
Decklin Foster was one of the people recruited by those tactics.
To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org Cc: debian-mentors@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: [New maintainer] Working for Debian and becoming a registered Debian developer From: Decklin Foster <decklin@home.com> Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 13:39:13 -0400 Raphael Hertzog writes: > Of course, as long you're not a registered Debian developers you cannot > upload your packages. The soluton is that the sponsor will upload the > package you'll do. The official maintainer will be > debian-qa@lists.debian.org. After all when you correct bugs on orphaned > packages, you're doing Quality Assurance. Sounds good, I'll subscribe right after I finish writing this. I'm also trying to work on non-orphaned backages as well (for example right now i'm fixing a bug in gsfonts-x11.) So keep in mind that you can always just send patches :) -- Debian GNU/Linux - http://www.debian.org/ The Web is to graphic design as the fax machine is to literature.
Not only was Decklin under the influence of Hertzog, they were also under the influnce of the Red Hat share offer. This email encourages speculation on the IPO:
To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: SPAM from Red Hat From: Decklin Foster <decklin@home.com> Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 09:57:45 -0400 Martin Bialasinski writes: > is it only me, or did you also get this spam from Red Hat about stock > options? > > Oh man - the bigger the company, the less clueful people? On #debian last night, it was suggested that we use our opportunity to buy some of this stock and sell it when the price goes up. This money could then be used to fund Debian, buy new hardware, improve our network connection, etc. Does anyone else think this is a Good Idea(TM)? I would be willing to donate as much as I reasonably could. -- Debian GNU/Linux - http://www.debian.org/ The Web is to graphic design as the fax machine is to literature.
Of interest to those watching the ActBlue saga, there is an email about hacking and cracking:
To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: [New maintainer] Working for Debian and becoming a registered Debian developer From: Decklin Foster <decklin@home.com> Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 16:37:40 -0400 Carl Mummert writes: > Hacking is a serious crime Cracking is a serious crime. Breaking into computer systems without permission is a serious crime. Violation of privacy and theft of confidential information is a serious crime. Now what does this have to do with hacking? > The fact remains that the debian policy is to discourage new > developers by making it slow and difficult to get an account. I have no problem with waiting, and I'd rather not look bad just because some people keep speaking badly about the new-maintainer team. We don't need another flamewar here. People have work to do. -- Debian GNU/Linux - http://www.debian.org/ The Web is to graphic design as the fax machine is to literature.
The New Maintainer report tells us they entered the process in the same month, their application manager was Craig Small and they completed the process in July/August 2000. The advocacies and the application manager (AM) report are all missing from the mailing list archives.
They had a page at https://people.debian.org/~decklin/ but that has been inaccessible ever since the peak of the Debian suicide cluster.
They had a blog on another web site. It is captured in the Wayback machine up to 2012. The last snapshot with the index is here: http://blog.rupamsunyata.org/. The last blog post:
I'm the fuel that fires the engine of Failure
So, the Democrats in my very blue state put up a depressing, entitled, out-of-touch candidate for our vacant senate seat and she lost. The only reason I voted for her was because she wasn't a Republican. Supporting someone you don't even slightly like is psychologically draining.
At this point, I would vote for a Democratic party (or a Republican party!) with the exact same fiscal policy as the current Republicans if they actually made a principled, moral stand on equal protection and civil rights, habeas corpus/due process, and reproductive rights. Those don't cost anything[1].
Maybe they should be solved before the stuff that does cost billions of dollars. As it is my choice is weak, almost grudging support for those rights from people who want to hand the economy over to the government, and disgusting, immoral, vehement opposition to them from people who want to hand the economy over to wealthy corporations.
Neither side is doing anything effective to keep us free, or to keep the market free. Each side says or implies that this is a Christian nation, which it explicitly isn't, while failing to do what's right. Sometimes I want to give up and stop voting.
[1] Conversely, of course, it doesn't cost anything to take people's rights away, or prevent them from getting rights in the first place; I think this is why anti-gay-marriage ballot measures have been more successful in the current recession. Some people get their kicks from the suffering of others.
Accessing the blog from 2013 onwards we can see the front page has been replaced with the message:
This blog is not being updated. Old entries are still around, but I'm turning off the front page for now.
From there, we could find a link to Decklin Foster on LiveJournal. Their profile tells us they like #Debian-women. Don't forget the Debian pregnancy cluster.
There is a link to a Twitter/X account for Decklin Foster.
contributors.debian.org tells us that Decklin Foster stopped contributing in February 2011, immediately before the death of Adrian von Bidder-Senn on our wedding day. Chris Gleason is not on the list at all. If Decklin had abandoned Debianism, why did it take eight years to remove them from the keyring? Reading the full history of the Debian Harassment culture, we can see many other co-authors were removed for purely political reasons and blackmail but keys belonging to the people who had abandoned the project and people who died were left in the keyring for years.
To: debian-devel <debian-devel@lists.debian.org> Subject: RFA: all my packages From: Decklin Foster <decklin@red-bean.com> Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:11:05 -0500 Message-id: <1297375750-sup-7355@gillespie.rupamsunyata.org> I'm looking for a new maintainer for, well, any of these. My heart is not in it anymore and most of them have been neglected for a while. Recently my free time has been taken up by other things (mainly my job) and I forsee that continuing. http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=decklin%40red-bean.com python-beautifulsoup and mpd need attention for proposed-updates; I missed getting them into Squeeze. rxvt-unicode is a total clusterfuck. If any desktop-type packages remain I will orphan them, as I am only running Debian on servers now. Apart from that, perhaps with a greatly reduced load I can still make a tiny contribution to the community. If not, I will retire. -- things change. decklin@red-bean.com
Decklin Foster is on a list of former members of Harvard's Center for Depression, Anxiety and Stress Research. They have a photo of him when he was younger. It appears to be the same person as the Github profile.
Various scholarly articles from Harvard experts on depression have thanked Decklin Foster for their contributions in 2008 and 2009. Decklin Foster was collaborating on this world-class depression research at exactly the same time they were part of the debian-private discussions that precipitated the Debian Day Volunteer Suicide in 2010.
- Pizzagalli, Diego A., Avram J. Holmes, Daniel G. Dillon, Elena L. Goetz, Jeffrey L. Birk, Ryan Bogdan, Darin D. Dougherty, Dan V. Iosifescu, Scott L. Rauch, and Maurizio Fava. 2009. Reduced Caudate and Nucleus Accumbens Response to Rewards in Unmedicated Individuals With Major Depressive Disorder. The American Journal of Psychiatry 166: 702-710. 2008
- Deveney, Christen M., and Diego A. Pizzagalli. 2008. The cognitive consequences of emotion regulation: An ERP investigation. Psychophysiology 45(3): 435-444.
- Wacker, Jan, Daniel G. Dillon, and Diego A. Pizzagalli. 2009. The role of the nucleus accumbens and rostral anterior cingulate cortex in anhedonia: Integration of resting EEG, fMRI, and volumetric techniques. Neuroimage 46, no. 1: 327-337.
- Diane L. Santesso, Daniel G. Dillon, Jeffrey L. Birk, Avram J. Holmes, Elena Goetz, Ryan Bogdan, Diego A. Pizzagalli. 2008. Individual differences in reinforcement learning: Behavioral, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging correlates - NeuroImage
- Daniel G. Dillon, Ryan Bogdan, Jesen Fagerness, Avram J. Holmes, Roy H. Perlis, and Diego A. Pizzagalli, 2010 - Variation in TREK1 Gene Linked to DepressionResistant Phenotype is Associated with Potentiated Neural Responses to Rewards in Humans - Human Brain Mapping 31:210–221
- Santesso DL, Bogdan R, Birk JL, Goetz EL, Holmes AJ, Pizzagalli DA. Neural responses to negative feedback are related to negative emotionality in healthy adults - Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2012 Oct;7(7):794-803. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsr054. Epub 2011 Sep 14. PMID: 21917847; PMCID: PMC3475354.
The connection to psychiatric research is a really odd coincidence, given that Decklin sent that RFA (resignation) email immediately before the death of Adrian von Bidder-Senn on our wedding day. The death was discussed like a suicide.
Subject: Re: Death of Adrian von Bidder Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 09:39:49 +0200 From: A Mennucc <mennucc1@debian.org> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org Il 19/04/2011 18:17, martin f krafft ha scritto: > Dear Debian colleagues, > > I have the sad task to communicate to you the news of the death of > Adrian von Bidder (avbidder, cmot), who passed away last Sunday, > most probably of a heart attack. I had contacted Adrian regarding the Debian umbrella. So I had also a chance of seeing a picture of him http://blog.fortytwo.ch/archives/80-Yay!-Debian-Logo!.html In that picture he seemed quite happy and young. His death is quite shocking and sad. a.
Remember, Debianists admitted the group needed a psychiatrist back in 2006, well before most of the deaths.
Around the same time, a petition about suicide prevention was submitted to the Basel city council and it had the name A. von Bidder at the bottom.
Now Decklin Foster himself is missing.
William Lee Irwin III was another Debian Developer who asked for help and then vanished.
There is a Decklin Foster profile on Youtube that hasn't been used for nine years. There are four subscribers. One of the videos has the comment:
Mixed these together on my show (editsradio.org) this week and really liked the result, so here it is on its own, slowed down and a little extended.
Photo taken at the Wilbur Theater in Boston on 2012-07-31.
The last snapshot of editsradio.org is on 6 April 2015. After that, the content is changed to Arabic. From 15 August 2015, it is redirecting to another site, also in Arabic, at http://www.17serialbaran.org.
In January 2015, Decklin Foster & Chris Gleason are listed as a couple as new members of the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Later in 2015, a report from the World Science Fiction Society lists Decklin Foster as a new member.
Spokeo has a report about Christina N Gleason-Foster in Chicago, IL with a former address in Cambridge, MA, the same location as Decklin Foster.
Going back to 2013, when the blog vanished, Universal Hub published a report "House of Blues turns down the heat, adds ice water for electronica shows due to Molly scourge". This is not about Molly de Blanc it is about the Molly pills. Decklin Foster drops a comment in the discussion:
This sounds like a bad idea. You really don't want to give huge amounts of water to MDMA users
In a separate report, I explained how Axel Beckert is/was the boyfriend of Martin Ebnoether, a former colleague. In fact, the firm where Martin Ebnoether worked for sixteen years is owned by one of the richest and most outspoken donors to the Republican party. He lives in Florida, just like Jeremy Bicha but he is only three doors down the road from Mar-a-Lago.
There is a LinkedIn profile for Chris Gleason in Pinellas County, in Florida, not far from the Registered Sex Offender who was invited to speak at DebConf25 in Brest, France. Looking at the photo on LinkedIn, is this an older version of Decklin Foster's wife who has transitioned back to being a man or is it a completely different person?
It would be extremely offensive to ask such a question in any other group of people but in the world of Debianism and Zizian phenomena, there are a disproportionate number of people who are living such lifestyles.
Let's not forget the example of another Debianism transgender bedmate with at least five identities, that was Pauline / Maria Climent / Pommeret.
The Republican Chris Gleason has a profile on Ballotpedia where they claim to have come from Massachusetts, the same Democrat state where we found Decklin Foster.
Chris Gleason was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. Gleason's career experience includes working as a technology consultant. He served in the U.S. Army National Guard from 1989 to 1999. Gleason earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell in 1996. Gleason has been affiliated with Caribbean Christian Center for the Deaf, Michigan -Make-A-Wish, Seniors Helping Seniors.
In the recent UK elections, journalists and researchers found various examples of candidates who didn't really exist. At least one political party was accused of making up fake candidates to make their party look bigger and attract more donations.
I have the impression the Chris Gleason in Florida is a different person but I'm not ruling out the possibility it is a fake profile or an alter-ego of Chris Gleason, wife of Decklin.
The ActBlue crisis is real however. Here is a committee report on the US house web site.
The Committee on House Administration, the Committee on the Judiciary, and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform are charged with ensuring the integrity of American elections. To that end, the Committees are examining allegations that ActBlue, a leading political fundraising organization, allowed bad actors, including foreign actors, to exploit its online platform to make fraudulent political donations.
Chris Gleason
CEO at NextMed Holdings, LLC CEO at Translational Analytics and Statistics, LLC
Chris Gleason is a board member at Our Mayberry, a company focused on revolutionizing charitable giving and fundraising.1 He is a lawyer, entrepreneur, and community philanthropist with multiple leadership roles in charities helping children.3 Gleason has also been involved in various business ventures and has held executive positions in different companies.
In addition to his role at Our Mayberry, Gleason has served as a board member for the Goldwater Institute since 2013.5 He was also recently appointed as the president and CEO of Moximed, a medical device company, in June 2024.2
Gleason has a background in sales leadership, having previously worked as VP of sales at Relievant and VP of sales of interventional urology at Teleflex.2 He has also been involved in political activities, receiving income from Election Watch, a Wisconsin-based group, in 2024.4
It's worth noting that Gleason has recently entered the political arena, running for the position of Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections in Florida for the 2024 election.46 His campaign has been controversial, as he has made unsubstantiated claims about election fraud and criticized the incumbent, Julie Marcus.
On 10 April 2026, Miami Independent published a video where they interview Chris Gleason and Jeff Buongiorno about vote rigging allegations. The CIA is mentioned within the first ninety seconds of the video. I stopped watching at that point.
In the case of another Debian Developer, Paul Tagliamonte, he really was working in the White House and the Pentagon. We have a photo to prove it:
Chris Gleason's campaign web site has the title Whistleblower in big letters. This implies he was an insider or he was connected to an insider, in other words, his claim to be a whistleblower encourages us to ask about the bizarre possibility that he really is or was the transgender wife of ActBlue's missing director of information technology, Decklin Foster.
If that was true, did his/her domestic arrangements give them unauthorized access to servers, laptops or cloud accounts for ActBlue? I was very grateful to receive donations of file servers from the Catholic archdiocese of Melbourne.
Take a side-step and have a look at the other Florida connection with the US Republican party. In the report about Senior management and HR email privacy: Martin Ebnoether (venty), Axel Beckert (xtaran) & Debian abuse in Switzerland, I made the observation that Axel Beckert's boyfriend and I both worked at the same company. The owner of that company is one of the top donors of the US Republican party and he lives three doors away from Mar-a-Lago, the home of current US President Donald Trump. Trump himself was elected for the first time on my birthday and I correctly predicted there would be conflict in the Strait of Hormuz.
Decklin was using Gists, they also stopped abruptly in 2017.
The Red-Bean.com web site has a list of people associated with their web site and Decklin's name is not on the list.
Whether they are the same Chris Gleason or not, we can say for sure that the Decklin Foster from Debianism is the same Decklin Foster who became Director of Information Technology for disgraced fundraising platform ActBlue Civics, Inc.
Here is one more interesting leak from the debian-private leaked gossip network. It shows us that Decklin Foster was in favor of the practice of dividing the community and humiliating people. It looks like he supported the humiliation of Sven Luther at the very time he was working in the Harvard Medical School's depression research team. Sven's mother was dying at the time this bun fight erupted.
Subject: Expulsion process: Sven Luther Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:00:29 +0100 From: Joerg Jaspert <joerg@debian.org> Organization: Goliath-BBS To: debian-private@lists.debian.org ... Now, the list of people who sent something in for the process: Anthony - Requestor Supporters, unordered: srivasta@debian.org mbanck@debian.org tbm@cyrius.com 93sam@debian.org fs@debian.org jgoerzen@complete.org fjp@debian.org dilinger@debian.org joeyh@debian.org liw@iki.fi stappers@stappers.nl tolimar@debian.org jeroen@wolffelaar.nl tfheen@debian.org micah@riseup.net decklin@red-bean.com tb@becket.net tytso.mit.edu
The conflict between Sven Luther and Frans Pop appears to be a factor in the eventual suicide of Frans Pop. The whole group failed.
Subject: [Very long] Post-partem rant and retrospective Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 03:56:11 +0200 From: Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org I've decided to write this in a separate mail because I'm afraid this may get long. Quite a bit of this has been written before, but I hope some of you will bear with me. [snip] So, what has made me decide to leave the project. It's a combination of just plain emotional stress over the whole Sven Luther issue, frustration with the inability of the project to deal with that and with some other issues, and frustration with the fact that a fair number of members of the project seem to feel that as long as you don't upload packages with trojans, pretty much anything is OK.
and eventually....
Subject: Resignation Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 21:41:18 +0200 From: Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl> To: debian-private@lists.debian.org It's time to say goodbye. I don't want to say too much about it, except that I've been planning this for a long time. Participating in Debian has been great. ...
To see all the leaked messages from debian-private, including the history of Decklin Foster, please see my crowdfunding campaign video.
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