Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #971 Nazis in New Orleans

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This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: This broad­cast is some­thing of a “pre­quel” to the next two pro­grams, both deal­ing with Char­lottesville.

What the media have termed “Alt-Right” and the author calls “the rad­i­cal right” were present at Char­lottesville and par­tic­i­pants in the assas­si­na­tion of JFK.

Numer­ous pro­grams and arti­cles on this web­site have dealt with Nazi involve­ment with the assas­si­na­tion of JFK, from para­mil­i­tary Amer­i­can Nazi ele­ments to indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions over­lap­ping the Rein­hard Gehlen spy milieu.

In this pro­gram, we excerpt a recent, mas­sive vol­ume Gen­er­al Walk­er and the Mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy by Jef­frey H. Cau­field M.D. NB: For a sea­soned researcher, this is a use­ful and impor­tant book, how­ev­er it MUST be handicapped–the author is dis­mis­sive of the [by now record­ed fact] that ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty were involved in the killing. Of course, they were.

Notwith­stand­ing that sig­nif­i­cant flaw, the book fea­tures a trea­sure trove of infor­ma­tion about Nazi and fas­cist con­nec­tions to the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. A vet­er­an researcher can–and should–easily take the infor­ma­tion from Cau­field­’s book and col­late it with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty ele­ments with which the “rad­i­cal right” indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions are affil­i­at­ed.

Although not coter­mi­nous by any means, what Cau­field terms “the rad­i­cal right” and U.S. intel­li­gence are pro­found­ly con­nect­ed.

We sus­pect that over­lap­ping groups com­pris­ing what Cau­field terms “the rad­i­cal right” con­sti­tute an “Amer­i­can Glad­io.”

This hypo­thet­i­cal rela­tion­ship sug­gests the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a domes­tic ver­sion of “Oper­a­tion Stay Behind” and its Ital­ian com­po­nent, “Oper­a­tion Glad­io”. The above were NATO oper­a­tions that uti­lized extreme right and fas­cist ele­ments as poten­tial gueril­la forces to fight against com­mu­nists in the event of either a suc­cess­ful Sovi­et takeover of West­ern Europe (an extreme improb­a­bil­i­ty), or the greater like­li­hood of a pop­u­lar Com­mu­nist takeover of a major West­ern Euro­pean coun­try. In prac­tice, Glad­io result­ed in a pro­gram of ter­ror­ist acts (bomb­ings, kid­nap­pings and assas­si­na­tions) direct­ed against the left. (Many of those acts were actu­al­ly blamed on the left, in order to dis­cred­it it in the eyes of the pub­lic.)

Dis­turbed by the alleged lack of “back­bone” demon­strat­ed by Amer­i­can mil­i­tary per­son­nel dur­ing the Kore­an War, Amer­i­can strate­gic thinkers under­took to indoc­tri­nate the Amer­i­can pub­lic with a prac­ti­cal­ly mil­i­tant, anti-Com­mu­nist per­spec­tive. These lead­ers feared that, in the event of a pro­tract­ed nuclear face-off with the Sovi­ets, lack of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal resolve could result in the Unit­ed States “blink­ing” and back­ing down in such a con­fronta­tion.

In 1958, the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion issued a Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil direc­tive autho­riz­ing the mil­i­tary to engage in a pro­gram of polit­i­cal indoc­tri­na­tion of mil­i­tary per­son­nel and (more impor­tant­ly) the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion as well. The goal of this direc­tive was to alter the polit­i­cal views of the Amer­i­can peo­ple. The con­sti­tu­tion­al impli­ca­tions of this direc­tive could not be exag­ger­at­ed. The bulk of the broad­cast exam­ines evi­dence that sug­gests that, as a result of this NSC direc­tive, the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment began uti­liz­ing far-right and fas­cist groups in order to real­ize the desired ide­o­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion. Mr. Emory sug­gests that these net­works may very well have been uti­lized in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions of the 1960s and ear­ly 1970s, as well as domes­tic intel­li­gence oper­a­tions against the civ­il rights and anti-Viet­nam War move­ments.

We begin our analy­sis with New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s 1967 let­ter to Lord Bertrand Rus­sell, in which he not­ed the Nazi asso­ci­a­tions of many of the peo­ple involved with the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

Next, we excerpt text dis­cussing David Fer­rie’s Nazi mus­ings and asso­ci­a­tions.

In future pro­grams, we will take up the issue of what Fort Sill Oper­a­tions Com­mand Offi­cer Glenn Pinch­back referred to as a “Neo-Nazi plot to enslave Amer­i­ca in the name of anti-Com­mu­nism” and “a neo-Nazi plot gar­gan­tu­an in scope.”

In FTR #188, we detailed the “Hate Bus,” a gam­bit by Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty leader George Lin­coln Rock­well to protest the Free­dom Rid­ers and the Civ­il Rights move­ment. It bears some struc­tur­al sim­i­lar­i­ty to the Char­lottesville inci­dent, with fas­cists stag­ing a counter-event to a pro­gres­sive demon­stra­tion, in this case the “free­dom rid­ers” bus rid­den by white col­lege stu­dents and black civ­il rights activists in sup­port of inte­gra­tion and vot­ing rights in the South.

Note that appar­ent Oswald asso­ciate Ray Lea­hart was the best man at the wed­ding of David Duke, a major par­tic­i­pant in the Char­lottesville event.

High­light­ing aspects of the career of “Hate Bus” par­tic­i­pant Ray Lea­hart, a New Orleans ANP [Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty] mem­ber, we note that:

  • Lea­hart was alleged to have been an asso­ciate of Lee Har­vey Oswald. ” . . . . On Decem­ber 16, 1963, after the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, the New Orleans FBI inves­ti­gat­ed a tip that Lee Har­vey Oswald had been seen with Ray Lea­hart dur­ing the pre­vi­ous sum­mer. Lea­hart was a New Orleans Nazi whom [Guy] Ban­is­ter had bailed out of jail in the Hate Bus inci­dent. . . .”
  • The FBI had no doc­u­ments on Lea­hart, rais­ing the ques­tion of what hap­pened to a doc­u­ment about Lea­hart’s arrest in the “Hate Bus” inci­dent. (For more about the Hate Bus, see FTR #188.) Author Cau­field spec­u­lates that Oswald han­dler Guy Ban­is­ter’s close rela­tion­ship with FBI SAC Reg­is Kennedy may have had some­thing to do with the dis­ap­pear­ance of Lea­hart’s arrest record. ” . . . . No FBI doc­u­ments, oth­er than the New Orleans police mug shots from the Hate Bus arrest, were in the FBI record, which rais­es the ques­tion of what hap­pened to FBI ref­er­ence 841767D (Lea­hart’s arrest record in the Hate Bus inci­dent) and why it did not accom­pa­ny the alle­ga­tion and sub­stan­tial like­li­hood of an Oswald-Lea­hart asso­ci­a­tion when sent to the War­ren Com­mis­sion. Ban­is­ter’s close friend­ship with New Orleans FBI SAC Reg­is Kennedy may have had some­thing to do with the crit­i­cal omis­sion. . . .”
  • Lea­hart was close to Dal­las, Texas, ANP mem­bers, includ­ing Robert Sur­rey, who print­ed a noto­ri­ous poster of JFK: ” . . . . . . . The Dal­las FBI office was aware of cor­re­spon­dence link­ing Lea­hart to ANP [Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty] activ­i­ties in Texas. One Dal­las ANP mem­ber, Robert Sur­rey, was a close asso­ciate of Gen­er­al [Edwin] Walk­er. Sur­rey’s wife Mary was Walk­er’s per­son­al sec­re­tary. Wealthy oil­men report­ed­ly fund­ed Sur­rey’s Nazi out­fit. Sur­rey print­ed the infa­mous ‘Want­ed for Trea­son’ poster which had cir­cu­lat­ed in Dal­las before the asso­ci­a­tion. The poster pic­tured mug-shot-styled pho­tos of Pres­i­dent Kennedy and accused him of trea­son. Sur­rey and Walk­er were War­ren Com­mis­sion wit­ness­es, and, of course, Walk­er was close to both Guy Ban­is­ter and Kent Court­ney. . . .”
  • Lea­hart was an asso­ciate of David Duke, and was best man at Duke’s wed­ding. ” . . . . On Sep­tem­ber 9, 1972, Lea­hart became the best man at Duke’s wed­ding. . . .”

The pro­gram then reviews Daniel Bur­ros, one of the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty mem­bers whose con­tact infor­ma­tion was in Lee Har­vey Oswald’s address book.

Bur­ros viewed with favor vet­er­an Nazi Edward Hunter, a Guy Ban­is­ter’s asso­ciate, who had been a mem­ber of the pre-war Nazi Fifth Col­umn in the U.S.

Bur­ros alleged­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide at the home of Penn­syl­va­nia Klan leader Roy Frankhouser, who–as seen in AFA #13–had oper­a­tional links with ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence, CIA in par­tic­u­lar.

Frankhouser also infil­trat­ed the Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty, an orga­ni­za­tion so infil­trat­ed by spooks and fas­cists that it was lit­tle more than a right-wing front orga­ni­za­tion. (The SWP was the ide­o­log­i­cal petri dish in which Lyn­dn LaRouche and Bernie Sanders were cul­tured.)

Note that Frankhouser was appar­ent­ly in pos­ses­sion of cor­re­spon­dence from Michael and Ruth Paine, two “lib­er­al” babysit­ters of Lee Har­vey Oswald and his wife. Both Michael and Ruth Paine had strong links to the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment.

Flesh­ing out the con­ti­nu­ity between the Nazi Fifth Col­umn of the pre-World War II peri­od and what author Cau­field termed the “rad­i­cal right” and by con­tem­po­rary observers as “the alt-right,” we excerpt John Roy Carl­son’s Under Cov­er. Note that Edward Hunter was an asso­ciate of Guy Ban­is­ter’s. (Ban­is­ter was one of Oswald’s appar­ent intel­li­gence han­dlers.)

Ger­hard Frey was the edi­tor of the Deutsche Nation­al Zeitung und Sol­dat­en Zeitung, which had vet­er­ans of the SS and Goebbels’ pro­pa­gan­da bureau on its edi­to­r­i­al staff. The pub­li­ca­tion received finan­cial sup­port from the CIA.

A financier of con­tem­po­rary Russ­ian fas­cist Vladimir Zhi­ronovsky, Frey was asso­ci­at­ed with the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations.

Formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943, that orga­ni­za­tion is a con­sor­tium of East­ern Euro­pean Third Reich sub­sidiaries such as the Ukrain­ian OUN/B, the Roman­ian Iron Guard, the Bul­gar­i­an Nation­al Front, the Hun­gar­i­an Arrow Cross, the Croa­t­ian Ustachi, the Slo­va­kian Hlin­ka Par­ty and oth­ers. The uni­fy­ing ele­ment in these fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions was the SS. The ABN became a key ele­ment of the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion and the GOP.

Both Frey and Gen­er­al Charles Willough­by were asso­ci­at­ed with the ABN.

 Gen­er­al Charles Willough­by was also tight with the ABN, and its founder Jaroslav Stet­zko, the head of Ukraine’s Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment. (The spelling of Stet­zko’s name varies with the translit­er­a­tion from the Cyril­lic alpha­bet.) In numer­ous pro­grams, we have dis­cussed Stet­zko, his wartime geno­ci­dal oper­a­tions, his and the ABN’s links to the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, the GOP, the CIA and the Under­ground Reich.

An ele­ment of con­ti­nu­ity between the wartime regime of Jaroslav Stet­zko and the present OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in Ukraine is Roman Svarych.

Roman Svarych was Stezko’s per­son­al sec­re­tary in the ear­ly 1980’s. He became Ukraine’s min­is­ter of jus­tice (the equiv­a­lent of Attor­ney Gen­er­al) under Yuschenko, and held the same post under both Tim­o­shenko gov­ern­ments. Svarych then became an advis­er to Ukraine’s pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko and is the chief spokesman for the Azov Bat­tal­ion. (We high­light Stetzko/Stetsko in numer­ous programs–use the search func­tion with the alter­nate spellings to flesh out your under­stand­ing.)

1. We begin our analy­sis with New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s 1967 let­ter to Lord Bertrand Rus­sell, in which he not­ed the Nazi asso­ci­a­tions of many of the peo­ple involved with the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

Gen­er­al Walk­er and the Mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy by Jef­frey H. Cau­field, M.D.; More­land Press [HC]; Copy­right 2015 Jef­frey H. Cau­field; ISBN-13: 978–0‑9915637–0‑8; p. 70.

. . . . Above the oper­a­tional lev­el, insu­lat­ed and removed to the point of being very near­ly invis­i­ble, appeared to have been indi­vid­u­als whose polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion can only be described as Neo-Nazi. Even as I have described this Neo-Nazi aspect, I am sure that it sounds some­what fan­ci­ful. Because of the unbe­liev­abil­i­ty of this part of the pic­ture, I have found it nec­es­sary to refrain from men­tion­ing it . . . . . Nev­er­the­less, the essen­tial­ly Fas­cist ori­gin of the assas­si­na­tion is inescaple.–D.A. Jim Gar­rison’s Let­ter to Lord Bertrand Rus­sell, August 27, 1967. . . .

2. Next, we excerpt text dis­cussing David Fer­rie’s Nazi mus­ings and asso­ci­a­tions.

In future pro­grams, we will take up the issue of what Fort Sill Oper­a­tions Com­mand Offi­cer Glenn Pinch­back referred to as a “Neo-Nazi plot to enslave Amer­i­ca in the name of anti-Com­mu­nism” and “a neo-Nazi plot gar­gan­tu­an in scope.”

Gen­er­al Walk­er and the Mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy by Jef­frey H. Cau­field, M.D.; More­land Press [HC]; Copy­right 2015 Jef­frey H. Cau­field; ISBN-13: 978–0‑9915637–0‑8; pp. 86–87.

. . . . Gar­ri­son did not pro­vide an expla­na­tion for all of the [David Fer­rie] note’s sub­ject mat­ter. How­ev­er, he did know the mean­ing of “fly­ing Barag­o­na in the Beech.” “Beech” refers to the mod­el of Fer­rie’s air­plane, a Beechcraft. Barag­o­na was a Nazi from Fort Sill. . . .

. . . . Gar­ri­son also obtained a tran­script of a let­ter writ­ten by Fer­rie to Barag­o­na. Next to Barag­o­na’s name, Gar­ri­son wrote: “Note Barag­o­na is impor­tant.” The let­ter had been sent to Gar­ri­son by Glenn Pinch­back, and a car­bon copy was sent to Mendel Rivers, a con­gress­man from Geor­gia. (Pinch­back worked in the Oper­a­tions Com­mand at Fort Sill, where he inter­cept­ed mail.) In the let­ter, Fer­rie shared his dream of the re-uni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many and liv­ing in a world where all the cur­ren­cy was in Deutschmarks. Pinch­back­’s sum­ma­tion of the let­ter described a “Neo-Nazi plot to enslave Amer­i­ca in the name of anti-Com­mu­nism,” and “a neo-Nazi plot gar­gan­tu­an in scope.” The Fer­rie let­ter spoke of the need to kill all the Kennedys and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. . . . Pinch­back also report­ed­ly obtained a let­ter from David Fer­rie to Barag­o­na con­fess­ing his role in the assas­si­na­tion of Robert Gehrig, who was a Nazi and Fort Sill sol­dier. . . .”

 3. In FTR #188, we detailed the “Hate Bus,” a gam­bit by Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty leader George Lin­coln Rock­well to protest the Free­dom Rid­ers and the Civ­il Rights move­ment. It bears some struc­tur­al sim­i­lar­i­ty to the Char­lottesville inci­dent, with fas­cists stag­ing a counter-event to a pro­gres­sive demon­stra­tion, in this case the “free­dom rid­ers” bus rid­den by white col­lege stu­dents and black civ­il rights activists in sup­port of inte­gra­tion and vot­ing rights in the South.

Note that appar­ent Oswald asso­ciate Ray Lea­hart was the best man at the wed­ding of David Duke, a major par­tic­i­pant in the Char­lottesville event.

High­light­ing aspects of the career of “Hate Bus” par­tic­i­pant Ray Lea­hart, a New Orleans ANP [Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty] mem­ber, we note that:

  • Lea­hart was alleged to have been an asso­ciate of Lee Har­vey Oswald. ” . . . . On Decem­ber 16, 1963, after the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, the New Orleans FBI inves­ti­gat­ed a tip that Lee Har­vey Oswald had been seen with Ray Lea­hart dur­ing the pre­vi­ous sum­mer. Lea­hart was a New Orleans Nazi whom [Guy] Ban­is­ter had bailed out of jail in the Hate Bus inci­dent. . . .”
  • The FBI had no doc­u­ments on Lea­hart, rais­ing the ques­tion of what hap­pened to a doc­u­ment about Lea­hart’s arrest in the “Hate Bus” inci­dent. (For more about the Hate Bus, see FTR #188.) Author Cau­field spec­u­lates that Oswald han­dler Guy Ban­is­ter’s close rela­tion­ship with FBI SAC Reg­is Kennedy may have had some­thing to do with the dis­ap­pear­ance of Lea­hart’s arrest record. ” . . . . No FBI doc­u­ments, oth­er than the New Orleans police mug shots from the Hate Bus arrest, were in the FBI record, which rais­es the ques­tion of what hap­pened to FBI ref­er­ence 841767D (Lea­hart’s arrest record in the Hate Bus inci­dent) and why it did not accom­pa­ny the alle­ga­tion and sub­stan­tial like­li­hood of an Oswald-Lea­hart asso­ci­a­tion when sent to the War­ren Com­mis­sion. Ban­is­ter’s close friend­ship with New Orleans FBI SAC Reg­is Kennedy may have had some­thing to do with the crit­i­cal omis­sion. . . .”
  • Lea­hart was close to Dal­las, Texas, ANP mem­bers, includ­ing Robert Sur­rey, who print­ed a noto­ri­ous poster of JFK: ” . . . . . . . The Dal­las FBI office was aware of cor­re­spon­dence link­ing Lea­hart to ANP [Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty] activ­i­ties in Texas. One Dal­las ANP mem­ber, Robert Sur­rey, was a close asso­ciate of Gen­er­al [Edwin] Walk­er. Sur­rey’s wife Mary was Walk­er’s per­son­al sec­re­tary. Wealthy oil­men report­ed­ly fund­ed Sur­rey’s Nazi out­fit. Sur­rey print­ed the infa­mous ‘Want­ed for Trea­son’ poster which had cir­cu­lat­ed in Dal­las before the asso­ci­a­tion. The poster pic­tured mug-shot-styled pho­tos of Pres­i­dent Kennedy and accused him of trea­son. Sur­rey and Walk­er were War­ren Com­mis­sion wit­ness­es, and, of course, Walk­er was close to both Guy Ban­is­ter and Kent Court­ney. . . .”
  • Lea­hart was an asso­ciate of David Duke, and was best man at Duke’s wed­ding. ” . . . . On Sep­tem­ber 9, 1972, Lea­hart became the best man at Duke’s wed­ding. . . .”

Gen­er­al Walk­er and the Mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy by Jef­frey H. Cau­field, M.D.; More­land Press [HC]; Copy­right 2015 Jef­frey H. Cau­field; ISBN-13: 978–0‑9915637–0‑8; pp. 73–82.

. . . . The Hate Bus rolled in to New Orleans after ear­li­er stops in strife-torn Mont­gomery, Alaba­ma, and Mobile, Alaba­ma, the next day, on an avowed cam­paign against inte­gra­tion and Com­mu­nism. Accord­ing to the Nazi Par­ty, the Hate Bus was sent, “to sym­bol­ize the fact that decent Amer­i­cans do hate and should hate Com­mu­nism and race mix­ing.” The Nazis fol­lowed the itin­er­ary of the Free­dom Riders–equal num­bers of black and white civ­il rights workers–who began their jour­ney south from Wash­ing­ton D.C. . . . .

. . . . On Decem­ber 16, 1963, after the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, the New Orleans FBI inves­ti­gat­ed a tip that Lee Har­vey Oswald had been seen with Ray Lea­hart dur­ing the pre­vi­ous sum­mer. Lea­hart was a New Orleans Nazi whom [Guy] Ban­is­ter had bailed out of jail in the Hate Bus inci­dent. The report is pre­sent­ed here for the first time:

MUNCY PERKINS: Clerk Car­rolton Avenue Sta­tion, New Orleans Pub­lic Ser­vice, Inc., res­i­dence address 5320 Camp Street, New Orleans advised that occa­sion­al­ly indi­vid­u­als have been observed by him at the Car­rolton Avenue Sta­tion in the ear­ly morn­ing hours wait­ing for RAY JAMES LEAHART, one of the bus dri­vers. MR. PERKINS thought that pos­si­bly LEE HARVEY OSWALD may have been among those per­sons wait­ing for LEAHART. . . .

. . . . No FBI doc­u­ments, oth­er than the New Orleans police mug shots from the Hate Bus arrest, were in the FBI record, which rais­es the ques­tion of what hap­pened to FBI ref­er­ence 841767D (Lea­hart’s arrest record in the Hate Bus inci­dent) and why it did not accom­pa­ny the alle­ga­tion and sub­stan­tial like­li­hood of an Oswald-Lea­hart asso­ci­a­tion when sent to the War­ren Com­mis­sion. Ban­is­ter’s close friend­ship with New Orleans FBI SAC Reg­is Kennedy may have had some­thing to do with the crit­i­cal omis­sion.

Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tors were aware of Lea­hart, but not of the alle­ga­tion that he was seen with Lee Har­vey Oswald. They had infor­ma­tion that Ray Lea­hart, a city street­car or bus dri­ver, past­ed ANP [Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty] slo­gans and posters on the walls of the Mag­a­zine Street bus depot where he worked. Inves­ti­ga­tors were aware that Lea­hart had been to the train­ing cap across Lake Pontchar­train with Derek Frier who was a couri­er for the Nazi Par­ty (sev­er­al alle­ga­tions that Oswald had been to the camp were not­ed in Chap­ters One and Two), and that Frier’s friend Loren But­ler was a high-rank­ing offi­cial in the Nazi Par­ty.

Accord­ing to FBI doc­u­ments, Ray Lea­hart and Blu­ford Bal­ter were orga­niz­ers of the New Orleans Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty. Lea­hart per­son­al­ly knew George Lin­coln Rock­well and had at least twelve per­son­al dis­cus­sions with Rockwell—and even vis­it­ed him on one occa­sion in Vir­ginia. Rock­well also met with Lea­hart, the head of the New Orleans Nation­al States’ Rights Par­ty, in New Orleans, in New Orleans in Sep­tem­ber 1964. In 1961, a “Spe­cial New Orleans Edi­tion” of the NSRP news­pa­per The Thun­der­bolt was issued with the front page head­line, “[LEANDER] PEREZ TURNS SPOTLIGHT ON THE ENEMY,” and appeared with a sto­ry writ­ten by Ray James Lea­hart above a large pho­to­graph of Lean­der Perez, Ban­is­ter’s close friend. . . . Guy Ban­is­ter sub­scribed to  The Thun­der­bolt. . . .

. . . . The Dal­las FBI office was aware of cor­re­spon­dence link­ing Lea­hart to ANP [Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty] activ­i­ties in Texas. One Dal­las ANP mem­ber, Robert Sur­rey, was a close asso­ciate of Gen­er­al [Edwin] Walk­er. Sur­rey’s wife Mary was Walk­er’s per­son­al sec­re­tary. Wealthy oil­men report­ed­ly fund­ed Sur­rey’s Nazi out­fit. Sur­rey print­ed the infa­mous “Want­ed for Trea­son” poster which had cir­cu­lat­ed in Dal­las before the asso­ci­a­tion. The poster pic­tured mug-shot-styled pho­tos of Pres­i­dent Kennedy and accused him of trea­son. Sur­rey and Walk­er were War­ren Com­mis­sion wit­ness­es, and, of course, Walk­er was close to both Guy Ban­is­ter and Kent Court­ney. . . .

 . . . . In the 1970s, Lea­hart became a lead­ing mem­ber in the Nation­al Social­ist White Peo­ple’s Party—a recon­fig­ured ANP and Ku Klux Klan outfit—along with David Duke, per­haps the best-known white suprema­cist in Amer­i­ca in the 21st cen­tu­ry, Lea­hart ped­dled his pro­pa­gan­da along with Duke in what was known as a “Free Speech Ral­ly” at Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty in Baton Rouge. On Sep­tem­ber 9, 1972, Lea­hart became the best man at Duke’s wed­ding. . . .

5. The pro­gram then reviews Daniel Bur­ros, one of the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty mem­bers whose con­tact infor­ma­tion was in Lee Har­vey Oswald’s address book.

Bur­ros viewed with favor vet­er­an Nazi Edward Hunter, a Guy Ban­is­ter’s asso­ciate, who had been a mem­ber of the pre-war Nazi Fifth Col­umn in the U.S.

Bur­ros alleged­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide at the home of Penn­syl­va­nia Klan leader Roy Frankhouser, who–as seen in AFA #13–had oper­a­tional links with ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence, CIA in par­tic­u­lar.

Frankhouser also infil­trat­ed the Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty, an orga­ni­za­tion so infil­trat­ed by spooks and fas­cists that it was lit­tle more than a right-wing front orga­ni­za­tion. (The SWP was the ide­o­log­i­cal petri dish in which Lyn­dn LaRouche and Bernie Sanders were cul­tured.)

Note that Frankhouser was appar­ent­ly in pos­ses­sion of cor­re­spon­dence from Michael and Ruth Paine, two “lib­er­al” babysit­ters of Lee Har­vey Oswald and his wife. Both Michael and Ruth Paine had strong links to the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment.

Gen­er­al Walk­er and the Mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy by Jef­frey H. Cau­field, M.D.; More­land Press [HC]; Copy­right 2015 Jef­frey H. Cau­field; ISBN-13: 978–0‑9915637–0‑8; p. 78.

. . . . One of his [Daniel Bur­ros’] favorite books was Under Cov­er, which exposed many well-known right wingers as Nazis, like Ban­is­ter’s friend Edward Hunter, who was an admit­ted Nazi before WWII. It also exposed a Kent Court­ney and Edwin Walk­er asso­ciate, Harold Lord Varney–the pub­lish­er of The Amer­i­can Mer­cury–as a Nazi.

After the Kennedy assas­i­na­tion, Bur­ros wore a but­ton he designed that read, “Lee Har­vey Oswald Fan Club.” He became inter­est­ed in the Ku Klux Klan at a Klan ral­ly in Bear, Delaware. Roy Frankhouser intro­duced Bur­ros to the Impe­r­i­al Wiz­ard (Nation­al leader) of the Unit­ed Klans of Amer­i­ca, Robert Shel­ton, who cher­ished Klan mem­bers from the north. Frankhouser was the Grand Drag­on of the State of Penn­syl­va­nia. Shel­ton swore in Bur­ros as Klea­gle (orga­niz­er) and, lat­er, as pro­vi­sion­al Grand Drag­on of the State of New York. Frankhouser, whose first ties to the Klan were in 1958, report­ed­ly assault­ed a police cap­tain dur­ing a seg­re­ga­tion­ist ral­ly in Octo­ber of 1961 in Atlanta. Attor­neys and promi­nent lead­ers in the Klan and NSRP, J.B. Ston­er and James Ven­able respec­tive­ly, defend­ed Frankhouser. Inter­est­ing­ly, Ven­able intimated–not long before he died in the 1990’s–that Lee Har­vey Oswald had vis­it­ed his Stone Moun­tain, Geor­gia, home in 1963. It is also worth not­ing that Ston­er served as the attor­ney for the con­vict­ed assas­sin of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. James Earl Ray.

. . . . Bur­ros retreat­ed to Frankhouse­r’s home in Read­ing, Penn­syl­va­nia, where upon read­ing the arti­cle expos­ing his Jew­ish background–shot him­self in the head. After Bur­ros’ death, Frankhouser told The New York Times that Bur­ros had offered the FBI Pho­to­stats that con­nect­ed Lee Har­vey Oswald to the Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty. In a May 18, 1967, FBI memo, an infor­mant told the FBI that Frankhouser had, in a secure place, let­ters con­cern­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy from a per­son known as “Payne.” The let­ters were appar­ent­ly were intend­ed to be giv­en by the infor­mant to Gar­ri­son dur­ing his inves­ti­ga­tion, but they nev­er mate­ri­al­ized. The infor­ma­tion was, how­ev­er, passed along from the FBI to the Secret Ser­vice. “Payne” was deter­mined to be a ref­er­ence to Michael Paine, whose wife shared their home with the Oswalds before the assas­si­na­tion. Frankhouser, in a 1975 inter­view, claimed that Ruth and Michael Paine had infil­trat­ed the Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty when he had infil­trat­ed the par­ty in 1960, and that he had met Oswald when the Paines took him to New York for an inter­na­tion­al sci­ence meet­ing. . . .

6. Flesh­ing out the con­ti­nu­ity between the Nazi Fifth Col­umn of the pre-World War II peri­od and what author Cau­field termed the “rad­i­cal right” and by con­tem­po­rary observers as “the alt-right,” we excerpt John Roy Carl­son’s Under Cov­er. Note that Edward Hunter was an asso­ciate of Guy Ban­is­ter’s. (Ban­is­ter was one of Oswald’s appar­ent intel­li­gence han­dlers.)

Under Cover–My Four Years in the Nazi Under­world in Amer­i­ca by John Roy Carl­son; E.P. Dut­ton & Co. [HC]; Copy­right 1943 by E.P.Dutton & Co.; pp. 446–7.

. . . . Hunter set up shop in 1932 “to incul­cate the prin­ci­ples of Amer­i­can­ism in indus­tri­al, reli­gious, fra­ter­nal, and edu­ca­tion­al cir­cles” under the high-sound­ing name, Indus­tri­al Defense Asso­ci­a­tion, Inc. That same year he was con­tact­ed by Kurt G. W. Luedecke, a Nazi agent with whom Hunter became friend­ly and intro­duced at the Exchange Trust Com­pa­ny. Here Luedecke opened a bank account then tried to induce Hunter to found a chap­ter of the Swasti­ka League of Amer­i­ca. The League actu­al­ly func­tioned for a while, but was denied a state char­ter. When Hitler came to pow­er a year lat­er, Hunter mys­te­ri­ous­ly began to receive $300 a month which he devot­ed to the pub­li­ca­tion of an exten­sive line of pro-Nazi tracts.

Even though the Boston Bet­ter Busi­ness Bureau brand­ed him an anti-Semi­te, it did not ham­per Hunter. But when his role of a Nazi par­ty-line fol­low­er took an omi­nous course, the Mass­a­chu­setts Leg­is­la­ture inves­ti­gat­ed him in 1937. Hunter proved to be an eva­sive wit­ness. Sen­a­tor Thomas M. Burke final­ly asked:

Q: Isn’t it true you attempt­ed to cre­ate a cor­po­ra­tion of the Nazi League in Mass­a­chu­setts? A. Yes. Q. Then I say, is it true you are a Nazi . . . ? A. Yes, I am.

Even though the Com­mit­tee con­clud­ed that he car­ried on “the most vicious activ­i­ty clear­ly intend­ed to incite racial and reli­gious hatred,” Hunter was released to take up from where he had left off. I dug out a let­ter he wrote in 1938 to a cor­re­spon­dent: I am acquaint­ed with Bund mem­bers . . . and do not want to know any fin­er or clean­er Amer­i­cans than they are. I can assure you 99.9% of the pro­pa­gan­da against the Bund orig­i­nat­ed in Com­mu­nis­tic cir­cles. . . . I would advise you to send a cou­ple of dol­lars to World Ser­vice and George Deather­age [the address­es of both were giv­en], ask­ing them to place you name on their mail­ing list.

He wrote again: I can­not under­stand how any stu­dent of Rad­i­cal­ism can be mis­led by the Jew­ish cry of Fas­cism and Nazism. . . . Fas­cism is made out of whole cloth by the fathers of liars (St. John’s 8–44). There is no such ani­mal in Amer­i­ca. . . .

 8. Ger­hard Frey was the edi­tor of the Deutsche Nation­al Zeitung und Sol­dat­en Zeitung, which had vet­er­ans of the SS and Goebbels’ pro­pa­gan­da bureau on its edi­to­r­i­al staff. The pub­li­ca­tion received finan­cial sup­port from the CIA.

A financier of con­tem­po­rary Russ­ian fas­cist Vladimir Zhi­ronovsky, Frey was asso­ci­at­ed with the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations.

Formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943, that orga­ni­za­tion is a con­sor­tium of East­ern Euro­pean Third Reich sub­sidiaries such as the Ukrain­ian OUN/B, the Roman­ian Iron Guard, the Bul­gar­i­an Nation­al Front, the Hun­gar­i­an Arrow Cross, the Croa­t­ian Ustachi, the Slo­va­kian Hlin­ka Par­ty and oth­ers. The uni­fy­ing ele­ment in these fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions was the SS. The ABN became a key ele­ment of the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion and the GOP.

Both Frey and Gen­er­al Charles Willough­by were asso­ci­at­ed with the ABN.

Gen­er­al Walk­er and the Mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy by Jef­frey H. Cau­field, M.D.; More­land Press [HC]; Copy­right 2015 Jef­frey H. Cau­field; ISBN-13: 978–0‑9915637–0‑8; pp. 403–404.

. . . . The inter­view end­ed with Walk­er say­ing, “Give my regards to my Ger­man friends, espe­cial­ly Ger­hard Frey,” . . . . Ger­hard Frey was edi­tor of the paper  and not only was he a friend of Walk­er but—unknown to the War­ren Com­mis­sion, he was also a friend of Gen­er­al Charles Willough­by, as we shall see lat­er. Frey and Willough­by were mem­bers of the far-right Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations. . . .

9. Gen­er­al Charles Willough­by was also tight with the ABN, and its founder Jaroslav Stet­zko, the head of Ukraine’s Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment. (The spelling of Stet­zko’s name varies with the translit­er­a­tion from the Cyril­lic alpha­bet.)

In numer­ous pro­grams, we have dis­cussed Stet­zko, his wartime geno­ci­dal oper­a­tions, his and the ABN’s links to the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, the GOP, the CIA and the Under­ground Reich.

An ele­ment of con­ti­nu­ity between the wartime regime of Jaroslav Stet­zko and the present OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in Ukraine is Roman Svarych.

Roman Svarych was Stezko’s per­son­al sec­re­tary in the ear­ly 1980’s. He became Ukraine’s min­is­ter of jus­tice (the equiv­a­lent of Attor­ney Gen­er­al) under Yuschenko, and held the same post under both Tim­o­shenko gov­ern­ments. Svarych then became an advis­er to Ukraine’s pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko and is the chief spokesman for the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

Gen­er­al Walk­er and the Mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy by Jef­frey H. Cau­field, M.D.; More­land Press [HC]; Copy­right 2015 Jef­frey H. Cau­field; ISBN-13: 978–0‑9915637–0‑8; p. 189.

. . . . Willough­by was a sup­port­er of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations and its founder pro-Nazi Jaroslaw Stet­zko, was list­ed on the let­ter­head of Willoughby’s For­eign Intel­li­gence Digest. . . .

Discussion

4 comments for “FTR #971 Nazis in New Orleans”

  1. Peter. Dale Scott on Inter­na­tion­al Para-Fas­cism http://8bitmode.com/rogerdog/lobster/lobster12.pdf

    Posted by Hugo Turner | September 24, 2017, 7:00 pm
  2. Is that a rat we’re smelling? A dif­fer­ent large rodent? Because some­thing sure stinks in this sto­ry about the dis­ap­pear­ing Secret Ser­vice text mes­sages. As we’re already seen, a large num­ber of agents texts on Jan 5–6 request­ed by Con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors appear to have been delet­ed. Adding to the scan­dal is that we first learned about these delet­ed texts from the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty’s Office of Inspec­tor Gen­er­al (DHS OIG) pub­licly decry­ing how these text appear to have been delet­ed after the OIG made its requests. The Secret Ser­vice had coun­ter­ing that the delete texts were lost due to a pre-planned ‘device migra­tion’ and that the OIG’s requests weren’t made until Feb 26, a month after the device migra­tion.

    So we had a kind of ‘He said/She said’ sit­u­a­tion going on between the DHS OIG an the Secret ser­vice. And now we’re get­ting more infor­ma­tion on when those requests were made and what result­ed in the delet­ed texts. Infor­ma­tion that is mak­ing the whole sit­u­a­tion small a lot like a rat. That was the lan­guage used by con­gress­man Jamie Raskin in response to these lat­est rev­e­la­tions.

    For starters, we’re now learn­ing that the Secret Ser­vice hand­ed over a sin­gle text mes­sage from Jan 5–6. Yep. Just one. Specif­i­cal­ly, a text from the then-Chief of the Capi­tol Police request help from the Secret Ser­vice dur­ing the insur­rec­tion. That was it. Recall what we were told by the Secret Ser­vice in ear­li­er reports on this mat­ter:

    ...
    The Secret Ser­vice said it has pro­vid­ed a sub­stan­tial num­ber of emails and chat mes­sages that includ­ed con­ver­sa­tions and details relat­ed to Jan. 6 to the inspec­tor gen­er­al. It also said text mes­sages from the Capi­tol Police request­ing assis­tance on Jan. 6 were pre­served and pro­vid­ed to the inspec­tor general’s office.
    ...

    Yes, the Secret Ser­vice was telling the pub­lic that they turned over a “a sub­stan­tial num­ber of emails and chat mes­sages”, includ­ing “text mes­sages from the Capi­tol Police request­ing assis­tance on Jan. 6.” And while that cer­tain­ly sounds good, it’s the kind of state­ment that is cast in a new light when we learn that a text mes­sage from then-Capi­tol Police offi­cer Steven Sund ask­ing the Secret Ser­vice for help was the only text sent by the Secret Ser­vice to inves­ti­ga­tors. The fact that it was a text des­per­ate­ly request­ing help dur­ing the insur­rec­tion just adds insult to injury.

    We’re also learn­ing that con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors made four requests to the Secret Ser­vice for texts from Jan 5–6 on Jan­u­ary 16, 2021, 9 days before the Jan 25 planned start of the device migra­tion. So whether or not the DHS OIG made its request for these texts on Feb 26 as the Secret Ser­vice claims, it appears Con­gress made four requests a week and a half before the migra­tion start­ed.

    But it gets worse: it turns out the Secret Ser­vice’s meth­ods for archiv­ing texts dur­ing this device migra­tion involved a rather curi­ous fea­ture that could be in vio­la­tion of the Fed­er­al Records Act. Because it was the agents them­selves who decid­ed which text to archive. So the agents involved the insur­rec­tion inves­ti­ga­tion got to choose which mes­sages to keep and the only one kept was the plea from the Capi­tol Police for help.

    It’s worth recall at this point how Alex Jones claimed he was asked by the Trump White House three days before the ral­ly to lead the march. The Secret Ser­vice even escort­ed him out of the ral­ly crowd thir­ty min­utes before the end of Trump’s Speech so he could lead the march to the Capi­tol. Did any of those delete texts come from or go to Alex Jones? We’ll prob­a­bly nev­er know, but these are the kinds of embar­rass­ing texts that these agents were tasked with archiv­ing. Archiv­ing or delet­ing.

    Oh, and we’re also going to see, the Secret Ser­vice ini­tial­ly stat­ed that the 24 agents in ques­tions were not actu­al­ly impact­ed by that device migra­tion, which should raise even more ques­tions about the dis­ap­pear­ing texts. But now we’re told that the agency is inves­ti­gat­ing whether or not those agents’ devices were indeed part of that device migra­tion. A device migra­tion that did­n’t just involve the Secret Ser­vice but also include gov­ern­ment staffers work­ing on Capi­tol Hill. So this ‘device migra­tion data loss­es’ issue could actu­al­ly be much larg­er than the just the Secret Ser­vice.

    But then we get to an absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry echo in this whole sto­ry: as we’re going to see tucked away near the bot­tom of a WaPo piece on this sto­ry from last week, this isn’t the first time the Secret Ser­vice was caught delet­ing infor­ma­tion about pos­si­ble fore­knowl­edge of a major assault on the US democ­ra­cy involv­ing white suprema­cists:

    ...
    When a con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee was inves­ti­gat­ing assas­si­na­tions and assas­si­na­tion attempts, it sought box­es of records that report­ed­ly showed the Secret Ser­vice received ample advance warn­ings and threats before Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy’s death that white suprema­cists and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions were plot­ting to kill Kennedy using high-pow­ered rifles from tall build­ings. The Secret Ser­vice told inves­ti­ga­tors the records had been destroyed as part of a nor­mal culling of old archives — days after inves­ti­ga­tors had request­ed them.
    ...

    Yep, the Secret Ser­vice hap­pened to ‘acci­den­tal­ly’ destroy the records show­ing fore­knowl­edge of a white suprema­cist plot against JFK. After the records were destroyed. Sound famil­iar? So while the cur­rent mys­tery of the lost Secret Ser­vice records is cer­tain­ly some­thing that absolute­ly must be inves­ti­gat­ed furi­ous­ly, could we maybe took anoth­er look into that white suprema­cist JFK angle? No? Is that just old news now? It’s the kind of sto­ry that should add some addi­tion­al con­text to the cur­rent Secret Ser­vice mys­tery. Con­text that should serve as a remind that these kinds of cov­er up don’t just resolve them­selves. They will go on indef­i­nite­ly if the peo­ple engaged in the cov­er up are allowed to do so. And the big­ger the scan­dal, the more effort that will go into that coverup:

    The Hill

    Secret Ser­vice turns over sin­gle mes­sage to Jan. 6 pan­el: ‘I smell a rat’

    by Rebec­ca Beitsch and Mychael Schnell
    07/20/22 3:27 PM ET

    The only text mes­sage the Secret Ser­vice turned over to the House com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capi­tol was a plea from then-Capi­tol Police offi­cer Steven Sund ask­ing for help.

    Law­mak­ers on the pan­el are increas­ing­ly con­fused and irri­tat­ed by the lack of mes­sages from the Secret Ser­vice after it sub­poe­naed the records fol­low­ing a let­ter from a gov­ern­ment watch­dog indi­cat­ing that mes­sages had been “erased” dur­ing a device replace­ment pro­gram.

    “That’s all that we have,” Rep. Stephanie Mur­phy (D‑Fla.) told The Hill.

    A source close to the Secret Ser­vice pre­vi­ous­ly told The Hill that Sund had con­tact­ed the Secret Ser­vice on Jan. 6 request­ing assis­tance.

    “That mes­sage was cap­tured and it was turned over,” the source said.

    The Secret Ser­vice has denied that it mali­cious­ly delet­ed any text mes­sages but has said some data was lost dur­ing a sys­tem migra­tion.

    Agency spokesman Antho­ny Gugliel­mi said Secret Ser­vice pol­i­cy pro­hibits using text mes­sages due to secu­ri­ty con­cerns, but that the ini­tial 20 agents whose records were request­ed did not have phones impact­ed by the migra­tion.

    He said there were no “hid­den mes­sages” the agency was con­ceal­ing or any­thing else offi­cials were “hold­ing out” from the pan­el.

    Law­mak­ers on the pan­el have said they are hope­ful the Secret Ser­vice will be able to recov­er the infor­ma­tion from the phones even though they were wiped.

    “My hope is that the Secret Ser­vice will use their foren­sic data capa­bil­i­ties to recap­ture the texts that we have request­ed and com­ply with the sub­poe­na. I think the infor­ma­tion they’ve pro­vid­ed us to date leaves a lot of ques­tions regard­ing their process for data reten­tion,” Mur­phy said.

    But they’ve grown increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed with Secret Service’s expla­na­tion around why its records weren’t ful­ly pre­served in the days after Jan. 6.

    “We were just updat­ed and it remains a big mys­tery to me,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D‑Md.) told reporters Wednes­day

    He added that the Secret Service’s expla­na­tion stretch­es the out­er lim­its of plau­si­bil­i­ty.

    “I smell a rat,” he said. “That seems like an awful­ly strange coin­ci­dence for those text mes­sages to be ban­ished into obliv­ion on two days where there was also the most vio­lent insur­rec­tion against the union in our his­to­ry, after the Civ­il War.”

    Mur­phy pre­vi­ous­ly said Secret Service’s actions are ques­tion­able, giv­en the time frame.

    They received four requests from con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees on Jan. 16 to pre­serve records, and they had this planned migra­tion for the 25th, I believe, of Jan­u­ary, and nobody along the way stopped and thought, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t do the migra­tion of data and of the devices until we are able to ful­fill these four requests from Con­gress,’” she said dur­ing an inter­view on MSNBC.

    ...

    ————

    “Secret Ser­vice turns over sin­gle mes­sage to Jan. 6 pan­el: ‘I smell a rat’” by Rebec­ca Beitsch and Mychael Schnell; The Hill; 07/20/2022

    ““They received four requests from con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tees on Jan. 16 to pre­serve records, and they had this planned migra­tion for the 25th, I believe, of Jan­u­ary, and nobody along the way stopped and thought, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t do the migra­tion of data and of the devices until we are able to ful­fill these four requests from Con­gress,’” she said dur­ing an inter­view on MSNBC. ”

    Just one text. It’s like pub­lic inves­tiga­tive gaslight­ing. But that’s the Secret Ser­vice’s sto­ry: there was just one text left undelet­ed fol­low­ing the ‘device migra­tion’ sna­fu. And this was despite the fact that there four requests from Con­gress for these records made on Jan 16, over a week before the planned Jan 25 migra­tion. The Secret Ser­vice’s sto­ry just does­n’t add up.l Or as con­gress­man Jamie Raskin put it, “I smell a rat”:

    ...
    The only text mes­sage the Secret Ser­vice turned over to the House com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capi­tol was a plea from then-Capi­tol Police offi­cer Steven Sund ask­ing for help.

    ...

    “That’s all that we have,” Rep. Stephanie Mur­phy (D‑Fla.) told The Hill.

    A source close to the Secret Ser­vice pre­vi­ous­ly told The Hill that Sund had con­tact­ed the Secret Ser­vice on Jan. 6 request­ing assis­tance.

    “That mes­sage was cap­tured and it was turned over,” the source said.

    ...

    We were just updat­ed and it remains a big mys­tery to me,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D‑Md.) told reporters Wednes­day

    He added that the Secret Service’s expla­na­tion stretch­es the out­er lim­its of plau­si­bil­i­ty.

    “I smell a rat,” he said. “That seems like an awful­ly strange coin­ci­dence for those text mes­sages to be ban­ished into obliv­ion on two days where there was also the most vio­lent insur­rec­tion against the union in our his­to­ry, after the Civ­il War.”
    ...

    But it gets worse. Because we’re now learn­ing that the lost text mes­sages were due to a sin­gle indi­vid­ual involved with retain­ing the agen­cy’s records. Instead, it appears that the indi­vid­ual agents them­selves were tasked with pre­serv­ing texts. So the loss of near­ly all of the text mes­sage from that day required the group effort of ALL of the agents in ques­tion. In oth­er words, if this is a cov­er up, it’s a high­ly coor­di­nat­ed one that may have involved a vio­la­tion of the Fed­er­al Records Act:

    The Hill

    Jan. 6 pan­el says Secret Ser­vice may have vio­lat­ed law with ‘erased’ text mes­sages

    by Rebec­ca Beitsch
    07/20/22 4:41 PM ET

    The Secret Ser­vice may have vio­lat­ed fed­er­al records laws by fail­ing to pre­serve data — includ­ing infor­ma­tion relat­ed to the Jan. 6 Capi­tol attack — after it had been request­ed by inves­ti­ga­tors, the House com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the riot said Wednes­day.

    The con­dem­na­tion came after the pan­el sub­poe­naed the agency fol­low­ing an alle­ga­tion from the inspec­tor gen­er­al at the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty (DHS), which over­sees the Secret Ser­vice, that it had “erased” the texts dur­ing a device replace­ment pro­gram.

    “We have con­cerns about a sys­tem migra­tion that we have been told result­ed in the era­sure of Secret Ser­vice cell phone data,” Chair Ben­nie Thomp­son (D‑Miss.) and Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R‑Wyo.) said in a joint state­ment.

    “The U.S. Secret Ser­vice sys­tem migra­tion process went for­ward on Jan­u­ary 27, 2021, just three weeks after the attack on the Capi­tol in which the Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States while under the pro­tec­tion of the Secret Ser­vice, was steps from a vio­lent mob hunt­ing for him. Four House com­mit­tees had already sought these crit­i­cal records from the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty before the records were appar­ent­ly lost,” they added.

    “Addi­tion­al­ly, the pro­ce­dure for pre­serv­ing con­tent pri­or to this purge appears to have been con­trary to fed­er­al records reten­tion require­ments and may rep­re­sent a pos­si­ble vio­la­tion of the Fed­er­al Records Act.”

    Law­mak­ers con­firmed Wednes­day that the Secret Ser­vice turned over just one text sent on Jan. 6, a plea from then-Capi­tol Police chief Steven Sund to the Secret Ser­vice for help.

    It was the only text includ­ed in more than 10,000 pages sent in response to the committee’s Fri­day sub­poe­na.

    The agency has said it did not inten­tion­al­ly delete any mes­sages, but did lose some data as part of what it has called a sys­tem migra­tion.

    But the Secret Service’s let­ter to the com­mit­tee sent along­side its doc­u­ments, shared by the pan­el Wednes­day, offers its most thor­ough expla­na­tion to date.

    The agency under­went a migra­tion to Microsoft start­ing Jan. 27, order­ing agents to install Intune on their phones, a soft­ware that allows remote man­age­ment of mobile devices and pro­tects data.

    “We are cur­rent­ly unaware of any text mes­sages issued by Secret Ser­vice employ­ees between Dec. 7, 2020 and Jan. 8, 2021 request­ed by OIG that were not retained as part of the Intune migra­tion,” Secret Ser­vice wrote in the let­ter.

    How­ev­er, it appears it was left almost entire­ly to agents to deter­mine what records on their phones need­ed to be pre­served in accor­dance with the law.

    Agents were direct­ed to self-install Intune and fol­low a guide for pre­serv­ing any data.

    “All Secret Ser­vice employ­ees are respon­si­ble for appro­pri­ate­ly pre­serv­ing any gov­ern­ment records, includ­ing elec­tron­ic mes­sages that may be cre­at­ed dur­ing text mes­sages,” the agency wrote in the let­ter, not­ing that employ­ees are required to “cer­ti­fy that they under­stand this pol­i­cy when they enter duty.”

    The Secret Ser­vice has pre­vi­ous­ly claimed that none of the 24 agents whose infor­ma­tion was request­ed by DHS OIG had phones impact­ed by the migra­tion.

    But in the let­ter the agency notes that “Secret Ser­vice is fur­ther research­ing whether any rel­e­vant mes­sages sent or received by the 24 indi­vid­u­als were lost due to the Intune migra­tion and, if so, whether such texts are recov­er­able.”

    ...

    ————

    “Jan. 6 pan­el says Secret Ser­vice may have vio­lat­ed law with ‘erased’ text mes­sages” by Rebec­ca Beitsch; The Hill; 07/20/2022

    ““Addi­tion­al­ly, the pro­ce­dure for pre­serv­ing con­tent pri­or to this purge appears to have been con­trary to fed­er­al records reten­tion require­ments and may rep­re­sent a pos­si­ble vio­la­tion of the Fed­er­al Records Act.””

    Was the destruc­tion of all these text mes­sages a vio­la­tion of the Fed­er­al Records Act? Let’s hope so. Because oth­er­wise that act would appear to allow for the bla­tant destruc­tion of records.

    But it’s not just the loss of these texts that was poten­tial­ly a vio­la­tion of the act. There’s also the fact that the agents them­selves were the ones tasked with decid­ed which records were pre­served:

    ...
    The agency has said it did not inten­tion­al­ly delete any mes­sages, but did lose some data as part of what it has called a sys­tem migra­tion.

    But the Secret Service’s let­ter to the com­mit­tee sent along­side its doc­u­ments, shared by the pan­el Wednes­day, offers its most thor­ough expla­na­tion to date.

    The agency under­went a migra­tion to Microsoft start­ing Jan. 27, order­ing agents to install Intune on their phones, a soft­ware that allows remote man­age­ment of mobile devices and pro­tects data.

    “We are cur­rent­ly unaware of any text mes­sages issued by Secret Ser­vice employ­ees between Dec. 7, 2020 and Jan. 8, 2021 request­ed by OIG that were not retained as part of the Intune migra­tion,” Secret Ser­vice wrote in the let­ter.

    How­ev­er, it appears it was left almost entire­ly to agents to deter­mine what records on their phones need­ed to be pre­served in accor­dance with the law.

    Agents were direct­ed to self-install Intune and fol­low a guide for pre­serv­ing any data.

    “All Secret Ser­vice employ­ees are respon­si­ble for appro­pri­ate­ly pre­serv­ing any gov­ern­ment records, includ­ing elec­tron­ic mes­sages that may be cre­at­ed dur­ing text mes­sages,” the agency wrote in the let­ter, not­ing that employ­ees are required to “cer­ti­fy that they under­stand this pol­i­cy when they enter duty.”
    ...

    Keep in mind the obvi­ous impli­ca­tions of this rev­e­la­tion: if the agents them­selves were the ones decid­ing which mes­sages got turned over to the OIG, and only one text mes­sage was turned over, that implies a wide­spread cov­er up inside the agency involv­ing a large num­ber of agents. It was­n’t just an indi­vid­ual high­er up in agency tak­ing these actions that result in a cov­er up. And that brings us to one of the oth­er high­ly sus­pi­cious changes in the Secret Ser­vice’s sto­ry: The agency pre­vi­ous­ly claimed that none of the 24 agents whose infor­ma­tion was request­ed by DHS OIG had phones impact­ed by the migra­tion. And now we learn that the agency is inves­ti­gat­ing whether or not any of those 24 agents had their mes­sages lost due to the phone migra­tion:

    ...
    The Secret Ser­vice has pre­vi­ous­ly claimed that none of the 24 agents whose infor­ma­tion was request­ed by DHS OIG had phones impact­ed by the migra­tion.

    But in the let­ter the agency notes that “Secret Ser­vice is fur­ther research­ing whether any rel­e­vant mes­sages sent or received by the 24 indi­vid­u­als were lost due to the Intune migra­tion and, if so, whether such texts are recov­er­able.”
    ...

    So at this point the Secret Ser­vice’s sto­ry makes no sense: we’re first told that the agency turn over a sub­stan­tial num­ber of emails and chats, only to learn that a sin­gle text was turned over. Then we’re told that this was all a mis­un­der­stand­ing due to a pre­vi­ous­ly sched­uled device migra­tion, only to learn that Con­gress made four requests for those texts over a week before the planned migra­tion. Then we’re told that none of the 24 agents whose records were request­ed were impact­ed by this device migra­tion issue, which then rais­es obvi­ous ques­tions about why just a sin­gle text was turned over. Then we’re told that the agency is actu­al­ly now look­ing into whether or not those 24 agents’ texts were indeed lost in the device migra­tion, at the same time we’re learn­ing that the agents them­selves were the ones who got to decide which text mes­sages to pre­serve. That rat is start­ing to stink to high heav­en.

    And as the fol­low­ing WaPo arti­cle from last week that first report­ed on these delet­ed text reminds us, this ‘device migra­tion’ plan did­n’t just involve Secret Ser­vice agents. Most of the replace­ment pro­gram began with staff mem­bers in Wash­ing­ton offices, and if they did not back up their old text mes­sages that infor­ma­tion is last too. It’s the kind of fun fact that should raise all sorts of addi­tion­al ques­tion regard­ing the still-mys­te­ri­ous sets of burn­er phones pur­chased by Kylie and Amy Kre­mer to com­mu­ni­cate with fig­ures that includ­ed White House Chief of Staff Mark Mead­ows.

    But there’s anoth­er remark­able his­toric fun fact found at the end of this arti­cle. A fun fact about the chill­ing his­toric echos in this sto­ry: when con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors look­ing into the JFK assas­si­na­tion sought records that report­ed­ly showed the Secret Ser­vice received ample advance warn­ings and threats before Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy’s death that white suprema­cists and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions were plot­ting to kill Kennedy using high-pow­ered rifles from tall build­ings. The Secret Ser­vice told inves­ti­ga­tors the records had been destroyed as part of a nor­mal culling of old archives — days after inves­ti­ga­tors had request­ed them. Yep. In oth­er words, this isn’t the first time the Secret Ser­vice has destroyed records involv­ing a white suprema­cist plot to under­mine the US’s demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Secret Ser­vice erased texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, offi­cial says

    By Maria Sac­chet­ti and Car­ol D. Leon­nig
    Updat­ed July 15, 2022 at 11:54 a.m. EDT|Published July 14, 2022 at 9:06 p.m. EDT

    A gov­ern­ment watch­dog accused the U.S. Secret Ser­vice of eras­ing texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, after his office request­ed them as part of an inquiry into the U.S. Capi­tol attack, accord­ing to a let­ter sent to law­mak­ers this week.

    Joseph V. Cuf­fari, head of the Depart­ment of Home­land Security’s Office of Inspec­tor Gen­er­al, wrote to the lead­ers of the House and Sen­ate Home­land Secu­ri­ty com­mit­tees indi­cat­ing that the text mes­sages have van­ished and that efforts to inves­ti­gate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack were being hin­dered.

    “The Depart­ment noti­fied us that many U.S. Secret Ser­vice (USSS) text mes­sages, from Jan­u­ary 5 and 6, 2021 were erased as part of a device-replace­ment pro­gram,” he wrote in a let­ter dat­ed Wednes­day and obtained by The Wash­ing­ton Post. The let­ter was ear­li­er report­ed on by the Inter­cept and CNN.

    Cuf­fari empha­sized that the era­sures came “after” the Office of Inspec­tor Gen­er­al request­ed copies of the text mes­sages for its own inves­ti­ga­tion, and sig­naled that they were part of a pat­tern of DHS resis­tance to his inquiries. Staff mem­bers are required by law to sur­ren­der records so that he can audit the sprawl­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty agency, but he said they have “repeat­ed­ly” refused to pro­vide them until an attor­ney reviews them.

    “This review led to weeks-long delays in OIG obtain­ing records and cre­at­ed con­fu­sion over whether all records had been pro­duced,” he wrote, and offered to brief the House and Sen­ate com­mit­tees on the “access issues.”

    ...

    Cuf­fari, nom­i­nat­ed by Trump in 2019 and con­firmed by the Sen­ate, has faced sig­nif­i­cant crit­i­cism since he took over the office. His first-year audits plum­met­ed to his­toric lows, he clashed with Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment over the verac­i­ty of an inspec­tion of a deten­tion cen­ter, and he blocked inves­ti­ga­tions into the Secret Service’s han­dling of protests in Lafayette Square fol­low­ing the mur­der of George Floyd and the spread of the coro­n­avirus in the agency’s ranks, doc­u­ments show.

    The OIG’s office is under inves­ti­ga­tion by the Coun­cil of the Inspec­tors Gen­er­al on Integri­ty and Effi­cien­cy (CIGIE), an inde­pen­dent enti­ty in the exec­u­tive branch, for undis­closed alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct, accord­ing to an inter­nal email cir­cu­lat­ed to the office in Jan­u­ary.

    The non­prof­it Project On Gov­ern­ment Over­sight (POGO), an inde­pen­dent watch­dog, has called on Pres­i­dent Biden to remove Cuf­fari.

    Cuffari’s office did not respond to requests for com­ment on Thurs­day, and DHS had no imme­di­ate com­ment on his alle­ga­tions.

    A per­son briefed on the Secret Service’s reac­tion to Cuffari’s let­ter said the agency rejects his char­ac­ter­i­za­tions that they elim­i­nat­ed or delet­ed records after Cuffari’s office request­ed them. Like oth­ers inter­viewed for this report, this per­son spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to share con­fi­den­tial inter­nal dis­cus­sions.

    Accord­ing to two peo­ple briefed on the doc­u­ments request, the Secret Ser­vice began a long pre­planned, agen­cy­wide replace­ment of staff tele­phones to improve com­mu­ni­ca­tion across the agency in Jan­u­ary 2021.

    It wasn’t until some­time in Feb­ru­ary 2021 that Cuffari’s office request­ed that the Secret Ser­vice pro­duce records that cen­tered on Jan. 6 and the days lead­ing up to the attack on the Capi­tol, seek­ing inter­nal agency com­mu­ni­ca­tions, mem­o­ran­dums, emails and tele­phon­ic records such as text mes­sages.

    By the time of the request, the peo­ple said, as many as a third of Secret Ser­vice per­son­nel had been giv­en new cell­phones.

    Most of the replace­ment pro­gram began with staff mem­bers in Wash­ing­ton offices, and if they did not back up their old text mes­sages, the peo­ple said, the infor­ma­tion from Jan. 6 and the days before that is lost. That could con­ceiv­ably include the texts sent and received by for­mer White House deputy chief of staff Tony Orna­to and for­mer Trump secu­ri­ty detail leader Bob­by Engel and oth­er senior lead­ers in the Secret Ser­vice.

    This device replace­ment pro­gram, and result­ing fail­ure to back up texts, does not appear to affect emails.

    The Secret Ser­vice has a pol­i­cy requir­ing employ­ees to back up and store gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tions when they retire old elec­tron­ic or tele­phon­ic devices, but in prac­tice, staff do not con­sis­tent­ly back up texts from phones.

    A sim­i­lar issue came up in 2018, when the Jus­tice Depart­ment inspec­tor gen­er­al said he used “foren­sic tools” to recov­er miss­ing text mes­sages from two senior FBI offi­cials who had inves­ti­gat­ed Hillary Clin­ton and Trump and exchanged notes crit­i­cal of the pres­i­dent. The miss­ing mes­sages gen­er­at­ed crit­i­cism when GOP lead­ers and the pres­i­dent ques­tioned how the FBI failed to pre­serve them.

    The Secret Ser­vice has had a his­to­ry of impor­tant records dis­ap­pear­ing under cov­er of night and agency staff mem­bers refus­ing to coop­er­ate when inves­ti­ga­tors came call­ing seek­ing infor­ma­tion.

    When a con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee was inves­ti­gat­ing assas­si­na­tions and assas­si­na­tion attempts, it sought box­es of records that report­ed­ly showed the Secret Ser­vice received ample advance warn­ings and threats before Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy’s death that white suprema­cists and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions were plot­ting to kill Kennedy using high-pow­ered rifles from tall build­ings. The Secret Ser­vice told inves­ti­ga­tors the records had been destroyed as part of a nor­mal culling of old archives — days after inves­ti­ga­tors had request­ed them.

    ...

    ———-

    “Secret Ser­vice erased texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, offi­cial says” by Maria Sac­chet­ti and Car­ol D. Leon­nig; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 07/14/2022

    Most of the replace­ment pro­gram began with staff mem­bers in Wash­ing­ton offices, and if they did not back up their old text mes­sages, the peo­ple said, the infor­ma­tion from Jan. 6 and the days before that is lost. That could con­ceiv­ably include the texts sent and received by for­mer White House deputy chief of staff Tony Orna­to and for­mer Trump secu­ri­ty detail leader Bob­by Engel and oth­er senior lead­ers in the Secret Ser­vice.”

    It’s not just the Secret Ser­vice who was poten­tial­ly play­ing these games. This device migra­tion began with staff mem­bers in Wash­ing­ton offices. It’s a reminder that the Secret Ser­vice’s coverup might be coor­di­nat­ed with a num­ber of oth­er actors out­side the agency.

    But then we get to this remark­able fun fact near the end of the arti­cle: this whole chap­ter is eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent of one of the unex­plored chap­ters of the JFK assas­si­na­tion: the box­es of records that report­ed­ly showed the Secret Ser­vice received ample advance warn­ings and threats before Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy’s death that white suprema­cists and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions were plot­ting to kill Kennedy using high-pow­ered rifles from tall build­ings. Records that were also destroyed after inves­ti­ga­tors request­ed them:

    ...
    When a con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee was inves­ti­gat­ing assas­si­na­tions and assas­si­na­tion attempts, it sought box­es of records that report­ed­ly showed the Secret Ser­vice received ample advance warn­ings and threats before Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy’s death that white suprema­cists and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions were plot­ting to kill Kennedy using high-pow­ered rifles from tall build­ings. The Secret Ser­vice told inves­ti­ga­tors the records had been destroyed as part of a nor­mal culling of old archives — days after inves­ti­ga­tors had request­ed them.
    ...

    The more things change, the more they stay the same. Like the ero­sion of what’s left of the US’s demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions. It just keeps hap­pen­ing. At least until there aren’t any demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions left to erode. We’ll pre­sum­ably just move on to erod­ing what’s left of human dig­ni­ty at that point. While nev­er look­ing back and seri­ous­ly ask­ing how we got here.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 20, 2022, 4:10 pm
  3. It’s already abun­dant­ly clear that the Oath Keep­ers were deeply involved in a plot to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion and keep then-Pres­i­dent Trump in office. It’s nev­er real­ly been a mys­tery. Oath Keep­ers founder Stew­art Rhodes has­n’t hid­den his plans.

    But one major aspect of this sto­ry that remains unclear is just how exten­sive was direct coor­di­na­tion between the Oath Keep­ers and the Trump White House. Not that we haven’t received exten­sive evi­dence point­ing in that direc­tion. For exam­ple, there are the reports on how the Oath Keep­ers’ “Quick Reac­tion Force” (QRF) of heavy arms ready to be trans­port­ed to the Capi­tol upon Trump’s orders. Then there was the sto­ry of Oath Keep­er Jes­si­ca Watkins and how she ini­tial­ly claimed she had been coor­di­nat­ing with the Secret Ser­vice in pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty for VIPs at that ‘Stop the Steal’ ral­ly that then-Pres­i­dent Trump spoke at before the ral­ly. Watkins lat­er recant­ed after the Secret Ser­vice denied work­ing with her, but by all accounts she was allowed into the VIP area of the ral­ly before she was lat­er filmed storm­ing the Capi­tol. That’s pret­ty direct evi­dence of some degree of coor­di­na­tion.

    And then there’s the indi­rect evi­dence in the form of the ongo­ing scan­dal at the Secret Ser­vice over the miss­ing text mes­sages for the entire month lead­ing up to Jan 6. A scan­dal that appears to have a Trump appoint­ed DHS OIG at the cen­ter of the coverup. This more we learn, the worse it looks for both the Trump White House and the Secret Ser­vice.

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing report about claims made by a for­mer Oath Keep­er mem­ber, John Zim­mer­man, about a phone call he wit­nessed between Stew­art Rhodes and a Secret Ser­vice agent. A phone call that appar­ent­ly took place in Sep­tem­ber of 2020 and focused on the ‘para­me­ters’ for how the group could oper­ate at a Trump ral­ly in North Car­oli­na. Recall how Sep­tem­ber 2020 was the same month Roger Stone start­ed going on Alex Jone’s Info Wars show to call for Trump to declare mar­tial law and can­cel the 2020 elec­tion. That’s the con­text of this appar­ent ear­ly out­reach between the Oath Keep­ers and the Secret Ser­vice: it hap­pened right around the time talk of block­ing the elec­tion and dec­la­ra­tions of mar­tial law were first real­ly start­ing to boil over.

    And as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing arti­cles below, these ques­tions about the rela­tion­ship between the Oath Keep­ers and the Secret Ser­vice are real­ly just one part of a much large ques­tion about the the rela­tion­ship between the myr­i­ad of far right groups there on Jan 6 and the Secret Ser­vice. For exam­ple, as we learned last month, it turns out one seem­ing­ly ran­dom riot­er, Anton Lun­yk, received a 9 sec­ond phone call from the White House switch­board at 4:34 pm on Jan 6, 15 min­utes after the video of Trump call­ing for the riot­ers to go home was released. Lun­yk had been at the Capi­tol ear­li­er but was already head­ing home by the time he received that phone call. Why was this call made? We have no idea, but anoth­er inter­est­ing detail in this sto­ry is that Lun­yk was appar­ent­ly allowed into the ‘spe­cial cor­doned area’ of the Ellipse ral­ly ear­li­er that day. What was his role in this larg­er plot? Was he part of some sort of covert spe­cial oper­a­tions teams? We still don’t know. But as we also learned, it turns out Stew­art Rhodes called the White House on the evening of Jan 6 and repeat­ed­ly implored who­ev­er he was talk­ing to to tell Trump to invoke the Insur­rec­tion Act and call in groups like the Oath Keep­ers to still block the trans­fer of pow­er. So the insur­rec­tion plans were still at least par­tial­ly ongo­ing going into the evening of Jan 6. That’s part of the con­text of this mys­tery call to Anton Lun­yk.

    Sim­i­lar­ly, why did the Secret Ser­vice dis­miss the threats posed by groups like Storm Front and Atom­waf­fen? We don’t know, but it turns out the Secret Ser­vice was indeed aware that such groups were plan­ning on attend­ing the ral­lies on Jan 6, and yet, as as recent reports have revealed, the Secret Ser­vice deter­mined these groups did­n’t pose a threat. Why is that? Did the Secret Ser­vice already get indi­ca­tions that these groups were going to be coor­di­nat­ing with the groups like Oath Keep­ers, Proud Boys, and Three Per­centers? Again, we don’t know. But all those open ques­tions are part of what make the alleged Sep­tem­ber 2020 phone call between Stew­art Rhodes and the Secret Ser­vice all the more inter­est­ing:

    Insid­er

    Oath Keep­ers founder Stew­art Rhodes claimed to have con­tact with a Secret Ser­vice agent, ex-mem­ber tes­ti­fies at tri­al

    C. Ryan Bar­ber
    Oct 6, 2022, 12:15 PM

    * A for­mer Oath Keep­ers mem­ber took the wit­ness stand in the tri­al of Elmer Stew­art Rhodes.
    * John Zim­mer­man recalled that the Oath Keep­ers leader claimed to have a Secret Ser­vice con­tact.
    * Rhodes called an unknown per­son the night of Jan­u­ary 6 to try to speak direct­ly with Trump.

    Oath Keep­ers founder Stew­art Rhodes claimed he was in con­tact with a Secret Ser­vice agent in the months lead­ing up to the Jan­u­ary 6, 2021, attack on the Capi­tol, a for­mer mem­ber of the far-right group tes­ti­fied at tri­al Thurs­day.

    Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors called John Zim­mer­man, a for­mer Oath Keep­ers mem­ber, to tes­ti­fy Thurs­day in the tri­al of Rhodes and four oth­ers charged with sedi­tious con­spir­a­cy in con­nec­tion with the Capi­tol siege.

    In his tes­ti­mo­ny, Zim­mer­man recalled how the Oath Keep­ers gath­ered weapons in prepa­ra­tion for the pos­si­bil­i­ty that then-Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump would invoke the Insur­rec­tion Act — a move the armed civil­ian group saw as giv­ing it stand­ing to step in and forcibly pre­vent the peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er.

    Asked whether he was aware of any direct con­nec­tion between Trump and Rhodes, Zim­mer­man answered, “Not that I recall specif­i­cal­ly.”

    “But,” Zim­mer­man added, “he did have a num­ber for a Secret Ser­vice agent — or claimed to be a Secret Ser­vice agent — back in Sep­tem­ber.”

    Zim­mer­man tes­ti­fied that he wit­nessed a phone call between Rhodes and his pur­port­ed Secret Ser­vice con­tact in Sep­tem­ber 2020 at a Trump ral­ly in Fayet­teville, North Car­oli­na. A for­mer coun­ty leader of the Oath Keep­ers, Zim­mer­man said heard only one side of the call and could not con­firm that Rhodes’ con­tact was, in fact, an active Secret Ser­vice agent.

    Dur­ing the call with the unknown indi­vid­ual, Rhodes asked about the “para­me­ters” under which the Oath Keep­ers could oper­ate dur­ing the ral­ly. From the ques­tions Rhodes was ask­ing, Zim­mer­man said, “it sound­ed like it could’ve been” a Secret Ser­vice agent on the oth­er end of the call.

    The tes­ti­mo­ny offered a poten­tial clue in a mys­tery that has hung over Rhodes’ pros­e­cu­tion.

    In a sep­a­rate case against an Oath Keep­er, pros­e­cu­tors said Rhodes attempt­ed on the night of Jan­u­ary 6 to speak with Trump direct­ly and urge him to call on groups to block the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s elec­toral vic­to­ry. Rhodes placed the call over speak­er­phone and “repeat­ed­ly implored the indi­vid­ual to tell Pres­i­dent Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keep­ers to forcibly oppose the trans­fer of pow­er,” pros­e­cu­tors said in a May court fil­ing.

    The recip­i­ent of the call has so far gone uniden­ti­fied. Once that per­son declined to con­nect him with Trump and hung up, Rhodes turned to the group gath­ered with him inside a Wash­ing­ton, DC, hotel suite and said, “I just want to fight,” accord­ing to the court fil­ing.

    In his tes­ti­mo­ny Thurs­day, Zim­mer­man said he joined the group while under the impres­sion that it served as an “exten­sion” of com­mu­ni­ty law enforce­ment ser­vices. Zim­mer­man said he was not in Wash­ing­ton, DC, on Jan­u­ary 6 because he was recov­er­ing from COVID, but he did trav­el to the nation’s cap­i­tal in Novem­ber 2020 for the “Mil­lion MAGA March.”

    It was dur­ing that trip, Zim­mer­man said, that he grew dis­il­lu­sioned with the Oath Keep­ers. Zim­mer­man said Rhodes pro­posed an idea to “dress up as elder­ly or be like a sin­gle par­ent push­ing a baby car­riage with some weapons in the baby car­riage.” The aim, he said, was to draw mem­bers of those groups into con­flict and give them a “beat­down” and pos­si­bly give Trump rea­son to invoke the Insur­rec­tion Act.

    “If we’re going to trick peo­ple into attack­ing us so we can give them a beat­down ... that’s not what we do,” he said.

    Zim­mer­man took the stand as the sec­ond wit­ness called to tes­ti­fy against Rhodes and four oth­ers — Kel­ly Meg­gs, Jes­si­ca Watkins, Ken­neth Har­rel­son, and Thomas Cald­well — in the first sedi­tious con­spir­a­cy tri­al that has arisen out of the near­ly 900 pros­e­cu­tions con­nect­ed to the Capi­tol attack.

    In the ear­ly days of the tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors have detailed how the Oath Keep­ers stored a cache of weapons in a hotel out­side Wash­ing­ton, DC, for a so-called “quick reac­tion force” that would rush into the nation’s capi­tol if Trump invoked the Insur­rec­tion Act. The tri­al has also fea­tured encrypt­ed mes­sages mem­bers of the Oath Keep­ers exchanged in the months lead­ing up to the Capi­tol siege, includ­ing one sent just days after the 2020 elec­tion in which Rhodes wrote, “We aren’t get­ting through this with­out a civ­il war.”

    In an open­ing state­ment, pros­e­cu­tor Jef­frey Nestler on Mon­day said the Oath Keep­ers “con­coct­ed a plan for an armed rebel­lion to shat­ter a bedrock of democ­ra­cy” — the peace­ful hand­off of pow­er. Pros­e­cu­tors have also shown jurors video footage of Oath Keep­ers enter­ing the Capi­tol in a mil­i­tary-style “stack for­ma­tion,” and Nestler on Mon­day point­ed to a record­ing of a meet­ing days after Jan­u­ary 6 in which Rhodes could be heard com­plain­ing about a lack of more lethal weapon­ry at the Capi­tol that day.

    “My only regret is that they should have brought rifles,” Rhodes said, adding, “We could have fixed it right there and then.”

    ...

    ———-

    “Oath Keep­ers founder Stew­art Rhodes claimed to have con­tact with a Secret Ser­vice agent, ex-mem­ber tes­ti­fies at tri­al” by C. Ryan Bar­ber; Insid­er; 10/06/2022

    “In the ear­ly days of the tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors have detailed how the Oath Keep­ers stored a cache of weapons in a hotel out­side Wash­ing­ton, DC, for a so-called “quick reac­tion force” that would rush into the nation’s capi­tol if Trump invoked the Insur­rec­tion Act. The tri­al has also fea­tured encrypt­ed mes­sages mem­bers of the Oath Keep­ers exchanged in the months lead­ing up to the Capi­tol siege, includ­ing one sent just days after the 2020 elec­tion in which Rhodes wrote, “We aren’t get­ting through this with­out a civ­il war.”

    The evi­dence of plans for vio­lence by var­i­ous Trump-sup­port­ing groups on Jan 6 isn’t real­ly in ques­tion at this point. The evi­dence is over­whelm­ing, includ­ing the exis­tence of the “Quick Reac­tion Force” (QRF) sta­tioned in DC. The big inves­tiga­tive ques­tions are now focused on the coor­di­na­tion between the Trump White House and these out­side groups. That’s what makes the claims by Oath Keep­ers mem­ber John Zim­mer­man dur­ing this tri­al so sig­nif­i­cant: he appar­ent­ly wit­nessed a call between Stew­art Rhodes and a Secret Ser­vice agent back in Sep­tem­ber of 2020, months before the elec­tion to dis­cuss the “para­me­ters” around which the group could oper­ate at a Fayet­teville, NC, ral­ly. It’s an anec­dote that echoes the claims made by Oath Keep­ers mem­ber Jes­si­ca Watkins who ini­tial­ly claimed she had been coor­di­nat­ing with the Secret Ser­vice in pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty for VIPs at that ‘Stop the Steal’ Ellipse ral­ly that then-Pres­i­dent Trump spoke at before the ral­ly. Watkins lat­er recant­ed after the Secret Ser­vice denied work­ing with her, but by all accounts she was allowed into the VIP area of the ral­ly before she was lat­er filmed storm­ing the Capi­tol.

    But learn­ing that this phone call took place in Sep­tem­ber 2020 relates to anoth­er salient fact in this inves­ti­ga­tion: Recall how Sep­tem­ber 2020 was the same month Roger Stone start­ed going on Alex Jone’s Info Wars show to call for Trump to declare mar­tial law and can­cel the 2020 elec­tion. So the Oath Keep­ers and a Secret Ser­vice agent were alleged­ly in phone con­tact right around the same time plot­ting for can­cel­ing the elec­tion was spilling out into the pub­lic:

    ...
    Asked whether he was aware of any direct con­nec­tion between Trump and Rhodes, Zim­mer­man answered, “Not that I recall specif­i­cal­ly.”

    “But,” Zim­mer­man added, “he did have a num­ber for a Secret Ser­vice agent — or claimed to be a Secret Ser­vice agent — back in Sep­tem­ber.”

    Zim­mer­man tes­ti­fied that he wit­nessed a phone call between Rhodes and his pur­port­ed Secret Ser­vice con­tact in Sep­tem­ber 2020 at a Trump ral­ly in Fayet­teville, North Car­oli­na. A for­mer coun­ty leader of the Oath Keep­ers, Zim­mer­man said heard only one side of the call and could not con­firm that Rhodes’ con­tact was, in fact, an active Secret Ser­vice agent.

    Dur­ing the call with the unknown indi­vid­ual, Rhodes asked about the “para­me­ters” under which the Oath Keep­ers could oper­ate dur­ing the ral­ly. From the ques­tions Rhodes was ask­ing, Zim­mer­man said, “it sound­ed like it could’ve been” a Secret Ser­vice agent on the oth­er end of the call.

    ...

    Zim­mer­man took the stand as the sec­ond wit­ness called to tes­ti­fy against Rhodes and four oth­ers — Kel­ly Meg­gs, Jes­si­ca Watkins, Ken­neth Har­rel­son, and Thomas Cald­well — in the first sedi­tious con­spir­a­cy tri­al that has arisen out of the near­ly 900 pros­e­cu­tions con­nect­ed to the Capi­tol attack.
    ...

    But that alleged phone call is just one of the instances of con­tact between the Trump White House and Oath Keep­ers. Con­tact that was pre­sum­ably active­ly going on up through the events of Jan 6, includ­ing the evening of Jan 6 after the riot­ers left the Capi­tol. For exam­ple, there was the alleged calls Rhodes made to an unnamed indi­vid­ual implor­ing him to tell Pres­i­dent Trump “to call upon groups like the Oath Keep­ers to forcibly oppose the trans­fer of pow­er”. In oth­er words, as far as Rhodes was con­cerned the insur­rec­tion was still viable on the evening of Jan 6 and dur­ing the peri­od lead­ing up to Jan 20. Rhodes want­ed Trump to just refuse to trans­fer pow­er and was ready to have the Oath Keep­ers oper­ate as Trump’s pri­vate mili­tia. A for­mal­ly-declared insur­rec­tion trig­gered by Trump’s dec­la­ra­tion of the Insur­rec­tion Act and impo­si­tion of mar­tial-law using groups like the Oath Keep­ers to car­ry it out. Rhodes was appar­ent­ly direct­ly reach­ing out to peo­ple in Trump’s imme­di­ate orbit to push this plan on the evening of Jan 6. And while it does­n’t sound like Rhodes ulti­mate­ly got his mes­sage through to Trump, it’s the kind of sto­ry that sug­gests a close work­ing rela­tion­ship between these groups. A work­ing rela­tion­ship that went at last as far back as Sep­tem­ber 2020:

    ...
    The tes­ti­mo­ny offered a poten­tial clue in a mys­tery that has hung over Rhodes’ pros­e­cu­tion.

    In a sep­a­rate case against an Oath Keep­er, pros­e­cu­tors said Rhodes attempt­ed on the night of Jan­u­ary 6 to speak with Trump direct­ly and urge him to call on groups to block the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s elec­toral vic­to­ry. Rhodes placed the call over speak­er­phone and “repeat­ed­ly implored the indi­vid­ual to tell Pres­i­dent Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keep­ers to forcibly oppose the trans­fer of pow­er,” pros­e­cu­tors said in a May court fil­ing.

    The recip­i­ent of the call has so far gone uniden­ti­fied. Once that per­son declined to con­nect him with Trump and hung up, Rhodes turned to the group gath­ered with him inside a Wash­ing­ton, DC, hotel suite and said, “I just want to fight,” accord­ing to the court fil­ing.

    ...

    In an open­ing state­ment, pros­e­cu­tor Jef­frey Nestler on Mon­day said the Oath Keep­ers “con­coct­ed a plan for an armed rebel­lion to shat­ter a bedrock of democ­ra­cy” — the peace­ful hand­off of pow­er. Pros­e­cu­tors have also shown jurors video footage of Oath Keep­ers enter­ing the Capi­tol in a mil­i­tary-style “stack for­ma­tion,” and Nestler on Mon­day point­ed to a record­ing of a meet­ing days after Jan­u­ary 6 in which Rhodes could be heard com­plain­ing about a lack of more lethal weapon­ry at the Capi­tol that day.

    “My only regret is that they should have brought rifles,” Rhodes said, adding, “We could have fixed it right there and then.”
    ...

    And note Zim­mer­man’s sto­ry from his “Mil­lion MAGA March” trip to DC in Novem­ber 2020: Rhodes was talk­ing about stag­ing vio­lent events intend­ed to give Trump the pre­text for invok­ing the Insur­rec­tion Act. It’s the kind of detail that rais­es the ques­tion of how those plans for stag­ing fake events evolved over the fol­low­ing weeks and whether or not the stag­ing of fake vio­lence would have been part of the plans Rhodes want­ed to put in place on the evening of Jan 6 to give Trump the excuse to call in the Oath Keep­ers as a mili­tia force to ‘keep the peace’:

    ...
    In his tes­ti­mo­ny Thurs­day, Zim­mer­man said he joined the group while under the impres­sion that it served as an “exten­sion” of com­mu­ni­ty law enforce­ment ser­vices. Zim­mer­man said he was not in Wash­ing­ton, DC, on Jan­u­ary 6 because he was recov­er­ing from COVID, but he did trav­el to the nation’s cap­i­tal in Novem­ber 2020 for the “Mil­lion MAGA March.”

    It was dur­ing that trip, Zim­mer­man said, that he grew dis­il­lu­sioned with the Oath Keep­ers. Zim­mer­man said Rhodes pro­posed an idea to “dress up as elder­ly or be like a sin­gle par­ent push­ing a baby car­riage with some weapons in the baby car­riage.” The aim, he said, was to draw mem­bers of those groups into con­flict and give them a “beat­down” and pos­si­bly give Trump rea­son to invoke the Insur­rec­tion Act.

    “If we’re going to trick peo­ple into attack­ing us so we can give them a beat­down ... that’s not what we do,” he said.
    ...

    It’s becom­ing increas­ing­ly clear that the White House and the Oath Keep­ers were in direct coor­di­na­tion both in the lead up to Jan 6 and on that day. But as the fol­low­ing TPM except reminds us, there were a lot of oth­er groups there beyond the Oath Keep­ers, which rais­es the obvi­ous ques­tion of what kind of con­tact did the White House, or the Oath Keep­ers, have with these oth­er groups.

    And that brings us to the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry from a cou­ple of weeks ago about a Jan 6 riot­er who actu­al­ly got a phone call from the White House switch­board on Jan 6. intrigu­ing­ly, the riot­er, Anton Lun­yk, received the 9 sec­ond phone call at 4:34 pm, 15 min­utes after the video of Trump ask­ing the riot­ers to leave the Capi­tol has already been released. Lun­yk, who was videoed inside the Capi­tol dur­ing the riot, was appar­ent­ly already head­ing back to New York by then. Why was this ran­dom fig­ure called by the White House as the riot­ers were leav­ing the Capi­tol?

    But there’s one more inter­est­ing detail in this sto­ry: it sounds like Lun­yk attend­ed the ral­ly at the Ellipse and was allowed into the spe­cial cor­doned-off area. Was he allowed into that area by the Secret Ser­vice? Or per­haps by the Oath Keep­ers who were report­ed­ly play­ing a ‘VIP pro­tec­tion’ role in coor­di­na­tion with the Secret Ser­vice? We don’t know, but Anton Lun­yk clear­ly was­n’t just a ran­dom riot­er:

    Talk­ing Points Memo

    How Inter­est­ing Is The J6 White House Riot­er Call?
    Some­what, but not con­clu­sive.

    By Josh Koven­sky
    Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022 4:28 p.m.

    Over the week­end, a for­mer mem­ber of the Jan. 6 Committee’s inves­tiga­tive team revealed some­thing poten­tial­ly explo­sive: the pan­el had found a record of a brief phone call from the White House to an unnamed riot­er.

    Den­ver Rig­gle­man, a for­mer Repub­li­can mem­ber of Con­gress from Vir­ginia who advised the Com­mit­tee, told CBS this week­end that a White House switch­board had made an out­go­ing call to a riot­er.

    It’s a big alle­ga­tion, and one that may go to the heart of the Committee’s — and, poten­tial­ly, the DOJ’s — inves­ti­ga­tion: what’s the con­nec­tive tis­sue between the White House and the riot­ers who stormed the Capi­tol on Jan. 6?

    ...

    There have been bits and pieces of incon­clu­sive evi­dence to sug­gest that there may be some­thing there. CNN’s Jim Acos­ta tweet­ed at the time, cit­ing a Trump White House offi­cial, that the “goal” was to occu­py the build­ing through­out the night.

    A source close to the White House who is in touch with some of the riot­ers at the Capi­tol said it’s the goal of those involved to stay inside the Capi­tol through the night.— Jim Acos­ta (@Acosta) Jan­u­ary 6, 2021

    In that con­text, Riggleman’s claim could seem all the more impor­tant.

    But the details that have emerged since Rig­gle­man first made the claim show that it’s inter­est­ing, but per­haps less excit­ing than it orig­i­nal­ly appeared.

    CNN reports that the per­son who received the call was a New York­er named Anton Lun­yk, who plead­ed guilty in April with two oth­er men to charges relat­ed to the breach.

    The call only last­ed for nine sec­onds, and, CNN sug­gest­ed, seems to have come as Lun­yk was on his way home to New York from D.C.

    There are a few details of Lunyk’s case which stand out.

    One is that, per his plea agree­ment, Lun­yk agreed to coop­er­ate with the gov­ern­ment. Pros­e­cu­tors wrote that he gave “cred­i­ble and use­ful” infor­ma­tion about an unnamed inves­ti­ga­tion con­duct­ed by Man­hat­tan fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors.

    The oth­er details relate to the nature of Lunyk’s breach of the Capi­tol.

    Lun­yk and the two oth­ers with whom he breached the Capi­tol attend­ed the ral­ly on the Ellipse before the breach where Trump spoke. For rea­sons that remain unclear, Lun­yk and the oth­ers were per­mit­ted to enter a “cor­doned off area on the Ellipse” to watch the event, his plea agree­ment said.

    Pros­e­cu­tors didn’t spec­i­fy what the “cor­doned off area” was, and what sta­tus it may have con­ferred.

    The trio only spent around 10 min­utes with­in the Capi­tol.

    Pros­e­cu­tors said that the trio were with­in the build­ing after 3 p.m. on Jan. 6. One cam­era cap­tured them wan­der­ing the halls at 3:12 p.m.

    The call that Rig­gle­man iden­ti­fied took place around one hour lat­er: at 4:34 p.m. That comes pret­ty far after the group depart­ed the Capi­tol, and around 15 min­utes after Trump issued a video mes­sage telling the riot­ers “go home, we love you.”

    It’s still unclear why the call was made. CNN report­ed that Lun­yk did not recall it.

    Texts released by pros­e­cu­tors in his case show that in the hours after the insur­rec­tion, Lun­yk was enraged.

    “This elec­tion was stolen and the peo­ple have had enough,” he wrote in a mes­sage sent after 9 p.m. on Jan. 6. Hours lat­er, at around 3 a.m. on Jan. 7, he texted a group that includ­ed those who had entered the Capi­tol with him: “Well… kiss your loved ones good­bye cause we all gonna die.”

    ———-

    “How Inter­est­ing Is The J6 White House Riot­er Call?” By Josh Koven­sky; Talk­ing Points Memo; 09/26/2022

    “Den­ver Rig­gle­man, a for­mer Repub­li­can mem­ber of Con­gress from Vir­ginia who advised the Com­mit­tee, told CBS this week­end that a White House switch­board had made an out­go­ing call to a riot­er.”

    Just how many dif­fer­ent groups was the White House in direct con­tact with dur­ing Jan 6? It’s one of the many dis­turb­ing ques­tions raised by this report. But per­haps the biggest ques­tion is about the tim­ing. Why make this call at 4:34 pm, 15 min­utes after the White House released the video ask­ing the riot­ers to leave. Why did a seem­ing­ly ran­dom New York­er named Anton Lun­yk get a call from the White House switch­board as Lun­yk was head­ing back to New York? We this a call to con­firm that an oper­a­tion was called off? Or a call to see if an oper­a­tion could be con­tin­ued? It’s part of the con­text of learn­ing about Stew­art Rhodes’s attempts on the evening of Jan 6 to keep the insur­rec­tion going:

    ...
    But the details that have emerged since Rig­gle­man first made the claim show that it’s inter­est­ing, but per­haps less excit­ing than it orig­i­nal­ly appeared.

    CNN reports that the per­son who received the call was a New York­er named Anton Lun­yk, who plead­ed guilty in April with two oth­er men to charges relat­ed to the breach.

    The call only last­ed for nine sec­onds, and, CNN sug­gest­ed, seems to have come as Lun­yk was on his way home to New York from D.C.

    ...

    The trio only spent around 10 min­utes with­in the Capi­tol.

    Pros­e­cu­tors said that the trio were with­in the build­ing after 3 p.m. on Jan. 6. One cam­era cap­tured them wan­der­ing the halls at 3:12 p.m.

    The call that Rig­gle­man iden­ti­fied took place around one hour lat­er: at 4:34 p.m. That comes pret­ty far after the group depart­ed the Capi­tol, and around 15 min­utes after Trump issued a video mes­sage telling the riot­ers “go home, we love you.”

    It’s still unclear why the call was made. CNN report­ed that Lun­yk did not recall it.
    ...

    And then we get this oth­er inter­est­ing detail: Lun­yk and two oth­ers were allowed into the “cor­doned off area on the Ellipse”. Again, recall how Oath Keep­er Jes­si­ca Watkins ini­tial­ly claimed she had been coor­di­nat­ing with the Secret Ser­vice in pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty for VIPs at that ‘Stop the Steal’ Ellipse ral­ly that then-Pres­i­dent Trump spoke at before the ral­ly. Watkins lat­er recant­ed after the Secret Ser­vice denied work­ing with her, but by all accounts she was allowed into the VIP area of the ral­ly before she was lat­er filmed storm­ing the Capi­tol. In oth­er words, the Oath Keep­ers were appar­ent­ly in a posi­tion to facil­i­tate the entry of spe­cial cor­doned off areas of the Ellipse. Was Lun­yk part of an ‘unof­fi­cial’ Oath Keep­ers hit squad?

    ...
    Lun­yk and the two oth­ers with whom he breached the Capi­tol attend­ed the ral­ly on the Ellipse before the breach where Trump spoke. For rea­sons that remain unclear, Lun­yk and the oth­ers were per­mit­ted to enter a “cor­doned off area on the Ellipse” to watch the event, his plea agree­ment said.

    Pros­e­cu­tors didn’t spec­i­fy what the “cor­doned off area” was, and what sta­tus it may have con­ferred.
    ...

    Final­ly, there’s this impor­tant detail that pub­licly came out on Jan 6: Jim Acos­ta at CNN was report­ed told by a Trump offi­cial that the “goal” was the occu­py to the Capi­tol build­ing through­out the night. That sure sounds like a goal that would be in keep­ing with Rhodes’s calls to the White House implor­ing Trump to call up the mili­tias:

    ...
    It’s a big alle­ga­tion, and one that may go to the heart of the Committee’s — and, poten­tial­ly, the DOJ’s — inves­ti­ga­tion: what’s the con­nec­tive tis­sue between the White House and the riot­ers who stormed the Capi­tol on Jan. 6?

    ...

    There have been bits and pieces of incon­clu­sive evi­dence to sug­gest that there may be some­thing there. CNN’s Jim Acos­ta tweet­ed at the time, cit­ing a Trump White House offi­cial, that the “goal” was to occu­py the build­ing through­out the night.

    A source close to the White House who is in touch with some of the riot­ers at the Capi­tol said it’s the goal of those involved to stay inside the Capi­tol through the night.— Jim Acos­ta (@Acosta) Jan­u­ary 6, 2021

    In that con­text, Riggleman’s claim could seem all the more impor­tant.
    ...

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing report by CREW from back in August about the numer­ous oth­er vio­lent groups that the Secret Ser­vice knew were plan­ning on attend­ing the ral­lies on Jan 6. And as the CREW report makes clear, the Secret Ser­vice sim­ply did not see these groups as a real threat. Groups like Storm Front and Atom­waf­fen:

    Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton

    The Secret Ser­vice knew about Jan 6 threat. They dis­missed it.

    By Jor­dan Libowitz and Sara Wia­trak
    August 17, 2022

    In the days before the Jan­u­ary 6 attack on the Capi­tol, doc­u­ments exchanged between the Secret Ser­vice and oth­er law enforce­ment agen­cies out­lined “threats of vio­lence” on the 6th, com­ing “pre­dom­i­nant­ly from right wing groups” with “plans to bring weapons into the Dis­trict,” accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by CREW. The Secret Ser­vice knew that Trump’s sup­port­ers would be demon­strat­ing around Free­dom Plaza and the Capi­tol with the intent to cause vio­lence, but the agency does not appear to have tak­en the threat seri­ous­ly.

    While the Secret Ser­vice down­played threats posed by right-wing extrem­ist groups and Trump’s sup­port­ers lead­ing up to Jan­u­ary 6, the new­ly obtained doc­u­ments reveal just how grave and explic­it the threats had actu­al­ly been.

    The Nation­al Cap­i­tal Region Threat Intel­li­gence Con­sor­tium (NTIC) dis­sem­i­nat­ed these threats in mes­sages and a con­fer­ence call on the morn­ing of Jan­u­ary 4, pro­vid­ing a clear and pre­scient warn­ing of the vio­lence to come. NTIC alert­ed the Secret Ser­vice, FBI, Capi­tol Police and Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Depart­ment among oth­er law enforce­ment groups of “on-line com­mu­ni­ca­tions cit­ing vio­lence in DC on 1–6‑21,” which includ­ed objec­tives such as “Occu­py­ing the Capi­tol to influ­ence law­mak­ers to change elec­tion results,” “Call to come with guns,” “Be pre­pared to bat­tle” and “Exer­cise 2nd Amend­ment rights.”

    Groups iden­ti­fied as com­ing with a poten­tial to cause vio­lence includ­ed the Oath Keep­ers, the 3%ers and neo-Nazi groups Atom­waf­fen and Storm Front. In spite of this warn­ing, the Secret Ser­vice not­ed “There is no indi­ca­tion of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence” stem­ming from the right-wing extrem­ist groups involved in the riot. Upon learn­ing of the Proud Boys’ intent to arrive in DC on Jan­u­ary 6, the Secret Ser­vice released an inter­nal memo that dis­closed no indi­ca­tion of concern—despite the Proud Boys stat­ing they will turn out in “record num­bers.”

    NTIC’s warn­ing was not the only one the Secret Ser­vice failed to heed. The U.S. Mar­shals Service’s Office of Pro­tec­tive Intel­li­gence flagged a Par­ler post for a ref­er­ence of vio­lence against the vice pres­i­dent, and fol­lowed it up with a report titled “Con­cern­ing issues” that includ­ed fur­ther screen­shots of recent Par­ler posts call­ing for the vio­lent removal of politi­cians, imply­ing plans to have firearms at the Capi­tol and threat­en­ing Mike Pence.

    “It’s gonna get vio­lent as we charge the fed­er­al build­ings and drag out cor­rupt politi­cians dead or alive!” one post­ed before the 6th read, con­tin­u­ing on to reveal the author’s desire to kill politi­cians. “Now you got weapons I came pack­ing,” read one post­ed the morn­ing of the riot, “I’m here for jus­tice bang bang.” The posts made clear who their top tar­get was: “Fu ck pence sell­out trai­tor we bet­ter see him com­ing out that build­ing in hand­cuffs or were [sic] going in.”

    ...

    ————

    “The Secret Ser­vice knew about Jan 6 threat. They dis­missed it.” By Jor­dan Libowitz and Sara Wia­trak; Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton; 08/17/2022

    “The Nation­al Cap­i­tal Region Threat Intel­li­gence Con­sor­tium (NTIC) dis­sem­i­nat­ed these threats in mes­sages and a con­fer­ence call on the morn­ing of Jan­u­ary 4, pro­vid­ing a clear and pre­scient warn­ing of the vio­lence to come. NTIC alert­ed the Secret Ser­vice, FBI, Capi­tol Police and Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Depart­ment among oth­er law enforce­ment groups of “on-line com­mu­ni­ca­tions cit­ing vio­lence in DC on 1–6‑21,” which includ­ed objec­tives such as “Occu­py­ing the Capi­tol to influ­ence law­mak­ers to change elec­tion results,” “Call to come with guns,” “Be pre­pared to bat­tle” and “Exer­cise 2nd Amend­ment rights.””

    It was­n’t just the Oath Keep­ers and 3 Per­centers. Or seem­ing­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed groups of peo­ple like Anton Lun­yk’s crew. The Secret Ser­vice had intel­li­gence warn­ing that groups like Atom­waf­fen and Storm Front were also plan­ning on being there on Jan 6. And yet, some­how, the Secret Ser­vice con­clud­ed that “There is no indi­ca­tion of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence.” It’s neg­li­gence, at best:

    ...
    Groups iden­ti­fied as com­ing with a poten­tial to cause vio­lence includ­ed the Oath Keep­ers, the 3%ers and neo-Nazi groups Atom­waf­fen and Storm Front. In spite of this warn­ing, the Secret Ser­vice not­ed “There is no indi­ca­tion of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence” stem­ming from the right-wing extrem­ist groups involved in the riot. Upon learn­ing of the Proud Boys’ intent to arrive in DC on Jan­u­ary 6, the Secret Ser­vice released an inter­nal memo that dis­closed no indi­ca­tion of concern—despite the Proud Boys stat­ing they will turn out in “record num­bers.”
    ...

    And if it seems like maybe the Secret Ser­vice sim­ply did­n’t have any direct intel­li­gence indi­cat­ing that these neo-Nazis were plan­ning on vio­lence, here’s anoth­er CREW report from a cou­ple weeks ago about how mem­bers of Vorherrschaft Divi­sion were active­ly call­ing for “boots on the ground and voic­es loud enough to be heard for miles” on social media sites like Telegram in the weeks and days lead­ing up to Jan 6. We know the Secret Ser­vice was aware of these ral­ly­ing cries because the Capi­tol Police were for­ward­ed warn­ings about them by the Secret Ser­vice. And yet, for what­ev­er rea­son, the Secret Ser­vice did­n’t see these groups as a threat:

    Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton

    Secret Ser­vice knew of neo-Nazi threat on Jan. 6

    By Lau­ren White and Sara Wia­trak
    Sep­tem­ber 22, 2022

    The Secret Ser­vice was track­ing at least one neo-Nazi group and mul­ti­ple indi­vid­u­als that planned to engage in vio­lence and occu­py the Capi­tol build­ing more than a week before the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion, accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by CREW. The doc­u­ments do not show the agency tak­ing action to pre­vent vio­lence on the 6th.

    A mem­ber of Vorherrschaft Divi­sion post­ed on Telegram—a mes­sag­ing site in part asso­ci­at­ed with far-right extrem­ists and white supremacists—saying, “We need boots on the ground and voic­es loud enough to be heard for miles. That’s the only way things are going to change…” In oth­er posts, the same mem­ber encour­aged users to “push for more nation­al­ist poli­cies and atti­tudes.”

    The threat, which was orig­i­nal­ly flagged by SITE Intel­li­gence Group, a non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion track­ing online activ­i­ty of white nation­al­ists and extrem­ist groups, was passed on to US Capi­tol Police by the Secret Ser­vice under the sub­ject line “NEO-NAZI calls on D.C. Pro-Trump Pro­test­ers to Occu­py Fed­er­al Build­ing” in Decem­ber 2020. Capi­tol Police acknowl­edged these noti­fi­ca­tions reply­ing “Thanks!” and “Thanks bro!”

    Vorherrschaft Divi­sion is a neo-Nazi group and one of sev­er­al white nation­al­ist groups orga­niz­ing on Telegram. The group was nev­er one to take light­ly, but the Secret Ser­vice appears to have paid it only pass­ing atten­tion.

    In addi­tion to the neo-Nazi threat, the Secret Ser­vice received mul­ti­ple tips from a “con­cerned cit­i­zen” who claimed that two peo­ple, includ­ing a sub­ject who pre­vi­ous­ly made threats against Joe Biden, were fly­ing to DC to attend Trump’s ral­ly and “incite vio­lence,” and that anoth­er indi­vid­ual would be dri­ving to DC with “bal­lis­tic hel­mets, armored gloves and vests, rifles and sup­pres­sors.” The Secret Ser­vice then spoke to the two sub­jects who flew in upon their arrival at BWI, where the sub­jects acknowl­edged that there was the pos­si­bil­i­ty of vio­lence if they encoun­tered counter pro­tes­tors and refused to tell the Secret Ser­vice where they would be stay­ing. The agency fur­ther val­i­dat­ed the tipster’s claims by find­ing a post on one of the sub­jects’ Face­book pages.

    ...

    ———-

    “Secret Ser­vice knew of neo-Nazi threat on Jan. 6” By Lau­ren White and Sara Wia­trak; CREW; 09/22/2022

    “A mem­ber of Vorherrschaft Divi­sion post­ed on Telegram—a mes­sag­ing site in part asso­ci­at­ed with far-right extrem­ists and white supremacists—saying, “We need boots on the ground and voic­es loud enough to be heard for miles. That’s the only way things are going to change…” In oth­er posts, the same mem­ber encour­aged users to “push for more nation­al­ist poli­cies and atti­tudes.””

    Calls by the Vorherrschaft Divi­sion for “boots on the ground” on Jan 6. Those were the kinds of warn­ings passed on to the Capi­tol Police by the Secret Ser­vice a week before Jan 6. And yet, some­how, the Secret Ser­vice still appar­ent­ly con­clud­ed that there was no risk:

    ...
    The threat, which was orig­i­nal­ly flagged by SITE Intel­li­gence Group, a non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion track­ing online activ­i­ty of white nation­al­ists and extrem­ist groups, was passed on to US Capi­tol Police by the Secret Ser­vice under the sub­ject line “NEO-NAZI calls on D.C. Pro-Trump Pro­test­ers to Occu­py Fed­er­al Build­ing” in Decem­ber 2020. Capi­tol Police acknowl­edged these noti­fi­ca­tions reply­ing “Thanks!” and “Thanks bro!”

    Vorherrschaft Divi­sion is a neo-Nazi group and one of sev­er­al white nation­al­ist groups orga­niz­ing on Telegram. The group was nev­er one to take light­ly, but the Secret Ser­vice appears to have paid it only pass­ing atten­tion.
    ...

    Were these groups deemed to be non-threats because they were seen as sup­port­ers of Pres­i­dent Trump? Or were they deemed non-threats because they these groups were known by the Secret Ser­vice to be active col­lab­o­ra­tors in a plot to block the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the elec­tion? A plot that the Secret Ser­vice already knew was being coor­di­nat­ed by the White House?

    Why were Nazis deemed such non-threats? It’s increas­ing­ly becom­ing one of the cen­tral out­stand­ing ques­tions in this inves­ti­ga­tion. And is kind of the meta-ques­tion for our era.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 8, 2022, 4:49 pm
  4. It looks like the miss­ing Secret Ser­vice Jan 6 text mes­sages are like­ly lost for­ev­er. But that does­n’t mean all of the Secret Ser­vice’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions from the peri­od were lost. Quite the con­trary, over 1 mil­lion emails and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions turned over to the Jan­u­ary 6 Con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tors back in August. As as we learned dur­ing the final pub­lic hear­ing of the Jan­u­ary 6 Con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tion, those emails includ­ed some pret­ty damn­ing evi­dence of Secret Ser­vice fore­knowl­edge about vio­lent plots. Includ­ing one email sent to the Secret Ser­vice on Decem­ber 26, 10 days before the insur­rec­tion, warn­ing that the Proud Boys “think that they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed and will out­num­ber the police so they can’t be stopped...Their plan is to lit­er­al­ly kill peo­ple. Please please take this tip seri­ous­ly and inves­ti­gate fur­ther.” That’s pret­ty explic­it.

    And as we’ve seen, the Secret Ser­vice appeared to have some sort of work­ing rela­tion­ship with groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keep­ers going back to the months lead­ing up to the 2020. For exam­ple, there was the tes­ti­mo­ny by Oath Keep­er mem­ber John Zim­mer­man that he over­heard Stew­art Rhodes speak­ing with a Secret Ser­vice agent back in Sep­tem­ber of 2020 in order to coor­di­nate about the “para­me­ters” under which the Oath Keep­ers could oper­ate dur­ing an upcom­ing Trump ral­ly. That’s on top of reports that the Secret Secret got explic­it warn­ings about vio­lent threats from groups that includ­ed not just the Proud Boys but also Atom­Waf­fen and Storm Front. That warn­ing was received on Jan 4, and yet the Secret Ser­vice report­ed­ly dis­missed these threats in inter­nal mem­os that stat­ed “There is no indi­ca­tion of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence” from these groups. So the warn­ing about the Proud Boys 10 days before Jan 6 was actu­al­ly fol­lowed up with anoth­er more alarm­ing warn­ing about the Proud Boys and a bunch of neo-Nazi groups 8 days lat­er, just two days before the insur­rec­tion. And yet the Secret Ser­vice did­n’t seem alarmed in the least.

    So it’s impor­tant to keep in mind two details here:

    1. Mike Pence was­n’t real­ly a direct tar­get of this vio­lent plot until the evening of Jan 5, when Pence issued his final refusal to go along with the plan to reject the vote. It was that day that Pence’s Chief of Staff, Marc Short, informed the head of Pence’s Secret Ser­vice detail that he feared for Pence’s safe­ty.

    2. The Secret Ser­vice is NOT the agency tasked with pro­tect­ing mem­bers of Con­gress. That’s the domain of the Capi­tol Police.

    So until that evening of Jan 5, all of that vio­lent plot­ting that the Secret Ser­vice was clear­ly aware of was vio­lent plot­ting on behalf of the peo­ple the Secret Ser­vice was tasked with pro­tect­ing. It was only when Pence made him­self a tar­get on the evening of Jan 5 that Pence him­self became a poten­tial tar­get. So when we’re scratch­ing our heads try­ing to under­stand what the Secret Ser­vice was think­ing in the face of these threats, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that it was only on the evening of Jan 5 — hours before the insur­rec­tion — when the threats began to direct­ly tar­get some­one under Secret Ser­vice pro­tec­tion:

    The Los Ange­les Times

    Secret Ser­vice knew of plans for vio­lence 10 days before Jan. 6 riot

    By Fred­dy Brew­ster
    Oct. 13, 2022 12:09 PM PT

    WASHINGTON —

    Unit­ed States Secret Ser­vice agents were alert­ed to poten­tial vio­lence at the U.S. Capi­tol on Jan. 6, 2021, at least 10 days before riot­ers stormed the build­ing, accord­ing to emails and oth­er mes­sages obtained by the Jan. 6 com­mit­tee.

    “Intel­li­gence about this risk was direct­ly avail­able to the U.S. Secret Ser­vice and oth­ers in the White House in advance of the Ellipse speech, in advance of the march to the U.S. Capi­tol,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D‑Burbank).

    The com­mit­tee has obtained over 1 mil­lion emails from the Secret Ser­vice and spent the month of August review­ing the doc­u­ments, Schiff said. The FBI, Unit­ed States Capi­tol Police, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Depart­ment of the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, and oth­ers gave the Secret Ser­vice intel­li­gence they had gath­ered regard­ing poten­tial threats, Schiff added.

    The threats includ­ed “calls to occu­py fed­er­al build­ings,” “intim­i­dat­ing Con­gress and invad­ing [the] Capi­tol Build­ing,” and peo­ple claim­ing they want to “arm them­selves and to engage in polit­i­cal vio­lence at the event,” accord­ing to doc­u­ments pre­sent­ed by the com­mit­tee.

    Schiff also high­light­ed how the Proud Boys, one of the groups who led the attack on the Capi­tol, planned their activ­i­ties in the open on mul­ti­ple web­sites that were shared with the Secret Ser­vice pri­or to the attack.

    One source sent a tip to the Secret Ser­vice on Dec. 26, 2020, warn­ing about the Proud Boys specif­i­cal­ly.

    “They think that they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed and will out­num­ber the police so they can’t be stopped,” the tip­ster warned. “Their plan is to lit­er­al­ly kill peo­ple. Please please take this tip seri­ous­ly and inves­ti­gate fur­ther.”

    The Secret Service’s knowl­edge of poten­tial vio­lence also extends to the day of Jan. 6, 2021, Schiff said, adding that accord­ing to mes­sages the com­mit­tee obtained, the Secret Ser­vice knew some pro­test­ers car­ried bal­lis­tics hel­mets, body armor, radio equip­ment, pep­per spray and var­i­ous firearms.

    ...

    ———-

    “Secret Ser­vice knew of plans for vio­lence 10 days before Jan. 6 riot ” by Fred­dy Brew­ster; The Los Ange­les Times; 10/13/2022

    “The threats includ­ed “calls to occu­py fed­er­al build­ings,” “intim­i­dat­ing Con­gress and invad­ing [the] Capi­tol Build­ing,” and peo­ple claim­ing they want to “arm them­selves and to engage in polit­i­cal vio­lence at the event,” accord­ing to doc­u­ments pre­sent­ed by the com­mit­tee.”

    It would be hard to come up with more explic­it threats than the threats revealed at Thurs­day’s final pub­lic hear­ing of the Jan­u­ary 6 Con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tion. Threats found in the trove of over 1 mil­lion emails and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions that, as we’re going to see, still does­n’t include the month of text mes­sages from Dec 7, 2020 to Jan 8, 2021 that were alleged­ly acci­den­tal­ly delet­ed and per­ma­nent­ly lost. There would pre­sum­ably be a lot more exam­ples of dire warn­ings about plans for vio­lence in those delet­ed texts. But the ‘lost’ texts aren’t need­ed to estab­lish whether or not the Secret Ser­vice had ample warn­ing about vio­lent plots. Not all of the warn­ings or com­mu­ni­ca­tions about the poten­tial for vio­lence were going to be sent over text, after all:

    ...
    The com­mit­tee has obtained over 1 mil­lion emails from the Secret Ser­vice and spent the month of August review­ing the doc­u­ments, Schiff said. The FBI, Unit­ed States Capi­tol Police, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police Depart­ment of the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, and oth­ers gave the Secret Ser­vice intel­li­gence they had gath­ered regard­ing poten­tial threats, Schiff added.

    ...

    The Secret Service’s knowl­edge of poten­tial vio­lence also extends to the day of Jan. 6, 2021, Schiff said, adding that accord­ing to mes­sages the com­mit­tee obtained, the Secret Ser­vice knew some pro­test­ers car­ried bal­lis­tics hel­mets, body armor, radio equip­ment, pep­per spray and var­i­ous firearms.
    ...

    And in the case of the Proud Boys, the Secret Ser­vice appar­ent­ly got explic­it tips about Proud Boy plans to swarm the Capi­tol and over­whelm the police with supe­ri­or num­bers and then lit­er­al­ly kill peo­ple. This tip was sent on Dec 26, 10 days before the insur­rec­tion:

    ...
    Schiff also high­light­ed how the Proud Boys, one of the groups who led the attack on the Capi­tol, planned their activ­i­ties in the open on mul­ti­ple web­sites that were shared with the Secret Ser­vice pri­or to the attack.

    One source sent a tip to the Secret Ser­vice on Dec. 26, 2020, warn­ing about the Proud Boys specif­i­cal­ly.

    “They think that they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed and will out­num­ber the police so they can’t be stopped,” the tip­ster warned. “Their plan is to lit­er­al­ly kill peo­ple. Please please take this tip seri­ous­ly and inves­ti­gate fur­ther.”
    ...

    A plan to lit­er­al­ly kill peo­ple. That sure sounds like the kind of plan that should have set off alarm bells inside the Secret Ser­vice. And yet those alarm bells did­n’t go off as one report after anoth­er in this inves­ti­ga­tion has demon­strat­ed. Or at least they weren’t act­ed upon.

    And that brings us to an impor­tant detail in this broad­er sto­ry about the what the Secret Ser­vice knew and when it knew it: The Secret Ser­vice isn’t tasked with pro­tect­ing mem­bers of Con­gress. That’s exclu­sive­ly the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the Capi­tol Police. In oth­er words, the Secret Ser­vice isn’t tasked with pro­tect­ing the peo­ple threat­ened by the vio­lent plots against Con­gress on Jan 6.

    The one notable excep­tion was Mike Pence. Recall how Pence’s Chief of Staff, Marc Short, informed the head of Pence’s Secret Ser­vice detail about his con­cerns for Pence’s safe­ty. That alert came one day after the Jan 4 meet­ing at the White House where John East­man argued that Pence had the pow­er to send the vote back to the states for a 10 day review. Trump tweet­ed out on the morn­ing of Jan 5 that Pence could reject elec­tors and again pressed Pence lat­er in the day to reject the votes. That was the day Marc Short told Pence’s Secret Ser­vice detail chief about secu­ri­ty con­cerns. It’s anoth­er impor­tant detail in this sto­ry, because the ‘plan’ up until that point had been for Pence to go along with ‘the plan’ and there­fore not be a tar­get of vio­lence by the armed mob they were plan­ning on unleash­ing on the Capi­tol. It was only on the evening of Jan 5, when Pence made what was his final refusal to go along with the plan, that Pence became a major tar­get. Up until that point it was real­ly just Con­gress that was being put at risk by any of the vio­lent plot­ting.

    It’s impor­tant con­text for try­ing to under­stand how and why the Secret Ser­vice may have been so casu­al about the Trumpian army being assem­bled in prepa­ra­tion for Jan 6. No one under Secret Ser­vice pro­tec­tion was direct­ly threat­ened by the plots until the evening of Jan 5. The Capi­tol Police, as the agency tasked with pro­tect­ing Con­gress, had a lot more to be wor­ried about:

    ABC News

    Pro­tect­ing US gov­ern­ment lead­ers: Who gets secu­ri­ty and why: ANALYSIS

    Pro­tec­tion is typ­i­cal­ly based on three fac­tors – posi­tion, threats and risk.

    By Don­ald J. Mihalek and Richard M. Frankel
    Octo­ber 18, 2019, 4:06 AM

    Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion Bet­sy DeVos has a pro­tec­tive detail pro­vid­ed by the U.S. Mar­shals Ser­vice, and it’s been ques­tioned by some mem­bers of the pub­lic who don’t under­stand its threat basis and con­sid­er it unnec­es­sary since it seemed to be start­ed due to pol­i­tics and its cost has increased.

    Those ques­tions are answered by some basic infor­ma­tion about the U.S. gov­ern­ment agen­cies that pro­vide per­son­al pro­tec­tion and why they pro­vide it.

    Per­on­sal or exec­u­tive pro­tec­tion is typ­i­cal­ly based on three fac­tors: posi­tion, threats and risk. The pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, for instance, trig­gers all three — it is an impor­tant posi­tion that typ­i­cal­ly receives many threats, and the risk of some­thing hap­pen­ing to them would have enor­mous con­se­quences.

    In the Unit­ed States, exec­u­tive pro­tec­tion is pro­vid­ed by an array of fed­er­al enti­ties whose mis­sion is to ensure their charges are kept free from harm. Often, though, the over­lap­ping fed­er­al gamut becomes con­fus­ing as dif­fer­ent agen­cies per­form what many per­ceive as a sim­i­lar func­tion but for dif­fer­ent peo­ple.

    Here’s a run­down of how pro­tec­tive ser­vices are man­aged:

    Secret Ser­vice:

    The Secret Ser­vice is often thought of — and some­times con­fused — as the only agency with­in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment that pro­tects peo­ple. While the Secret Ser­vice does pro­tect a large array of indi­vid­u­als, the scope of that pro­tec­tion can be dwarfed by oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies.

    By law, 18 USC 3056, under the direc­tion of the sec­re­tary of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, the Unit­ed States Secret Ser­vice is autho­rized to pro­tect:

    - The pres­i­dent and vice pres­i­dent (or oth­er offi­cer next in the order of suc­ces­sion to the office of pres­i­dent)

    - The pres­i­dent-elect and vice pres­i­dent-elect

    - The imme­di­ate fam­i­lies of those indi­vid­u­als

    - For­mer pres­i­dents and their spous­es for their life­times, except that pro­tec­tion of a spouse shall ter­mi­nate in the event of remar­riage

    - Chil­dren of a for­mer pres­i­dent who are under 16 years of age.

    - Vis­it­ing heads of for­eign states or for­eign gov­ern­ments includ­ing the pope

    - Oth­er dis­tin­guished for­eign vis­i­tors to the Unit­ed States and offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Unit­ed States per­form­ing spe­cial mis­sions abroad when the pres­i­dent directs that such pro­tec­tion be pro­vid­ed, such as the U.S. trade rep­re­sen­ta­tive

    - Major pres­i­den­tial and vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates and, with­in 120 days of the gen­er­al pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the spous­es of such can­di­dates

    - For­mer vice pres­i­dents, their spous­es and their chil­dren who are under 16 years of age, for a peri­od of not more than six months after the date the for­mer vice pres­i­dent leaves office

    Under the law, each of the above list of indi­vid­u­als may decline pro­tec­tion except for the sit­ting pres­i­dent, vice pres­i­dent and pres­i­dent- and vice pres­i­dent-elect. For­mer Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon waived pro­tec­tion dur­ing the lat­ter years of his life.

    Addi­tion­al­ly, the Secret Ser­vice has been direct­ed to pro­tect cer­tain Cab­i­net-lev­el offi­cials — includ­ing the sec­re­tary of Home­land Secu­ri­ty and sec­re­tary of trea­sury — and senior White House staff often con­sid­ered crit­i­cal to nation­al secu­ri­ty, includ­ing the White House chief of staff and nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er.

    Cur­rent­ly, the Secret Ser­vice pro­vides pro­tec­tion to over 40 indi­vid­u­als on a full time bases and can pro­vide tem­po­rary pro­tec­tion of almost 200 indi­vid­u­als — as hap­pens every Sep­tem­ber dur­ing the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly in New York City.

    Diplo­mat­ic Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice (DSS):

    With­in the State Depart­ment, the Diplo­mat­ic Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice (DSS) has a high-pro­file per­son­al pro­tec­tive func­tion as well, high­light­ed when­ev­er the sec­re­tary of state trav­els over­seas. The sec­re­tary of state detail is DSS’s largest per­ma­nent dig­ni­tary pro­tec­tive detail.

    DSS also has an ongo­ing pro­tec­tion detail on the Unit­ed States ambas­sador to the Unit­ed Nations and oper­ates pro­tec­tive assign­ments on vis­it­ing for­eign dig­ni­taries and diplo­mats, which is high­light­ed dur­ing the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly.

    Typ­i­cal­ly, for­eign and defense min­is­ters from impor­tant nations as well as oth­ers with high threats are typ­i­cal­ly cov­ered by DSS. These have includ­ed Prince William, Prince Har­ry, the Dalai Lama, Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Abbas and Princess Diana. The DSS is also tasked with pro­vid­ing pro­tec­tion to the U.S. Olympic team and ensur­ing they remain safe at Olympic venues.

    Intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty:

    The CIA direc­tor and some of their deputies, as well as the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence, are also pro­vid­ed per­son­al pro­tec­tion due to the nature of what they do and threats.

    This exec­u­tive pro­tec­tion is pro­vid­ed by the Secu­ri­ty Pro­tec­tive Ser­vice and Pro­tec­tive Agents, who — despite Hol­ly­wood depic­tions — are actu­al­ly fed­er­al law enforce­ment offi­cers with police pow­ers rather than agents from the ranks of the CIA’s intel­li­gence per­son­nel. This is due in large part to the neces­si­ty of these offi­cers to be able to arrest peo­ple, an author­i­ty intel­li­gence offi­cers lack.

    The risk of one of those high-rank­ing indi­vid­u­als being cap­tured is a tremen­dous risk to our nation­al secu­ri­ty and dri­ves the rea­sons for the per­son­al pro­tec­tive details.

    U.S. Capi­tol Police:

    Every sin­gle indi­vid­ual in Con­gress that holds lead­er­ship posi­tions, includ­ing the speak­er of the House, House minor­i­ty leader, Sen­ate pres­i­dent pro tem­pore, Sen­ate major­i­ty and minor­i­ty lead­ers as well as the whips in those cham­bers, receives per­son­al pro­tec­tion from the U.S. Capi­tol Police.

    The Capi­tol Police also con­duct risk assess­ments of every mem­ber of Con­gress and may, from time to time, estab­lish a pro­tec­tive detail on a mem­ber if the threat matrix against them becomes pro­nounced.

    FBI and U.S. Mar­shals Ser­vice (USMS):

    With­in the Depart­ment of Jus­tice (DOJ), both the FBI and U.S. Mar­shals Ser­vice have delin­eat­ed per­son­al pro­tec­tive func­tions focused on indi­vid­u­als with­in the DOJ frame­work.

    The FBI oper­ates the pro­tec­tive detail for the attor­ney gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States and also oth­ers as request­ed by DOJ. The attor­ney gen­er­al is the FBI’s only per­ma­nent per­son­al pro­tec­tive mis­sion. In some lim­it­ed ways, the FBI may also per­form per­son­al pro­tec­tion on high-pro­file wit­ness­es or vic­tims.

    The Mar­shals Ser­vice has broad legal author­i­ty to pro­vide pro­tec­tion for almost any­one not giv­en spe­cif­ic pro­tec­tion by law, hence their abil­i­ty to pro­vide pro­tec­tion for the sec­re­tary of edu­ca­tion.

    Addi­tion­al­ly, the Mar­shals Ser­vice has the author­i­ty to pro­tect fed­er­al judges, includ­ing judges on the Supreme Court, U.S. attor­neys and in rare cas­es, high-pro­file crim­i­nals and wit­ness­es who may tes­ti­fy against dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals.

    For­mer Iraq Pres­i­dent Sad­dam Hus­sein, for exam­ple, received pro­tec­tion from the Mar­shals Ser­vice pri­or to his death sen­tence and the Mar­shals Ser­vice ran the court process in Afghanistan for sev­er­al high-pro­file ter­ror­ist cas­es.

    Depart­ment of Defense:

    Per­haps the largest and broad­est per­son­al pro­tec­tive role in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is the Depart­ment of Defense (DOD) and its com­po­nent mil­i­tary branch­es that oper­ate pro­tec­tive details on a wide range of DOD per­son­nel and offi­cers.

    The high­est pro­file is, of course, the sec­re­tary of defense, who receives their pro­tec­tion via the U.S. Army Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices Bat­tal­ion (CID), who also cov­er the deputy sec­re­tary of defense, the chair­man and vice chair­man, joint chiefs, the sec­re­tary of the Army, the chief of staff of the Army, the vice chief of staff of the Army, their for­eign coun­ter­parts on offi­cial vis­its to the Unit­ed States and oth­er Depart­ment of Defense High Risk Per­son­nel as direct­ed.

    They can also pro­vide exec­u­tive lev­el pro­tec­tion for senior U.S. Army com­man­ders dur­ing war-time and con­tin­gency oper­a­tions as direct­ed, most recent­ly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Oth­er Cab­i­net-lev­el offi­cials in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment also receive dif­fer­ent lev­els of per­son­al pro­tec­tion from law enforce­ment com­po­nents with­in their depart­ment. These per­son­al pro­tec­tive details take dif­fer­ent forms and are often autho­rized via an offi­cial direc­tive vs defin­i­tive legal author­i­ty.

    ...

    ————

    “Pro­tect­ing US gov­ern­ment lead­ers: Who gets secu­ri­ty and why: ANALYSIS” By Don­ald J. Mihalek and Richard M. Frankel; ABC News; 10/18/2019

    The Secret Ser­vice is often thought of — and some­times con­fused — as the only agency with­in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment that pro­tects peo­ple. While the Secret Ser­vice does pro­tect a large array of indi­vid­u­als, the scope of that pro­tec­tion can be dwarfed by oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies.

    The Secret Ser­vice may have the biggest respon­si­bil­i­ties in terms of the indi­vid­u­als its pro­tect­ing. But in terms of vol­ume and num­ber of peo­ple under its pro­tec­tion, the Secret Ser­vice only cov­ers around 40 peo­ple full time. The vast major­i­ty of peo­ple under some sort of fed­er­al pro­tec­tion are pro­tect­ed by anoth­er agency. And for mem­bers of Con­gress, that agency is the Capi­tol Police:

    ...
    Cur­rent­ly, the Secret Ser­vice pro­vides pro­tec­tion to over 40 indi­vid­u­als on a full time bases and can pro­vide tem­po­rary pro­tec­tion of almost 200 indi­vid­u­als — as hap­pens every Sep­tem­ber dur­ing the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly in New York City.

    ...

    U.S. Capi­tol Police:

    Every sin­gle indi­vid­ual in Con­gress that holds lead­er­ship posi­tions, includ­ing the speak­er of the House, House minor­i­ty leader, Sen­ate pres­i­dent pro tem­pore, Sen­ate major­i­ty and minor­i­ty lead­ers as well as the whips in those cham­bers, receives per­son­al pro­tec­tion from the U.S. Capi­tol Police.

    The Capi­tol Police also con­duct risk assess­ments of every mem­ber of Con­gress and may, from time to time, estab­lish a pro­tec­tive detail on a mem­ber if the threat matrix against them becomes pro­nounced.
    ...

    So we have to ask: if Secret Ser­vice agents are made aware of vio­lent plots that are being planned on behalf of the peo­ple these agents are tasked with pro­tect­ing and the plot does­n’t seem to pose a direct threat to any of these peo­ple, what respon­si­bil­i­ties do these agents have regard­ing the plots? What does the Secret Ser­vice train­ing instruct these agents to do in a sit­u­a­tion like that? Because that appears to have been the sit­u­a­tion for these agents up until the evening of Jan 5 when Mike Pence final­ly made clear that he was­n’t going along with the plan. It was only then, hours before the insur­rec­tion, that the plot sud­den­ly threat­ened some­one under Secret Ser­vice pro­tec­tion.

    But while the lack of any direct threats to peo­ple under Secret Ser­vice pro­tec­tion may have been a fac­tor in the agen­cy’s casu­al atti­tude toward the pre-insur­rec­tion threats, we can’t ignore the oth­er obvi­ous fac­tor that could be at work here: per­son­al sym­pa­thies for Trump and the insur­rec­tion­ists. And while we haven’t received reports about ram­pant pro-Trump sym­pa­thies across the Secret Ser­vice, we did just get such a report about the FBI. Yes, “a siz­able per­cent­age of the employ­ee pop­u­la­tion that felt sym­pa­thet­ic to the group that stormed the Capi­tol” accord­ing to an email released under a FOIA request sent to the FBI by for­mer agent a week after the insur­rec­tion. Accord­ing to anony­mous sources who spoke with NBC news about this email, these sym­pa­thies have, some cas­es, trans­lat­ed into lack­lus­ter inves­ti­ga­tions. So if that was the sen­ti­ment get­ting expressed a week after the insur­rec­tion, you have to won­der how exten­sive that sup­port was the Trump’s resis­tance to the elec­toral loss dur­ing the months lead­ing up to the insur­rec­tion when all these red flags were get­ting waved and ignored:

    NBC News

    FBI offi­cial was warned after Jan. 6 that some in the bureau were ‘sym­pa­thet­ic’ to the Capi­tol riot­ers

    “There are def­i­nite­ly vary­ing degrees of enthu­si­asm from agents across the coun­try,” a source told NBC News.

    By Ryan J. Reil­ly and Ken Dilan­ian
    Oct. 14, 2022, 10:38 AM CDT

    WASHINGTON — A week after the Jan. 6 attack, an email land­ed in a top FBI official’s inbox express­ing con­cern that some bureau employ­ees might not be par­tic­u­lar­ly moti­vat­ed to help bring to jus­tice the riot­ers who stormed the U.S. Capi­tol and threat­ened law­mak­ers’ lives.

    “There’s no good way to say it, so I’ll just be direct: from my first-hand and sec­ond-hand infor­ma­tion from con­ver­sa­tions since Jan­u­ary 6th there is, at best, a siz­able per­cent­age of the employ­ee pop­u­la­tion that felt sym­pa­thet­ic to the group that stormed the Capi­tol,” and that it was no dif­fer­ent than the Black Lives Mat­ter protests of the sum­mer of 2020, the per­son wrote in an email to Paul Abbate, who is now the No. 2 offi­cial at the bureau. “Sev­er­al also lament­ed that the only rea­son this vio­lent activ­i­ty is get­ting more atten­tion is because of ‘polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.’”

    The email, recent­ly dis­closed pub­licly in response to a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request, reflects an issue that’s been hang­ing over the Jan. 6 inves­ti­ga­tion since it began: the notion that there are some in the bureau who weren’t, and aren’t, par­tic­u­lar­ly dri­ven to bring cas­es against the Capi­tol riot­ers.

    The con­tent of the full email, which includes a ref­er­ence to “my first unit,” cou­pled with the fact that Abbate replied sug­gests that the sender, whose name is redact­ed, was like­ly some­one plugged into the bureau or a for­mer agent. The email was labeled exter­nal, indi­cat­ing it was not sent from an active bureau account.

    “I lit­er­al­ly had to explain to an agent from a ‘blue state’ office the dif­fer­ence between oppor­tunists burn­ing and loot­ing dur­ing protests that stemmed legit­i­mate griev­ance to police bru­tal­i­ty vs. an insur­gent mob whose pur­pose was to pre­vent the exe­cu­tion of demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es at the behest of a sit­ting pres­i­dent,” the per­son wrote to Abbate. “One is a smat­ter­ing of crim­i­nals, the oth­er is an orga­nized group of domes­tic ter­ror­ists.”

    The per­son also wrote that an offi­cial in one FBI office in a “red state” said that more than 70% of that office’s coun­tert­er­ror­ism squad and about three-quar­ters of its agent pop­u­la­tion dis­agreed with the vio­lence, “but could under­stand where the frus­tra­tion was com­ing from.”

    In his response, Abbate wrote: “Thank you [redact­ed] for shar­ing every­thing below.”

    When he received the email, Abbate was the asso­ciate deputy direc­tor in charge of all FBI per­son­nel, bud­get, admin­is­tra­tion and infra­struc­ture. The next month, he was named deputy direc­tor, the high­est-rank­ing offi­cial under FBI Direc­tor Christo­pher Wray.

    ...

    Despite the appar­ent Jan. 6 ten­sion in the bureau, the FBI has had major suc­cess­es in what offi­cials have repeat­ed­ly described as an unprece­dent­ed inves­ti­ga­tion. More than 850 defen­dants have been arrest­ed on charges rang­ing from mis­de­meanor parad­ing to felony sedi­tious con­spir­a­cy. So far, the inves­ti­ga­tion has had a flaw­less track record before juries.

    FBI spe­cial agents have extract­ed con­fes­sions from riot­ers, includ­ing one who drove a stun gun into the neck of a police offi­cer abduct­ed by the mob, and have giv­en com­pelling tes­ti­mo­ny about respond­ing on Jan. 6 and escort­ing tear­ful law­mak­ers back into the build­ing that evening.

    But sources close to the inves­ti­ga­tion have told NBC News that there have been some spe­cial agents in the coun­try who have resist­ed Jan. 6 cas­es. Many spe­cial agents have been very proac­tive, while oth­ers in var­i­ous field offices have engaged in half-heart­ed inves­tiga­tive efforts and seem con­tent to let things peter out, the sources said.

    “There are def­i­nite­ly vary­ing degrees of enthu­si­asm from agents across the coun­try,” one source close to the inves­ti­ga­tion said. The source said it was “dis­ap­point­ing” to see a “lack­lus­ter response” from some spe­cial agents, while not­ing that there were many at the FBI who did their job regard­less of pol­i­tics.

    Some of the inter­nal resis­tance at the FBI has gone pub­lic.

    Steve Friend, an FBI spe­cial agent from Flori­da, was praised as “patri­ot­ic” by Repub­li­can law­mak­ers after he was sus­pend­ed not long after telling a supe­ri­or he was “going to refuse to par­tic­i­pate in any J6 cas­es.” As NBC News has report­ed, Friend chose to make his stand by object­ing to the arrest of a mem­ber of a mem­ber of a mili­tia with ties to a for­mer con­gres­sion­al can­di­date in Flori­da.

    After receiv­ing sup­port from 30 for­mer FBI spe­cial agents, Friend joined Trump’s Truth Social plat­form this week, where he was wel­comed by Kyle Seraphin, anoth­er sus­pend­ed FBI spe­cial agent who joined Truth Social and did an inter­view with con­ser­v­a­tive fire­brand Dan Bongi­no after his sus­pen­sion. Seraphin has writ­ten that the Jan. 6 cas­es keep him awake at night, and pro­mot­ed a fundrais­er for a Jan. 6 legal defense fund.

    Seraphin him­self, in a video post­ed online, said that he was at a shoot­ing range with local law enforce­ment offi­cials when the Jan. 6 attack hap­pened, and thought that a bunch of “goof­balls” were behind the attack.

    “We were laugh­ing about it, and there’s no oth­er way to say it,” he said. “We were lit­er­al­ly laugh­ing, peo­ple were crack­ing up, you know, some­body has Nan­cy Pelosi’s podi­um. Is that the way that our coun­try is sup­posed to act? No, but these were a bunch of clowns, that’s not what an insur­rec­tion looks like to me.”

    In anoth­er mes­sage on Truth Social, Seraphin said he had “lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of employ­ees” stand­ing behind him. “You’ll only see me. But you will hear them. And we aren’t hap­py.”

    The email sent to Abbate was released the same day the House Jan. 6 com­mit­tee held its ninth pub­lic hear­ing and shed light on some of the warn­ing signs the FBI received ahead of the attack on the Capi­tol. The com­mit­tee revealed the FBI had briefed the Secret Ser­vice on Jan. 5 that right-wing groups were estab­lish­ing armed “quick reac­tion forces” and said groups like the Oath Keep­ers were “stand­ing by at the ready should POTUS request assis­tance.” Those rev­e­la­tions line up with infor­ma­tion that has come out in the ongo­ing Oath Keep­ers tri­al.

    A tip the FBI received about the Proud Boys ahead of Jan. 6, high­light­ed by the com­mit­tee, was even stark­er.

    “Their plan is to lit­er­al­ly kill peo­ple. Please please take this tip seri­ous­ly and inves­ti­gate fur­ther,” the Decem­ber 2020 tip stat­ed.

    Frank Figli­uzzi, a for­mer FBI offi­cial and NBC News con­trib­u­tor, said on MSNBC on Thurs­day that it should be abun­dant­ly clear to FBI employ­ees that the attack on the Capi­tol dur­ing the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Elec­toral Col­lege vote was a very seri­ous mat­ter.

    “If a FBI employ­ee can’t under­stand the dif­fer­ence between Black Lives Mat­ter vio­lence and an attempt to over­throw the gov­ern­ment and stop a valid elec­tion,” he said, “then they need to find anoth­er job.”

    ———-

    “FBI offi­cial was warned after Jan. 6 that some in the bureau were ‘sym­pa­thet­ic’ to the Capi­tol riot­ers” by Ryan J. Reil­ly and Ken Dilan­ian; NBC News; 10/14/2022

    “There’s no good way to say it, so I’ll just be direct: from my first-hand and sec­ond-hand infor­ma­tion from con­ver­sa­tions since Jan­u­ary 6th there is, at best, a siz­able per­cent­age of the employ­ee pop­u­la­tion that felt sym­pa­thet­ic to the group that stormed the Capi­tol,” and that it was no dif­fer­ent than the Black Lives Mat­ter protests of the sum­mer of 2020, the per­son wrote in an email to Paul Abbate, who is now the No. 2 offi­cial at the bureau. “Sev­er­al also lament­ed that the only rea­son this vio­lent activ­i­ty is get­ting more atten­tion is because of ‘polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.’”

    A “siz­able per­cent­age of the employ­ee pop­u­la­tion” at the FBI was high­ly sym­pa­thet­ic towards the insur­rec­tion­ists. Imag­ine that. And don’t for­get that this anony­mous assess­ment of the FBI staff’s sym­pa­thies was made after the insur­rec­tion. This was an inter­nal poll of the respons­es to the insur­rec­tion, not pre-insur­rec­tion sup­port for Trump’s ‘stolen elec­tion’ claims. That’s how strong the sup­port for Trump was inside the FBI: they still loved him even after the insur­rec­tion.

    And while the FBI has clear­ly made a large num­ber of arrests of the riot­ers, it’s hard to accept the idea that these endur­ing sym­pa­thies haven’t com­pro­mised at least some of those inves­ti­ga­tions. Espe­cial­ly inves­ti­ga­tions that actu­al­ly threat­en Trump direct­ly and not just ran­dom riot­ers:

    ...
    The email, recent­ly dis­closed pub­licly in response to a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request, reflects an issue that’s been hang­ing over the Jan. 6 inves­ti­ga­tion since it began: the notion that there are some in the bureau who weren’t, and aren’t, par­tic­u­lar­ly dri­ven to bring cas­es against the Capi­tol riot­ers.

    The con­tent of the full email, which includes a ref­er­ence to “my first unit,” cou­pled with the fact that Abbate replied sug­gests that the sender, whose name is redact­ed, was like­ly some­one plugged into the bureau or a for­mer agent. The email was labeled exter­nal, indi­cat­ing it was not sent from an active bureau account.

    “I lit­er­al­ly had to explain to an agent from a ‘blue state’ office the dif­fer­ence between oppor­tunists burn­ing and loot­ing dur­ing protests that stemmed legit­i­mate griev­ance to police bru­tal­i­ty vs. an insur­gent mob whose pur­pose was to pre­vent the exe­cu­tion of demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es at the behest of a sit­ting pres­i­dent,” the per­son wrote to Abbate. “One is a smat­ter­ing of crim­i­nals, the oth­er is an orga­nized group of domes­tic ter­ror­ists.”

    The per­son also wrote that an offi­cial in one FBI office in a “red state” said that more than 70% of that office’s coun­tert­er­ror­ism squad and about three-quar­ters of its agent pop­u­la­tion dis­agreed with the vio­lence, “but could under­stand where the frus­tra­tion was com­ing from.”

    ...

    FBI spe­cial agents have extract­ed con­fes­sions from riot­ers, includ­ing one who drove a stun gun into the neck of a police offi­cer abduct­ed by the mob, and have giv­en com­pelling tes­ti­mo­ny about respond­ing on Jan. 6 and escort­ing tear­ful law­mak­ers back into the build­ing that evening.

    But sources close to the inves­ti­ga­tion have told NBC News that there have been some spe­cial agents in the coun­try who have resist­ed Jan. 6 cas­es. Many spe­cial agents have been very proac­tive, while oth­ers in var­i­ous field offices have engaged in half-heart­ed inves­tiga­tive efforts and seem con­tent to let things peter out, the sources said.

    “There are def­i­nite­ly vary­ing degrees of enthu­si­asm from agents across the coun­try,” one source close to the inves­ti­ga­tion said. The source said it was “dis­ap­point­ing” to see a “lack­lus­ter response” from some spe­cial agents, while not­ing that there were many at the FBI who did their job regard­less of pol­i­tics.
    ...

    A ‘siz­able’ is the per­cent­age of employ­ees work­ing in the nation­al secu­ri­ty state who still to this day wish the insur­rec­tion had worked? Who knows, but it’s hard to imag­ine many of the FBI agents who were pro-insur­rec­tion a week after the Jan 6 have real­ly changed their views today. They’re still there pre­sum­ably, at least in most cas­es. It’s some­thing to keep in mind as 2024 approach­es and the prospects for some sort of insur­rec­tion sequel grows. The insur­rec­tion was obvi­ous­ly ‘prac­tice’ for groups intent on over­throw­ing the gov­ern­ment. But it was also prac­tice for any­one inside the gov­ern­ment who wants to help that effort along. Prac­tice at both ignor­ing the warn­ings and then cov­er­ing it up.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 14, 2022, 3:30 pm

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