It seems that we ought to be able to agree on matters of preference and opinion that do not relate to absolute truth. I also realize, clearly realize, that statement is problematic to some, people of goodwill, that do not accept that absolute truth exists. I even admit that there are true adherents of a theosophical religion that believe there is no higher religion than truth. Perhaps when I speak so highly of absolute truth, some might even confuse me with them. My point is, on matters of political theory, people that speak generally the same language, from the same philosophical parent tree even if from diverse branches, ought to be able to disagree. One would also think that men of goodwill, people that proclaim they seek justice and truth would be able to lay aside biases and seek full truth. Of course, neither of these “oughts” manifests in the real world often.

Over the last several years, ‘truthers’ have appeared across the political spectrum. Within these movements, one can find a lot of information that points to truth, but almost without exception, that truth is covered in counter-narratives. Very often the counter-narratives originate from the desire of believers to find alternative answers, things that contradict the story told by those they have already discovered lie. And sometimes, those counter-narratives are intentional, well-crafted lies developed and designed by the other side to pollute attempts to uncover truth and real understanding. This phenomenon is not limited to truth movements, we find it in politics with opposition research and counter-narratives and sometimes intentionally planted red herrings. But a fact remains. Objective truth is elusive, even to those that sincerely seek it because none of us can escape the biases we harbor.  Also, there are groups that actively seek to infiltrate and pollute efforts to seek truth by hijacking the efforts and injecting falsehoods.

Anyone that denies the above will never uncover much that is true about the nature of any of mans’ activities in this world. Anyone that denies that they carry a bias, or perhaps many biases, that hamper their efforts to discern and understand data is only fooling themselves. This includes me, I hold biases.

I have told this story before, but it bears repeating briefly here. In December of 2019, a group of folks I had known from the military began to start a conversation about things we were observing, oddities that looked a lot like methodologies. The group grew over the next two months, we included a couple of military lawyers, some vanilla retired guys, and some folks that had worked with the Department of State and/or some other agencies during their careers. We were all retired military guys, yes guys. We even had a chaplain in the group, he was a good guy, that provided some unexpected and profound perspective to us later based upon some of his experiences. By April or 2020 we decided to formalize our approach, operationalize it and be systematic in our analysis.

This is the only thing we publically published, released on Dec 3, 2020, before we ceased operations. [Initial Report: 202004015-A]. We provided details on specific portions of this directly to elected officials before the election. I was the only individual willing to put a public face on the entire process, I suppose the others were wiser than I. But it was apparent that by December of 2020 retired military men were being brought out across the narrative to say various things, some preposterous, some lies. Some of them meant what they said, some said the truth. But, it was not in keeping with what our profession ought to be doing, not in this way. The methodologies were partly military in nature, we could see that, but no good result could come from all the noise of military 'experts' talking about it. We were no exception, even though we believed we were approaching it with our bias in check, and attempting to look at it holistically and to identify all nefarious players. 

We never had access to all the tools required to follow some of the facts we uncovered to the ground, to see these facts related to the larger story. Specifically, we lacked any capacity to fully see if the provable facts we listed related to China played any part in the story. Those should be considered raw data, not part of an analysis. What we were able to provide analysis on, because we could evaluate enough data, is the relationship of the three main movements in the US and their demonstrated use of well-defined methodologies and doctrine used in state capture operations. 

I have written, long before Darren Beattie, about the methodology of state capture and how I personally saw it being used in the US, I drew heavily from my work with my friends above to reach this conclusion. [Color Revolutions Explained] But I want to be clear, this was just a methodology, not the end state. A thing, not the thing. [Color Revolution was just a Methodology]

Over the coming months in 2020, we witnessed the things that first brought us together manifest openly. Some of the guys went on to work in law enforcement after the military, some had unique skills in the Cyber domain. We used those with these skills to take a peek behind the veil. ANTIFA and BLM were not hard to listen to, not early on. Since they were conducting direct actions in multiple cities the very nature of that made their comms easy to infiltrate, most of the comms. Early on, before they cleaned up their OPSEC it was easy to cross-reference pictures and even details of individual dress and kits to identify key individuals operating in multiple locations. Sometimes it was even possible to trace money and expenditures.

There is no need to bore you with the details, many people talk about these groups and the activities then. We saw enough to come to the conclusions we reached. These organizations were not organic, they were broadly organized, exhibited the ability to modify and improved TTP over time, operated intelligence and counterintelligence capabilities, had a logistical tail, and well something more. The something more was most interesting to us.

Most on the right focused heavily on these groups and their activities. The shock and awe expressed by so many related to the absurd coverage and gaslighting of burning cities and riots called peaceful protests - that outrage hit at half the story. That outrage was harnessed by some of the ‘heroes’ of the right. There is an iconic picture of one of these individuals, standing in DC, face to face with someone wearing black bloc. That picture helped sell a book on ANTIFA, and to keep the focus of those on the right on just one part of the truth, a small, constructed part.

Throughout 2020, the entire theme of our quest for truth kept coming back to one metanarrative. There were observable methodologies in play, and they seemed to be in play on both sides of the common narrative – the friction points that normal progressives and conservatives fight about on social media were dominated by these false friction points.

Discord was a powerful tool in 2020, it was not extremely difficult to infiltrate groups on all sides of the discussion. It has become less useful, people were burned, but in 2020 one could take a peek at a lot. There were ANTIFA-aligned groups seeking to uncover the “Templar Trads” that ran the Qanon movement, Autist looking to reveal the organizational structure of ANTIFA and BLM, and just a few Q groups. Frankly, the Q groups were the least useful to look at, there were some that sought something of truth, there were threads of facts that were true, but it floated in a cesspool of weird. As opposed to the worldview of most of the ANTIFA supporters I am, and as wrong as there very often were in their analysis, they sometimes uncovered true facts.

Of all three, the Autist, at least in 2020 for a lot has happened that has shaped the remnant of that group - but in 2020 the Autist were close to stumbling upon the full picture. These youngsters sought truth in the nearest to a dispassionate, rational, and reasonable way. We noticed, early on that others noticed this. We observed real-time, individuals moving from the ANTIFA-oriented groups to the Autist discords, portraying themselves as totally reasonable and rational seekers of truth and then slowly and methodically turning the conversation completely away from ANTIFA to Q.

The most interesting thing we observed was direct communications between some of the key players in the movements above and journalists and then extrapolating and connecting those journalists to intelligence assets. The chatter between ANTIFA “storytellers”, their term, and journalist of the nature described was more pronounced than in the other groups (with a couple of exceptions). That is logical if one accepts that the outcome that developed was the outcome desired.

When ANTIFA went to ground, and effectively disappeared approaching the 2020 election and several ridiculous events occurred and preposterous words were said between November 2020 and January of 2021 most of the remaining Autists went silent or redirected to trying to understand what Q was, how it deceived so many people and who ran it.

Here is the thing. My little group was convinced, we saw it, we measured it, we evaluated it, we double-checked it – we were convinced by the summer of 2020 that almost every single major event, since at least mid-December of 2019 appeared to be serving the same goal. It smelled like, looked like, and appeared like an operation. Numerous methodologies, techniques used in psychological operations and state capture were present. All of the major groups in play (ANTIFA, and Q and to a lesser degree BLM and even MAGA, the Lincoln Project, and others) had the hallmarks of the exact sorts of groups that governments create to affect political outcomes, the US does it all the time in other nations. ANTIFA had a discernable structure, logistics, command, and control, a propaganda arm. It was designed, it seems as a proto-insurrection group. It looks almost just like what you would build in a nation that you wanted to overthrow. Q looked and smelled just like an improved version of Operation Trust, and many others that have copied that model. BLM looked and smelled just like the sort of populist army of foot soldiers that nefarious actors create in a nation they wish to destabilize to provide cover for their direct-action cadre.

Everyone involved in these groups, those below a certain level, was played and used. It all was designed to achieve a specific end state, it was all part of an operation. We came to that conclusion before the end of 2020, before we decided collectively we were done looking. Nothing I have seen since disputes any of that. In fact, the operation appears to have worked exactly as designed.

Some of the people involved in this operation, wittingly or no, are still out there talking, still shaping opinions. I cannot prove it, we did not directly observe it, but logically it would seem that all of that was beyond mere political parties. We certainly did our part to reach out to and communicate with elected officials and report our observations, none of them were interested. But logically, it appears not theoretical that there is little left uncorrupted in our system and that all of the events, beginning in 2019 were designed to affect foundational systems. People in power are easy to turn. Long after I got out of the business of considering the details of all this a friend drug me into an inquiry that the implications of which imply there may have been a plan as early as 2011 or 2014 to radically alter our system. [Absolute Sabotage] I do not know.

I do know that there are still people out there talking, on both sides that played roles in various parts of the deception operations. Some of them may be your heroes.