The Whitmer Case & the FBI’s PATCON Legacy
The Whitmer Caper and the January 6 Capitol Breach both have their origins in a little known FBI Operation called PATCON.
April 11, 2022 — With the recent acquittal of two defendants in the USA vs. Fox, et al, aka the Michigan “Whitmer Kidnapping Plot” case, and a mistrial on the other two defendants it seems that the FBI has been rebuked for the tactics it used in the case. The defense raised entrapment as a defense, which is legally hard to prove and very rarely is successful. This represents a sea change in the way the American public views the actions of federal law enforcement in their use of infiltration and informants.
Many commentators discussing the case see this as a relatively recent phenomenon, but it is not. The FBI has been employing these tactics for decades. Most people are familiar at least on a surface level of the FBI COINTELPRO operation, which back in the day was aimed at the left. It was used to target groups like the Black Panthers and civil rights groups for example. Much has been made of CointelPro but most people are completely unaware of the FBI’s PATCON aka “Patriot Conspiracy” operation that was basically CointelPro aimed at the right.
The Whitmer Caper, A Review
As a reminder, for those who might be unfamiliar with the Michigan “Whitmer” case, I have devoted over a year to covering the case and you can do a search on our website to read my prior reporting to get caught up. On October 7, 2020, the FBI arrested a slew of men who they claimed had been organizing a domestic terror plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The men had been part of a small “militia” group called the Wolverine Watchmen. Even the left-leaning Buzzfeed News reported on the case, detailing how the FBI used at least 12 informants and two undercover FBI agents to infiltrate the group.
The problem with the government’s theory and narrative of the case is that it appears the FBI, through its network of undercover agents and informants orchestrated the plot, happened to be the ones in leadership positions in the militia, provided the “field training exercises” the group engaged in, recruited people to join the militia, and funded much of the Watchmen’s activities. In short, the FBI was involved every step of the way, to the point that the so-called “plotters” never would have met each other without the involvement of the FBI. The FBI’s agents and informants pressured the group to come up with a “plan” and when some of the members expressed their concerns with “kidnapping” and others quit the group, the FBI’s main informant “Big Dan” effectively became the leader of the group.
“Big Dan,” aka Dan Chappel, claimed that he first came upon the group on Facebook. Interestingly, about two weeks after the arrests, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook testified before the Senate Commerce Committee and mentioned the caper:
It calls into question many things, including how closely social media companies work with the federal government. Dan Chappel claimed he was on social media looking for groups supporting the Second Amendment when Facebook “algorithms” prompted him to the Wolverine Watchmen page. That was one of the alleged “militia” groups accused of plotting the kidnapping. At that time, the group totaled about 15 members and was primarily an online group. Even worse, we later learned that FBI informants created and administered many of the Facebook groups of the fake militias tied to the case. “He got that Facebook page courtesy of the federal government,” a defense attorney said of his client during the trial.
Fedscoop just reported in April of this year:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has purchased 5,000 licenses for an analytics tool for gathering open-source intelligence from multiple social media platforms.
In documents issued during the procurement process, the FBI said that prospective vendors would need to offer a tool that can search a wide range of different social media websites in multiple languages. The award of the licenses could be worth up to $27 million.
‘The tool shall be able to gather information from the following mandatory online and social media data sources: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Deep/Dark Web, VK, and Telegram,’ the bureau said. It added that the ability to search Snapchat, TikTok. Reddit, 8Kun, Gab, Parler, ask.fm, Weibo, Discord. and ‘additional fringe platforms, and other encrypted messaging platforms,’ would be a bonus. – Fedscoop
This is disturbing because it appears the FBI is continuing in its mission to infiltrate, radicalize and entrap American citizens. Another interesting thing to note is that Dan Chappel also claimed that at the time he discovered the group on Facebook he was employed by the U.S. Postal Service.
According to a Yahoo News expose, the USPS has been engaged in a covert operation to spy on American’s social media:
The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about planned protests, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News.
The details of the surveillance effort, known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, have not previously been made public. The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as ‘inflammatory’ postings and then sharing that information across government agencies.
‘Analysts with the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored significant activity regarding planned protests occurring internationally and domestically on March 20, 2021,’ says the March 16 government bulletin, marked as ‘law enforcement sensitive’ and distributed through the Department of Homeland Security’s fusion centers. ‘Locations and times have been identified for these protests, which are being distributed online across multiple social media platforms, to include right-wing leaning Parler and Telegram accounts.’ – Yahoo News
If there is a connection here between this program and how Dan Chappel discovered the group, we do not yet know. It is an interesting coincidence to say the least.
Dan’s story did not add up. Mr. Chappel is a U.S. Army Iraq war veteran and he claimed he “volunteered” to be an FBI informant after “stumbling” across the Wolverine Watchman on Facebook. He testified that after seeing the groups page, he applied to join the private group and was then admitted after being “vetted.” Dan said he wanted to join the group to maintain his “perishable” tactical skills that he learned from the military. Yet, at the time he joined the group they had only one member who had any sort of military experience, Joe Morrison. Morrison was a reservist Marine who worked as a mechanic part time and in fact had zero combat experience or tactical skills.
It is worth asking what training or tactical skills Dan hoped to acquire by joining a group that existed mostly online, and was filled with untrained and inexperienced civilian men. No one seemed interested in this though, so it went unaddressed at the trial. For his role in the caper, Dan told his FBI handling agent he was “building up his resume” by acting as an informant. One might ask, for whom? He also earned over $55,000.00, and received items like a smart watch and a new Microsoft Surface laptop.
It is clear from the evidence revealed at discovery the FBI ran every single aspect of this “plot,” and in my opinion, that was because it was part of an operation. We learned that FBI Special Agent Jayson Chambers opened this case as a TEI (Terrorism Enterprise Investigation) which is the highest tier terrorism investigation at the FBI and requires permission from superiors. Further, he did so well before any so-called “plot” materialized. He even said in text messages to another FBI agent named “Amanda” that he had submitted the TEI paperwork for approval but that he would run the investigation that way “with or without approval.”
During the trial, we learned that at least three groups affiliated with the “Three Percenters” militia were funded by FBI informants. According to the defense attorney for Adam Fox, Adam’s role as a “high-raking militia” member was an FBI concoction. He described how Fox was named “head” of the “Michigan Branch” of the Three Percenters at a June 6, 2020 meeting in Dublin, Ohio that was organized by an FBI informant. Defense attorney Chris Gibbons went on to state that the other attendees of the “nationwide militia” meeting were the heads of the Tennessee and Missouri branches of the Three Percenters and were also both FBI informants. He said that the other two Three Percenters leaders who weren’t FBI informants, the head of the Virginia branch and Delaware branch, defendant Barry Croft were under FBI surveillance. It was around this time that FBI Informant Dan Chappel pushed to bring Fox into the Wolverine Watchmen. Fox was made an admin for a Facebook page that was set up by the federal government. After being made admin for the page, Fox was sent a message on Facebook by undercover FBI agent “mark,” and the so-called plot driven by the FBI escalated.
I encourage people to read my prior reporting to understand just how instrumental and corrupt the FBI was in this investigation, which was really an operation. When evidence began coming out via discovery in the case and at trial, it struck me that we were looking at what appeared to be a “PATCON” 2.0.
PATCON, aka PATRIOT CONSPIRACY
So, what is PATCON, and why have you not heard of it? Code named PATCON, aka “Patriot Conspiracy,” PATCON was a 1990s-era right-wing infiltration operation so secret its details remain largely unknown, unlike CointelPro.
Ken Silva of the Epoch Times reports on PATCON, which I have been covering on my shows for the past 3 years:
First revealed in heavily redacted records in 2007, PATCON entailed three undercover FBI agents operating a front group called the Veterans Aryan Movement (VAM). Posing as racist militiamen who robbed banks to fund domestic terrorism, the undercover agents spied on various right-wing organizations throughout the early ’90s—but never contributed to any major convictions.
The existing public records on PATCON are relatively sparse. They include a few sworn declarations in a long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, as well as the initial set of redacted documents obtained by extremism researcher J.M. Berger.
Newsweek also published a story describing PATCON in 2011 based on extensive information from a former FBI informant who participated in the operation. Much to the informant’s dismay, that Newsweek story was heavily edited to remove information about PATCON, according to court records.
Together, these documents portray an FBI program that prioritized intelligence-gathering on U.S. citizens over enforcing the law. Possibly worse, they reveal connections between PATCON and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh—raising troubling questions about how a massive FBI right-wing counterterrorism initiative failed to prevent the deadliest domestic attack in U.S. history.
And given the recent revelations about Three Percenters, Proud Boys, and other right-wing groups having FBI informants in leadership positions, PATCON should serve as a valuable history lesson for the public, according to Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue, the plaintiff in the ongoing FOIA case.
‘Harry Truman is my favorite president, and he had a quote I always loved: There’s nothing new in the world except the history you don’t know,’ Trentadue told The Epoch Times.
The FBI launched PATCON in 1991 to investigate a right-wing extremist movement that had been bubbling under the surface of U.S. society throughout the 1980s. Members included disaffected military veterans, displaced farmers, as well as a fringe group of racist extremists.
While hundreds of militias and armed conservative organizations operated peacefully during this time, one particular group, Committee of the States, dominated the spotlight with its violent actions and anti-Semitic screeds.
‘I, like the members of the White American Bastion, have declared war on the Zionist Occupied Government [ZOG],’ wrote Committee of the States co-founder David Moran in his last will and testament in 1986, before dying in a shootout with law enforcement. ‘My only regret in this regard is that I was not able to join with my brothers in arms earlier.’
It was out of this atmosphere that the FBI officially launched PATCON in 1991. While racist groups had largely operated separately from militias and other Patriot organizations throughout the ’80s, they were starting to network due to one common enemy: the federal government.
When initially launched, PATCON aimed to investigate a right-wing militia called the Texas Light Infantry (TLI). Records from the time show that the FBI was worried about threats made by the TLI against two of its Austin-based agents.
To investigate the threats, the FBI created a front group called the Veterans Aryan Movement, outfitted with three undercover agents. VAM quickly infiltrated the militia scene by posing as anti-government extremists who robbed banks and armored cars to fund their operations.
The undercover FBI agents soon discovered that the TLI militia lacked concrete plans to kill any federal law enforcers, records show. While the TLI militia members had gone as far as surveilling two FBI agents—including one who was overseeing PATCON at the time—they told undercover agents that nothing would be done until they first overthrew the U.S. government.
But instead of closing their investigation, the FBI kept its VAM front group operating as a ‘vehicle to collect evidence of the criminal activity of suspected domestic terrorism organizations,’ according to an FBI memo from the time. PATCON operatives were to obtain ‘information concerning a nationwide ‘Alliance’ of white supremacist groups being formed to fight the U.S. government,’ FBI records said.
One of PATCON’s main targets was Tom Posey, a Vietnam veteran who helped train anti-communist fighters in Nicaragua during the Reagan administration. Posey became radicalized after he felt the Reagan administration threw him under the bus amid the Iran–Contra scandal, according to his former friend and PATCON informant John Matthews.
Posey turned his Civilian Material Assistance (CMA) organization—which had been helping the Contras—into a ‘survivalist-type group’ opposed to the U.S. government and ‘aimed to make friends with a constellation of white supremacist and survivalist organizations across the country,’ according to Berger.
By February 1992, Posey was purportedly trying to sell Stinger anti-aircraft missiles on the black market. Matthews, also a Vietnam veteran who worked with Posey and CMA in Nicaragua before becoming an informant, tried to help broker a deal as part of an attempted FBI sting operation.
FBI records show that the investigation dragged on for months with little progress, as Posey was reportedly waffling about the Stinger missiles.
‘The FBI’s documents and several interviews with people with direct knowledge of the events paint a murky picture but offer no clear evidence the Stingers had been real,’ notes a 2012 paper by extremism researcher Berger.
While the FBI’s Stinger sting never bore fruit, the FBI had connected Posey to 61 pairs of night-vision goggles that had been stolen from Fort Hood. However, the U.S. Army was running its own investigation into the matter, and arrested the thief in January 1993—ironically, after receiving a tip from Posey.
Months later, the infamous Waco, Texas, siege occurred between federal law enforcement and a religious sect called the Branch Davidians—ending on April 19, 1993, when a fire broke out and killed 76 of the group’s members.
Viewing Waco as a government massacre, Posey’s plans became more extreme. According to FBI records, he began plotting a raid to steal arms from the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant in Alabama.
Posey was arrested in September 1993, but the Department of Justice charged him only in connection with the stolen night-vision goggles.
‘It was the only case investigated by PATCON that ever led to a trial, but the prosecution was based almost exclusively on evidence gathered by the Army’s investigation and a handful of FBI informants,’ Berger wrote in his 2012 paper. ‘Posey maintained at trial that he didn’t know the goggles had been stolen and received a minimal sentence for trafficking in stolen goods. He was released from prison after two years, in early 1996, but CMA as an organization was basically finished.
‘And so was PATCON.’
PATCON lacked major arrests, but it did allow the FBI to deeply infiltrate what by then had become known as the ‘Patriot movement’—the scattered network of anti-government, right-wing, and other armed groups throughout the country.
The result of that is a mixed bag, Berger says.
‘While there is obvious value in collecting information about extremist activity, it must be weighed against fiscal and social costs incurred, as well as the constitutional implications of targeting groups with strong political or religious components,’ he wrote in his 2012 paper.
Historian Wendy Painting, who covered PATCON in her 2016 doctoral thesis-turned-book ‘Aberration in the Heartland of the Real,’ takes a more dismal view of the program.
‘In attempts to prove they were not ‘Feds,’ PATCON agents and informants set about successfully arranging the theft (often from military bases), sale, and purchase of related contraband, mostly weapons but sometimes explosives,’ she wrote.
‘The program did manage to forge a more symbiotic relationship between the targets and those who targeted them, and in doing so, arguably only exacerbated the problem it intended to neutralize.’ – Ken Silva, Epoch Times
The fact that so much information about PATCON has been suppressed and continues to be to this day, is very telling regarding the current status of the ongoing nature of the operation.
“In the early 90s, the FBI conducted a bizarre infiltration program code-named PATCON, short for "Patriot Conspiracy." PATCON consisted primarily of three FBI undercover agents posing as members of a fictional right-wing extremist group.”
“PATCON agents roved the country for years collecting intelligence on right-wing organizations and on dozens of individuals, investigating leads on potential plots and threats.”
If this is sounding incredibly familiar, it should. We have learned in recent years most if not all of these so-called “far right” militia groups and “neo-nazi” groups are either created by or infiltrated by the FBI. This includes the Atomwaffen Division, Order of Nine Angles and the Tempel ov Blood, all of which I have reported on extensively in the past.
Despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and logging countless man-hours, PATCON produced almost no major serious criminal convictions. Instead, PATCON became an intelligence tool, predicated on a series of suspected crimes, most of which were discussed but never committed. This is exactly what we saw with the Michigan “Whitmer Kidnapping Plot” that was driven by the FBI, but never actually materialized.
Because it was not directly tied to prosecutions, the existence of PATCON was not formally disclosed until 2007, when references to the program appeared in documents released through Freedom of Information Act requests about the targeted groups1.
PATCON it still being covered up and information about it kept secret and I believe it is obvious why that is. The parallels with January 6, the Whitmer caper and the so-called “White supremacist” threat is all following the PATCON blueprint.
Suspected PATCON operations include: Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City and more. Sara Kamali of the University of Oxford published a study entitled “Informants, Provocateurs, and Entrapment: Examining the Histories of the FBI’s PATCON and the NYPD’s Muslim Surveillance Program” that discussed PATCON and how it related to what the FBI was doing in the wake of September 11, 2001.
An article from 2011 addressed the Newsweek article that mentioned PATCON, but failed to disclose the truth about the Operation:
And now we know what a cabal of New York editors under pressure from a frightened FBI and nervous White House can do to the story of the greatest crime ever perpetrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation — they can gut it, reducing it almost to innocuousness, all to protect criminals who hide behind federal badges and to shield the politicians who sent them.
For you see, you may scan this article, you may study it, you may even read it backwards, but you will find no mention of PATCON. Nor will you find any mention of how PATCON touched upon, shaped the lives of and ultimately decided the fate of the dead at Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City. For PATCON has been excised by the editorship of Tina Brown and sent down the memory hole as if it never existed.
Sources in advance of the story said that FBI was very afraid of this article. ‘They don’t want PATCON mentioned,’ said one source. ‘Not ever, by anybody. Because it leads to OKBOMB (the FBI name for the Oklahoma City bombing case), Elohim City (Oklahoma, a Christian Identity community), (German undercover agent Andreas Carl) Strassmeier, the McVeigh-Strassmeier connection, the Aryan Republican Army, the whole shebang.’ A source out west told me that when he mentioned the name to a retired FBI agent, he was told to ‘stay away from that shit’ for ‘PATCON will get you killed — it’s national security.’
There are many rumors and individual bits of fact that have drifted out about PATCON over the years — Stories of FBI informants and undercover assets giving taxpayer-funded operational assistance — including weapons, explosives and money — to neo-Nazi and racist terrorists to cement their relationships with the criminals; Reports that an operation that began with real concerns about racist terrorist groups like The Order was expanded to include mere political opponents of the Clinton administration and the defensive-oriented constitutional militias; Reports of a similar operation called VAAPCON, ‘Violence Against Abortion Providers,’ using the same tactics; Reports that the Southern Poverty Law Center was hip-deep as a partner to the FBI in PATCON; Reports of FBI penetration of the news media, religious institutions and the ranks of politicians of both parties, who very usefully expanded the FBI’s power and reach and who provided political cover when the curtain slipped. Oklahoma lawyer and journalist J.D. Cash once told me that ‘there isn’t a neo-Nazi or racist group in the country that isn’t operationally controlled by the FBI.’ Did that include the Aryan Republican Army and the Oklahoma City bombing? I asked. ‘Certainly,’ he replied. So, the prospect of a story in a major news magazine about PATCON must have given the FBI a severe case of the old rectal looseness.
Now, however, ‘the Fibbies in the Hoover Building, (Eric) Holder and (Janet) Napolitano must feel like dancing’ said another source. ‘They got what they wanted out of Newsweek. . .’
So I wrote on Monday in this article which linked to a
published but gutted version of the original Newsweek story about the patriotic volunteer confidential informant John Matthews, who was recruited by the FBI under the secret program known as PATCON (Patriot Conspiracy).‘What was it, specifically,’ I was asked later in numerous emails and phone calls, ‘that Tina Brown cut out?’ From sources I had a pretty good idea, not all of which I put in the first article. But that was only based on trusted but secondhand sources.
Well, now I can answer that question. Sipsey Street has obtained a copy of the unedited article written by R.M. Schneiderman.
It was — as originally written — a great story, an important, game-changing story, a story that could have made the career and reputation of Ross Schneiderman for the rest of his life. It had been several months in the making, sources say, as Schneiderman and his immediate editor John Solomon put it together and almost instantly ran into resistance from editors higher up the Newsweek food chain including, ultimately, Tina Brown.
When the editors were finished, most of the startling revelations of what John Matthews and Jesse Trentadue had to say were in Tina Brown’s waste basket. Nestled beside them, amid waste paper and used Starbucks’ latte cups, was the golden opportunity of Ross Schneiderman’s career.
However, sources tell Sipsey Street, that the FBI, the Obama DOJ and the White House were all reportedly quite happy — as well they should be.
Until now.
Among the items expunged from the story:
1. The missing paragraphs that presented evidence that Tom Posey, the supposed chief conspirator whose crazy talk about using weapons of mass destruction first prompted Matthews to go to the FBI, may himself have been a government asset. From the original story as written, before Tina Brown’s felt tip marker excised it:
After Posey’s arrest, the FBI had Matthews Social Security number changed, and paid for him and his family to move to Stockton , California . Yet the trial in Alabama proved frustrating for him. Despite hundreds of hours of recorded conversations, as well as video and personal surveillance, the Justice Department only chose to prosecute Posey and his cohorts for buying and selling the stolen night vision goggles. And in the end, Posey was sentenced to just two years in prison.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department in Birmingham said there simply wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute Posey for the Brown’s Ferry plot. Yet curiously, the TVA denied that the plot or the weapons cache even existed. Meanwhile, several of the men involved in the planned robbery were never arrested. At the time, two of the men, Matthews says, were planning to blow up a federal building in Birmingham .
‘They were gonna take a truck filled with fertilizer,’ says Matthews. ‘You look at what Timothy McVeigh done, it’s basically the same thing. What happened in Oklahoma could have happened a couple of years earlier.’
One possible explanation for how Posey’s trial played out: In 1996, the year he was released from prison, Posey appears to have been issued a new Social Security number, according to a Lexis-Nexus search conducted by Newsweek. Tony Gooch, a friend and Posey’s and a former CMA member, said that Posey was innocent of any wrongdoing, and that the whole Brown’s Ferry plot had been cooked up by Matthews. ‘Tom was a good man,’ he says. ‘John did not endear himself to us with that story.’ Yet Gooch said that Posey may have felt forced to cut a deal with the Justice Department, and provide them with information on other groups in the movement, or agreed not to reveal what he knew about Iran Contra.
‘It wouldn’t surprise me,’ Gooch said. ‘Tom knew some people who were real hardcore.’
Andreas Carl Strassmeier. John Matthews encountered him in company with Timothy McVeigh in San Saba, Texas. Sources say that Strassmeier was a joint operative of the German and U.S. governments.
2. There is mention that Matthews had encountered both Timothy McVeigh and Andreas Carl Strassmeier, widely thought to have been involved in the planning of the bombing, in Texas. From the original version of the story.
3. The story published also excised any mention of the Texas Light Infantry, a militia unit in the Lone Star State which contained constitutional militia, racist right and non-political elements. The racists and neo-Nazis, says one source who was familiar with TLI at the time, ‘kept a very low profile. Think of them as infiltrators that most TLI members knew nothing about.’
Exactly why Newsweek found it necessary to delete mention of the TLI get-together in San Saba, and instead ascribe it to the Texas Reserve Militia, is curious. It was the TLI which is mentioned in FBI reports (called 302s) of this meeting where Matthews met men who he later discovered to be McVeigh and Strassmeier, sources say. Why, sources ask, is Newsweek (and presumably the FBI) allergic to mention of TLI?
4. The published story also expunged mention of an FBI undercover operative named Dave Rossi.
Rossi, my sources say, may have been the ultimate PATCON operative, serving the FBI in a number of operations. If true, it is understandable that the FBI would be happy that Rossi’s role ended up in Tina Brown’s waste basket.
5. Also excised was mention that Jesse Trentadue had more than just a suspicion that his brother Kenney had been beaten to death as part of the OKBOMB investigation.
6. Gone, too, were the links between McVeigh and Strassmeier.
There is one thing that the heavily-edited article did, however, which makes these edits so much more important now that we know about them.
Both the FBI and Newsweek have validated Mr. Matthews service, his accounts and the quality of his memory. From the FBI plaque given to John Matthew.
When you take the gutted version of the story and combine it with the critical information Tina Brown cut out and then compare it to these glowing character references, there is one thing that leaps out at any independent observer — the full truth about the FBI’s involvement in, and prior knowledge of, the Oklahoma City bombing has yet to be even scratched.
John Matthews, a dying man, a patriotic man, a man who tried above all to do right and protect the country that he swore an oath to protect against enemies foreign and domestic, has come forward to tell his story.
Then let him tell the WHOLE story about PATCON.
The cause of simple justice for the victims of Oklahoma City demands it.
Newsweek is evidently so compromised by political considerations that it cannot tell these truths.
It remains to be seen if there are any other “mainstream media” outlets who can, or will.
But at least, gentle readers, you know now the extent of Newsweek’s perfidy in hiding the truth that threatens both the comfortable bureaucratic existence of the FBI and the reputations of people such as Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano — both of whom were knee deep in PATCON and the cover-up of the true circumstances behind the deaths of 176 men, women and children in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995. – SSI
Indeed it is about time that we got the truth about the FBI’s PATCON operations, and whether or not they are still running these operations across the U.S. today.
That brings us to the connections between PATCON and the mainstream news media. What is very interesting about the Oklahoma City Bombing case was this little tidbit discovered by investigator Charles Rogers. He claimed that while he was skimming through a pile of documents from the FBI’s investigation, he discovered something curious: a memo suggesting that someone working at ABC News provided a tip to the bureau a day after the deadly April 19, 1995, domestic terrorist attack.
It later came out that an ABC News senior investigative journalist had also been moonlighting as an FBI informant. The memo did make the news at the time of the discovery, but the story about the FBI having moles and operatives in the news media was quickly memory holed. The one person who did not forget the story was Jesse Trentadue who had been suing the FBI for records related to the death of his brother.
Jesse began filing records requests with the FBI back in 2012, seeking information about the feds use of informants, to see if they had any not just in the media but in other places as well, such as churches, the courts or other government agencies. Jesse was shocked when not only did the FBI not deny this, they admitted they did it. They had manuals on how to do it, but that they would not produce the documentation due to “national security.”
Trentadue ended up in litigation with the FBI for many years, as the agency fought to keep information about its training manuals secret. Finally, after years of back and forth, a judge dismissed the suit in 2015. Jesse said that some good things did come from the litigation though, and that through the information he obtained he was able to piece together information about the feds “sensitive informant program.” According to the lawsuit, the program was used to place informants in places like the mainstream media and other institutions. We do not know how widespread the program is, and how many institutions are now compromised.
Another memo disclosed the FBI talking about receiving information from ABC and NBC News:
If this wasn’t enough to terrify you, I am not sure what might be. Another memo apparently shows the FBI attempting to sell footage of the OKC bombing to NBC. A tip from 1995 from a so-called “confidential source” at NBC claimed they had been contacted by an attorney on behalf of an FBI agent seeking to sell footage for $1 million dollars. More memos have been uncovered, memo one, memo two, and memo three regarding the FBI and their use of journalists as sources of information.
A 2014 article entitled “They’ll Be Back: PATCON, Oklahoma City, and Jesse Trentadue’s Lonely Crusade for Justice” discusses Jesse’s tireless efforts to obtain justice:
‘His name used to be Don Jarrett,’ long-time federal asset John Matthews told FBI Special Agent Adam Quirk during a July 9 phone call. Matthews was concerned that he would have to testify in a lawsuit filed by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue seeking the release of long-concealed video tapes from the `1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Trentadue believes that the suppressed tapes would help identify “John Doe II,” a dark-haired, heavy-set man seen by dozens of people in the company of Timothy McVeigh on the day of the bombing.
‘John Doe II’ remains at large, and the FBI is perversely determined to protect him. For reasons that will be explained anon, Trentadue is convinced that learning his identity is necessary in order to obtain a measure of justice on behalf of his late brother Kenneth, who was killed while in federal custody shortly after the bombing.
Matthews was scheduled to testify during a federal court hearing in Salt Lake City last July. On the basis of what he had told Trentadue, Matthews was expected to describe how the FBI was closely monitoring McVeigh in the hours leading up to the bombing.
The FBI continues to insist – despite abundant evidence to the contrary — that there was no advance warning of the OKC terrorist attack, and that John Doe II and the ‘others unknown’ referred to in Timothy McVeigh’s indictment do not exist.
Trentadue maintains that there is a ‘strong possibility’ that the long-suppressed video recordings captured McVeigh in the company of a second person who would be identifiable as ‘an FBI undercover operative.’
During the July 9th phone call with Matthews, Mr. Jarrett told the jittery federal informant to avoid testifying if he could, and to perjure himself if he must. He was also instructed to call Special Agent Quirk, who eagerly reinforced that advice.
‘I ain’t goin’ and I ain’t saying nothing unless somebody issues me a subpoena,’ Matthews told Quirk, according to a transcript obtained by Trentadue. Even if ‘they haul my ass to Salt Lake City, I’m gonna set [sic] there on the stand and say I don’t recall anything.’
‘That’s fine,’ was Quirk’s approving reply to Matthews’ announced intent to commit perjury.
In a conversation on the following day, Matthews reiterated his determination to avoid a subpoena.
‘Well, yeah, and I mean – worst case scenario, even if you testified you can just – you can say you have, you know – you have nothing to say,’ advised Quirk.
Matthews, eager to please a high-ranking officer of the American Cheka, suggested that he might take a trip in order to avoid receiving a subpoena.
‘That’s fine,’ gloated Quirk. ‘F*ck ’em, right?’
It was during the second conversation with Quirk that Matthews explicitly mentioned his role as an undercover operative in an FBI initiative called called PATCON, or ‘Patriot Conspiracy.’ This was a long-term provocation campaign in which the Bureau sought ‘to infiltrate and incite the militia and evangelical Christians to violence so that the Department of Justice could crush them,’ explains Trentadue.
The man Matthews had known as ‘Don Jarrett’ had been his FBI handler – and apparently still is, given the deference to him shown by Matthews. Now that the Regime has largely shifted its domestic focus from Muslims back to ‘sovereign citizens,’ Jarrett is probably busy orchestrating homeland security theater operations involving the ‘Radical Right.’
Assuming that ‘Don Jarrett’ is still the name of Matthews’ former handler, he may currently be working as an “Independent Insurance Professional” in Florida. According to his vita, Jarrett retired from the FBI in 1998, becoming an insurance investigator and security consultant for the NFL. It’s not clear how he wound up in Afghanistan last year: A May 1, 2013 email to Matthews reported that he was in Afghanistan, and that he expected to leave at the end of June.
Using his last known email address, I sent Jarrett a number of questions to which he has not replied. Given PATCON’s history the chances are pretty good that wherever Jarrett finds himself, bad things are being done to innocent people.
‘Ruby Ridge was a PATCON operation,’ Trentadue has pointed out. ‘Waco was a PATCON operation. And so, too, I believe, was the Oklahoma City Bombing.’
The same is probably true of the little-remembered October 1995 sequel to the OKC Bombing – the derailment of the Sunset Limited, an Amtrak train carrying 248 passengers. Sleeping car attendant Mitchell Bates was killed and 78 others were injured when four of the train’s 12 cars careened off a 30-foot trestle.
A rail joint bar supporting a critical section of the track had been removed by a saboteur who also knew how to short-circuit sensors that would have alerted the Amtrak engineer of trouble on the tracks ahead. Typewritten notes on both sides of the track expressed outrage over the familiar litany of federal crimes and claimed responsibility on behalf of a group calling itself “Sons of Gestapo” (SOG).
Publication of the SOG manifesto caused many foreheads to crease in puzzlement: This was a right-wing terrorist group so obscure that its existence was unknown even to Morris Dees and his ever-vigilant comrades, who are sensitive to every tremor of ‘right-wing extremism’ occurring anywhere in the soyuz.
SOG was unknown prior to the derailment, and hasn’t been heard from since. The FBI insists that it is continuing to investigate the derailment. For the past seven years, Victor Hooper, an electrical engineer from Anaheim, California, has been telling anybody in the Bureau who will listen that he knows who carried out that attack, and why it was done.
‘That derailment was carried out by some of the people who helped McVeigh build the bomb for Oklahoma City,’ Hooper insisted during a telephone interview with me. He claims to have known at least two of them as neighbors in Anaheim, where they became involved in drug trafficking as part of a neo-Nazi criminal syndicate –and that John Doe II is actually a young man he has known since childhood.
As Hooper tells the story, the man he identifies as John Doe II and whose identity is known to the FBI, worked closely with Kingman, Arizona resident Michael Fortier, who was involved in the OKC bombing plot and spent ten years in prison after agreeing to testify against McVeigh. According to Hooper, John Doe II told him that ‘McVeigh was trained in sabotage and taught him how to derail a train.’
Following the bombing, and publication of a composite sketch of ‘John Doe II,’ FBI agents descended on Kingman en masse. Hooper claims that ‘Doe’ and a handful of co-conspirators (who originally called themselves ‘Kings of Kings,’ before adopting the moniker ‘Sons of Gestapo’) staged the Amtrak attack as a diversion, working in cooperation with another, longer-established neo-Nazi group.
‘I heard these guys talking about derailing a train, but at the time I didn’t take it seriously,’ Hooper told me. ‘For years I’ve been trying to get the FBI to act on this, and I’ve been told that the investigation is still open, but they’re not doing anything about this. They moved heaven and earth to get Osama bin Laden, but their investigation into John Doe II has been lackluster, at best. Why are they denying the testimony of twenty witnesses who saw McVeigh with another John Doe, and saying that John Doe II didn’t exist?’
‘The FBI says that they’ve investigated the case, and they’ve planted agents around the people involved in the train derailment,’ Hooper continued. ‘But it’s been nearly twenty years now, and they’ve not done anything about it.’
During his conversation with me, Hooper made it clear that he doesn’t hold Jesse Trentadue in particularly high esteem. However, they emphatically agree that the FBI knows the identity of John Doe II, and continues to protect him. – Pro Liberate
The article goes into far more detail, and I encourage everyone to read it in full. The FBI has blood on its hands from PATCON operations such as Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc. How many other incidents have been part of PATCON, without the public ever finding out?
Conclusion
What makes something a Patriot Conspiracy? I believe what we have seen in recent years with so-called “far right extremist” groups like O9A and others, as well as the Whitmer Kidnapping caper and January 6, 2021 all have their origins in the FBI’s sinister PATCON operation. I believe PATCON is far bigger than many had previously thought. Also interesting is the recurring PATCON figures like Bill Barr, Dave Chipman and Merrick Garland who seem to be reprising their roles in this new PATCON 2.0 Operation.
Will the FBI ever be held accountable for the preventable deaths at OKC, Waco and Ruby Ridge? Will they be held accountable for their role in fomenting the Whitmer caper and the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021? We, the America public must demand accountability and do our part in exposing what the feds are really doing.
In a follow-up piece, we will look at OPERATION GLADIO in Eastern Europe. The US funded a lot of right-wing paramilitary groups there, and it directly ties in the Azov Battalion. GLADIO also connects groups like the Order of Nine Angles, which then brings in Joshua Sutter and Tempel ov Blood, which then brings us back to PATCON.
Further Reading
For more information related to the PATCON operations and the corruption of the FBI:
PATCON Explored: Records Provide Glimpse of FBI Right-Wing Infiltration Ops
FBI’s Operation to Infiltrate Right-Wing Extremist Groups Lies at Center of Transparency Lawsuit
Judge orders FBI to cough up information about a previously secret computer drive
FBI & U.S. Military Tied to Funding & Training Satanic Neo-Nazi Pedophile Death Cult
Eric Striker: Is Joshua Sutter a CIA Asset?
https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep10506?seq=1
There is so much here to digest...thanks for the heavy lift..I’ll be paying attention....