The Jade Helm Invasion (with Dan Lamothe)

Army training exercise lasting for two months across seven states called jade Helm fifteen is underway.

So what is jade Helm fifteen. It's realistic military training taking place simultaneously in seven states from southern California to Texas. Over eight weeks, the nation's elite special forces will practice unconventional warfare. Now to a Texas sized conspiracy theory that an upcoming Pentagon training exercise is actually part of a plan to impose martial.

Law, I do not trust the government that is in power right now.

Conspiracy theorists went crazy, fearing the entire thing was actually a guys to impose martial law, take guns and rights away.

I'm John Ceipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover all around the world.

And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

And we don't usually look at it this way. We created conspiracies.

In our operations. We got people to believe things that weren't true.

Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the news almost every day.

Will break them down for you. To determine whether they could be real or whether we're being manipulated.

Welcome to Mission implausible.

John was saying, you have a story about a congressman.

The one thing I can say is that all CIA people who worked overseas have lots of stories about lots of congressman senators. But this is a good one.

A congressman shows up. It's in a big European country, and director's CIA gets a call from him and he's really angry and he's like, how come you guys aren't briefing me, and like, we don't even know he was in country. So it turns out he was in another city and his wife had to go for some sort of medical procedure that he couldn't get in the US

I've had lots of briefing with congressman and centers were clearly that they were there to shop or they were there, yeah, for some other reason, and they came for their briefing. They're not the slightest bit interested. Sometimes they even know what country they're in. I don't want to suggest that for all of them, because sometimes some centers and congressmen coming in they're very engaged.

Well most of them, I think are really well clued died.

So today we're going to talk about a conspiracy that has the name jade Helm, about folks in Texas believing that the federal government in the US Army and US military might be involved in trying to essentially overthrow the state government in Texas. And in fact, John Stewart did a segment on this jade Helm military exercise while it was happening.

Well, the military says, it's just training soldiers for the realities of war. Critics say the army is preparing for modern day martial law.

Some are calling it a Texas takeover.

You know who's calling it a Texas takeover?

Lone star lunatics.

There's no Texas takeover. The United States government already control since like the eighteen forties, it's not like this is being taken seriously by anyone who holds actual power.

On Tuesday, Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas State Guard to monitor military personnel movements and training exercise schedules.

Oh dear lord, yet in other ways to Texas funds that could have been spent on actual threats like your infamous Chainsaw massacres.

And not only is the US military going to invade Texas and parts of the Southwest, they're going to also go around and collect everybody's guns. They were going to create huge concentration camps. Yeah, basically all conspiratorial hell was going to break loose.

I don't think there's a list of who has guns. I think that's actually a law in the United States and certainly in Texas. So right, like go to everyone's.

House, Although in Texas isn't the list just everyone in Texas.

No, not just people, but like the friggin governor of Texas and the Texas State legislature was buying into this.

Apparently there was a town hall meeting and bass drop in which they shouted down an army colonel. They just refused to believe anything he said. Here's a clip of that.

Well, Jaye Helm is simply just a challenging eight week training exercise for unconventional warfare, and it's an exercise that will be conducted throughout Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Newahaw. Jade Helm is United States Special Operations Command. It's a sponsored exercise to improve Special Operations Forces unconventional warfare capability as part of the national security strategy.

Right are the people's overwhelming opposition to this? Ours a law program with the Commissioner's Court considered reversing their invitation to these guys, and would.

The court be offended?

I told the colonel that I didn't believe.

In the single word that he just said.

Thank you for your question.

This institution right here has been around for over two hundred and forty years. I've transitioned in this uniform, various shades of it under five presidents, all of it peacefully. You may have issues with the federal government, you may have issues with the administration, so be it okay. But this institution right here has been with you for over two hundred and forty year period.

So let's get into it with Dan the Moth from the Washington Post. You are a distinguished journalist from the Washington Post. You've reported from over thirty countries. You spent a lot of time in one of my favorite places, Afghanistan, embedded with the Marines. And I see you've also won a Pulitzer as part of the team that did January sixth.

Yeah, I'm going on about closing on sixteen years of covering the US military. I've been at the Post since twenty fourteen, so I guess I'm going on almost ten there.

So Dan, can you just give us a quick overview about the Jade Helm exercise and the conspiracy that came out of that exercise.

It was a joint special operations exercise that would have included forces for multiple services, was run by Army Special Operations Command, twelve hundred people spread out of earned the span of six seven eight states. So you're not talking about an invasion force. Here, you're talking about a relatively small force that gets spun around into preparation for martial law, and this idea the President Obama was trying to take over Texas or not leave the office.

But it also got wider than that, didn't it. I Mean, we look at a lot of conspiracy theories on this podcast, but this one particularly also got into serious political discussions with the Texas State Legislature, the Texas governor saying he was going to use the Texas State Militia to like shadow or cover the US military to make sure they didn't take over the country or take over Texas. You've got people in Congress Louis Gohmer talking about this as

I think the discussion got broad enough where officials like Governor Abbott chose the way in, and I think weighing in would not have been a surprise. More the way that he weighed in, raising eyebrows.

By directing the State Guard to monitor the operations.

Don't mess with Texas. Is Republican Governor Greg Gabbott's message to the Pentagon. Abbott called out his state Guard to keep an eye on US special operations sports is. The governor says he wants to make sure Texans constitutional rights, private property rights, and civil liberties will not be infringed during an upcoming military war game called jade Helm fifteen.

You know, it's an American thing that's been long held that there's this sort of fear of big government. But in this case, it was some bad actors like Alex Jones and others who pushed theories that this was a psychological operation. It was to force citizens into internment camps, to seize people's guns, to round up political dissidents. When I think even other bad actors saw what was happening in Texas and how this blew up into something really big.

Remember all those Facebook posts about jade Helm a few years ago, it turns out some of them might have been planted by Russia and.

The former ahead of the CIA things.

A Texas reaction may have been the green light for Russia to wrap up campaigns in America.

That Russian bots in the American alt right media convinced most many Texans was an Obama plan to round up political dissidents. I'm figuring the Russians to saying we can go big time. At that point, I think they made the decision we're going to play in the electoral process.

Let's take a break, we'll be right back.

And Rebecca So I did a simple back of the envelope calculation. It's like fifteen different conspiracy theories that compete and conflict. But one of the ones that seemed to be really neuralgic was that foreign troops were being brought in, right, And there were ten thousand Chinese troops working with the American Special Forces hiding in abandoned Walmart And what they intended to do was to start taking people's guns, right. And I think Alex Jones said famously that HELM stood

Yeah, I mean, I think in this case there was a thought that President Obama was not worthy and not just not trustworthy on oh hey, what are we going to do with health care, but untrustworthy on whether or not he's going to leave office, whether or not he's a threat of democracy. And I think some of this was underpin by Race.

Dane.

You've spent a lot of time embedded with the US military, especially the Marines. And I spent a lot of time in Afghanistan too, up in the North and Kunar Province and Nuristan, and then in Massari Shreef, and I got to know a lot of Jasak guys So I want to throw a thought experiment at chif. So you're a Jasak guy and you're a very professional military and you're in the United States and you're doing one of these things, and senior officer comes to you and says, Okay, here's

So then you take that and this isn't just the military. This is Marine raiders, Navy seals, Army Green Beret soldiers, and all of a sudden, they're now going to be the ones that are undermining the American experience. There's a disconnect there. I never understood how the same group of people who would mostly hold this group of people up as an American hero and as an ideal would now also say, oh, they're totally going to push us on the train cars with shackles and send us off to wherever.

There's no way they would follow those illegal orders. And yet people seem to now, people who were very pro military before are now entertaining thought that their heroes are actually bad guys and militias are good guys.

You know, I think as time has progressed, you go through the Trump administration and him very vocally calling out general officers in terms that we don't typically hear in polite company that I think was a shock to the system. So I think you play that out now forward and even something like the more recent hold on military promotions that Senator Tupperville has. You know, these are death jockey generals. I'm for the military, I'm just not for these death jockey generals.

So concurrent with Jade Helm in twenty fifteen, there was also another watershed wherein then presidential candidate Donald Trump said of John McCain that he was a loser for being shot down over North Vietnam and being tortured and being held by the North Vietnamese.

But Frank, Frank, let me get to it. He hit me.

He's not a war hero, war euro, he's a war He's a war hero because he was captured.

I like people that weren't captured.

Okay.

I hate to tell.

You, do you a ward that here's a war hero because he was capture.

Okay. Enormous respect for John McCain, a genuine war hero who suffered the rest of his life. He couldn't raise his arms over his head, that he could be vilified, that his military record could be trashed and discarded by somebody who avoided the draft, which was another harbinger for a change in way certain part of the electorate is

One of the things that was basis to the Jade Helm conspiracy is that this was the government coming to seize your guns. And literally just in the years prior to this, it was a Republican talking point that Obama's going to take your guns. What if he gets elected, He's going to take your guns and take your guns. And he went through his whole first term and there was nothing related to taking anybody's guns. And then in the lead up to the second term, is he's going

I guess I would say this. It seems to me that there are certain purveyors, those who perpetuate these kinds of theories. Certain people just want to see these because they're entertained by them, but they pass them on. And when you keep passing them on, it's like, well, he passed it on, he must believe it, even if they were just kind of like causing mayhem for the heck of it. Yeah, And I also think it probably depends issue by issue, conspiracy theory by conspiracy theory, one might

Take the oil? You know, there are military exercises all the time in the United States, which begs the question why this one? And I think the answer has to do with your reporting, is that some exercise maps somehow were leaked into the public. And it's funny for me because having been in the CIA going through our training program, we do the same thing. We put people into exercises as they prepare to go overseas, and we create maps of false places that you pretend you're recruiting citizens of

This is a new thing with a weird name that kind of was immediately weird because of the maps that leaked out.

The name is cool. Jadehill is a cool name.

Let's say this was a West Coast exercise with the military landing in California, which was labeled hostile. Has a whole different feel at that point. If they're landing in some liberal community off the coast there, it's kind of hard to say they're trying to take your guns if it's in a place where guns are not all that popular in the first place, All right, right, right.

So Governor Abbitt famously said he's going to employ the Texas National Guard to keep tabs on the US.

Yeah, okay, his guard, if he will, his guard. They used the State Guard largely as liaisons, but I.

Would suspect that there was a liaison already set up and the military does this. Yeah, you know, for Abbott to say that he needed to do it was probably giving some oxygen to the fire that didn't need to be given.

And then I just got to go back one last time to logistics. Bring it. So you've been to Afghanistan, Hellman Province. Right. I don't know how many Marines were out there, but when we went to the military bases up in Kunar, a couple hundred guys. The logistics of like feeding them and watering them is like enormous. If you've got ten thousand Chinese soldiers hidden in a walmart, how are you feeding these guys? What do you do

Right? Can you even hold the neighborhood let alone? A state let alone? Eight states, ten thousand, Chinese troops ten thousand, and any kind of troop maybe would a hold part of the city maybe for.

A little while.

You're like just thinking about our own operations in you know, various urban areas, like you need a whole lot of manpower.

I get a kick out of the fact that the concern here was that the government was going to try to take over Texas? Like has no one told them that the government already has Texas?

Right, Let's take a breather and back in a moment, and we're back.

The conspiracy theory made a lot of predictions. None of those came true. So how did they explain that?

One was? All the attention had prevented it? You know, the idea that this discussion had burst out into the open and been exposed more or less taking credit for the fact that it didn't happen. Another was that it was never really supposed to be an effort in that moment to perpetuate martial law. It was sort of a more squishy, softer, smaller effort to do it someday in the future, you know, rather than the big thing now. It's preparing for the big thing two, five, ten years down the road.

What would it take for the US military to take over Texas or to actually do these things?

You know? The way these briefing slides read, it was twelve hundred troops, give or take, and granted some number of them would have been the elite, the best of the best, but twelve hundred troops doesn't get you very far in reality, no matter who they are. Think about some of the American operations over the last ten, fifteen, twenty years. I was embedded in a specific province in Afghanistan. It's sort of the height of the surge there, or

There's been a lot of spinoff conspiracy theories coming out of jade Helm's what's your favorite flavor of jade Helm?

I think the one that caught me the coldest with the idea that there were trains I think FEMA trained FEMA somehow being a part of this with shackles on it, and that you would just guide away American citizens who disagreed. But just the idea that FEMA, the idea that they would be pulled in and citizens would just be hurted away.

They could take those people and bring them some awful place like New Jersey.

Thank you very much for doing this and before you continued reporting on this, and I think it's very important for Americans to understand what the military and what has become called the deep state, what they do, and so thanks for the reporting you do on that.

All right, guys, it's hard to think of them any ways, that this is a particularly absurd conspiracy.

But what stands out for you, well.

You know it hurts me sometimes. You know, was a history major and a policize major and worked in the government for years. So there's an assumption that the American people understand how their system works, and how the military works, and how our government functions. But you got to remind yourself from time to time that people can be fooled by things, and it seems to be that that's the

As somebody who's never served in the military but served a lot with the military. I'm trying to imagine, you know, a scenario whereby they bring in all the colonels, who then later talk to the majors, who talk to lieutenants, who talk to the actual troops, and they start the meeting by saying, Okay, we're going to invade the United States, and they all look at each other and go like, that's not a legal order. I'm from New Mexico. I'm

But when you do think of countries where they do.

I think of what Syriah's done against Yes, China, Russia, Syria, Iraq under Saddam. Why are those armies able.

To what is propaganda that the troops are intoxrinated with fear, and maybe some of them believe it. But the other thing too is we do know that Russian troops in Ukraine that they've got the really professional troops behind the new guys going in to be cannon fodder, and if anybody looks to retreat, they shoot them. So I think that a lot of the troops are just simply afraid not to carry out their orders. And that's not the

So I lived in Indonesia, which is like I don't know, seven twenty thousand all islands essentially, and they have a massive army and almost no navy, and you're like, there's no borders with any other country, Like what's the point here?

But I guess like Indonesia is a good example of a place where you have an Iraq is as well Syria to some degree, where people have more of a regional or ethnic group identity than a national identity. I mean, I was there before the war, and you just felt different in Aleppo than you did in Damascus. Damascus was much more loyal to the regime, or at least playing So you could imagine you just make sure to get

But it depends too on how you train your military. You know, those militaries that we're mentioning here are all trained on internal descent. They make lousy armies fighting any place else, right, I mean, right from day one there it's about the internal enemy, right, right, Right? Does El sever to Guatemala have an army in Costa Rica? Doesn't, right, because it's all about internal stuff.

So I did witness a micro version of something like this. So in the run up to the Irock War in two thousand and three, one of the sensitive political issues, you know, the US invasion was mostly coming up from Kuwait in the south, and then a bit coming from the.

North from the Kurdish region.

But there was a lot of talk that maybe parts of the US military, especially special ops, would come in from Jordan across the western Iraqi Desert, and the official story was absolutely not that's not happening, And in fact, King Abdullah of Jordan said there are no US troops on the Jordan side of the border, and basically the entire Jordan based Foreign press Corps, which included me at the time, drove to the border just because that was our stage in ground, because we were if the US

There were US.

Troops all over. We saw their helicopters, we saw them in shops buying stuff. It was a very transparent fact that there were US troops exactly on the border who look like Special Forces guys.

I mean like they had tattoos and stuff.

Well actually no beards, so that actually is a sign that maybe they weren't special ops. But that has always stuck with me is like the level of secrecy. We just say it's not true, and you will never find out unless you happen to go to a shop that sells sodas and potato chips and then you'll see like four guys standing around.

Politicians have learned that if you just say something, most people don't have any other way to prove it's not true, so they'll.

Lot they'll believe it.

Yeah.

By the way, that was another moment where there was a fairly transparent lie, which was when George W. Bush sent a US aircraft carrier to help with tsunami relief in Indonesia. A very important moment that no US troops will spend the night on Indonesian soil because that would would somehow turn it into a different thing. So they were supposed to fly in every morning whatever they were doing, bringing food and fixing bridges, and then fly out every night.

And I mean, it wouldn't have mattered. And they know we're not invading them, and they understand that we were helping. That A chasers horrible and it was unbelievable.

I don't want it myself now be a conspiracy theorist, But do you think that there is a you know, posse comitatus, like if there was a true rebellion in the US, like a true armed like Americans truly taking up arms in a very serious way with real military might. Are there plans in the Pentagon somewhere for how the US military will deal with it?

Or is that going to just be police action?

It's a good question. I mean, we were in intelligence. That issue is never anything as part of our you know.

You couldn't look domestically at all.

No, but and it's hard to imagine, but of course we see it in our political discussion now talking about the protesters. Would would a Trump adminstration call in the National Guard? You know, at what point would you call in the military. So these are issues that they're not completely crazy. People are talking about them, but I don't know anything about how that's planned.

But let's look at how far we've gotten. I mean, Trump did, as a fact, talk to his military leaders about calling out martial law on protesters back when he was still president, and he mentioned to the generals, can't you just shoot them in the leg, which is often a fatal wound. And the leadership basically thought he was nuts. And they're saying so now, like you know, his secretaries of Defense and the people around and who were doing

I think the military people know what's legal not to do. Were there politicians who come in from the outside understand.

No, that's exactly what I meant that Trump doesn't understand or the people the civilians around understanding. I think the US military understood perfectly well what they were allowed to do and not to do.

And they're very well trained and they're very well led.

It's also part of their duties to disobey orders that are unlawful. In that case, depending on the circumstances, a lot of people not doing that. But on civil unrest, the first thing was would be to call in the National Guard. That would be the first. The US military would be much much later. First they they'd have police and then the National Guard. And you know, the military. When you bring in helicopters and tanks against guys with clocks and shotguns, it's not going to be a very

Jade Helm might be a good example. They saw that when they weren't even doing anything related to this concern. People went off on it and thought that the US right military was attacking civilians and taking their guns. So, yes, I think they're going to be very very careful about making these kind of quote unquote plans.

Because reporters, journalists like you, Adam, would love to get a hold of those plans, right, well, or good journalists more good, Yeah, good journalists would.

Oh, there's lots of good journalists. Yeah.

Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'sha, John Cipher, and Jonathan Sterner. The associate producer is Chill Harner. This has been a production of abominable Pictures, an honorable mention for iHeart Podcasts.