A Mole Infiltrated the Highest Ranks of American Militias (2025)
propublica.org91 points by georgecmu 5 hours ago
91 points by georgecmu 5 hours ago
The involvement of Police and military personnel is not unexpected, but still rather horrifying.
This - I hate to be the person that always posts the same thing, but read about Operation Gladio ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio ) to see how NATO encouraged and enabled far right groups (with support of police, secret services and the army) to operate clandestine militias across Europe. If that is what they did in Europe, I wonder what they were supporting in America?
This article could do with an serious edit; it seems to be an odd mix of actual information, imagined colour and emotion to the point where it is a little difficult to follow and hard to work out the credibility of any individual assertion. I get the strong impression here that Williams is a bit paranoid and spent a lot of time fearing for his skin in the company of people who thought we was a good mate and would probably just kick him out of the club if they figured out he was conspiring against them. I thought this passage summed the vibe up best:
> They spotted the dog at the same time. The bug was attached to a charging device. The animal was running around with it like it was a tennis ball. As Kinch went to retrieve it, Williams felt panic grip his chest. Could anyone talk their way out of this? He’d learned enough about Kinch to be terrified of his rage. Looking around, Williams eyed his host’s handgun on the kitchen counter.
> If he even starts to examine it, I’ll grab the gun, [Williams] thought. Then I’ll shoot him and flee into the woods.
> Kinch took the bug from the dog’s mouth. Then he handed it right to Williams and started to apologize.
It’s propublica, what did you expect. The Atlantic and New Yorker do a much better job, and their biases don’t seems to affect their overall factual discussion.
The lede isn’t just buried, it is submerged in a swamp under a pile of human interest rocks.
The article mentions several relatively minor/local public figures, including a prosecutor, apparently caught on mic saying they’ve influenced policy in favour of the group. Political lobbying is one thing, but an undeclared interest, another entirely.
As best I can tell this was published, talked about for a few days, and sank under its own mass. Their most read piece of 25, apparently, and it went precisely nowhere.
(2025)
Some discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42594766
2025
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> the leader of such a powerful group would keep a filing cabinet at his house with all sorts of incriminating records
I’m 95% sure your comment is framed to also allude to the President of the U.S. keeping classified/secret/top secret documents (after leaving office) in stacks of cardboard boxes and spilling out onto the floor in:
* a Mar-a-Lago resort business center
* a Mar-a-Lago resort ballroom stage
* a Mar-a-Lago resort bathroom
etc., with Mar-a-Lago being the 126-room resort (and Trump's home) where others are constantly coming and going, including even representatives of foreign adversaries and the foreign security teams, etc.?
Or it's 4 paragraphs in to the article:
>He’d slept in the home of the man who claims to be the new head of the Oath Keepers, rifling through his files in the middle of the night.
1. But is the GP comment also designed to allude to the US President doing something very similar? If not, I don't understand why it seems to have a sarcastic tone acting like obviously an important militia leader would never store files like that, when we already have a case of the US President doing something similar (actually worse since there are significant laws against taking/insecurely storing classified/secret/top secret documents).
2. Same with the GP calling for "public hearings before the Senate" about it - I don't understand why they'd call for it for a militia leader (as a militia leader insecurely storing their files isn't a crime) unless they were actually calling for public hearings before the Senate digging into Trump illegally taking/insecurely storing classified documents?
Are we just going to forget that the feds went through Melania’s panty drawer during the raid over the documents?
Had they not would they have been doing their job properly ?
Are you saying that we should we all hide our bloody knives in drawers under women's underclothes?
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"His voice had the high-pitched rasp of a lifelong smoker" That is one of the dumbest, most prejudicial things I've ever heard about smoking. Where do these ideas come from?