Military Madness

In the Navy with Q-Anon

Documents released through the Freedom of Information Act reveal more than half a dozen military members, reservists and contractors associated with the United States Navy and Marine Corps were under investigation since at least January 6, 2021 by the Naval Investigative Service, better known as NCIS. 

In the days after the  January 6th invasion of the Capitol NCIS tip lines lit up with anonymous reports of suspicious political activity attributed to service members. Gleaned from social media posts, and overheard conversations the tips were turned over to investigators by informants alarmed by language supporting the Capitol invaders and former President Donald Trump’s false allegation that the election had been stolen.

Redacted documents released to this reporter from NCIS through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal sailors, marines, reservists and civilian military contractors following conspiracy theories claiming Donald Trump and the United States military are engaged in a war against an elite cabal of satanic pedophiles corrupting every level of government. A conspiracy theory known as Q, widely discussed on fringe Internet web pages and  bulletins boards.

Among the targets of NCIS investigators were a financial analyst based at Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, D.C., holding “secret” security clearance. A Navy Contractor and former Air Force reservists who made “references to QAnon,” a United States Marine at Camp Pendleton who posted that “world elites were part of a global sex ring.” A United States Navy Postgraduate student in Monterey, California who made anti-semitic posts on an Instagram page, and a US Navy sailor and gun enthusiast assigned to the Navy’s premier Top Gun fighter pilot training base who admitted stashing an arsenal of weapons off base after allegedly threatened to kill himself after an argument with a female superior

The Roots of Q

Belief that a rogue high level government official named Q is leaking “Q drops,” a trail of riddles leading an army of followers down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories is rooted in 4chan a fringe Internet bulletin board started by a teenager in 2003. A post on 4chan in 2017 by “Q Clearance Patriot” is one of the first places Q turned up as a screen name in a post predicting “massive riots” opposing Trump’s immigration policies.

4chan was used by the “alt-right,” a network of eclectic purveyors of extremist views and memes. During the 2016 election 4chan and its spinoff 8chan/8kun went viral with a conspiracy theory known as ‘pizzagate.’ 

Based on a self-serving interpretation of leaked emails from John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, ‘pizzagate’ claimed democrats were linked to a pedophilia ring operating out of a popular pizza joint in Washington, DC known as Comet Ping Pong.

Countless followers were influenced by ‘pizzagate,’ including 28 year old Edgar M. Welch who used an AR-15 style rifle to shoot up the restaurant in December 2016. No one was hurt and Welch was arrested, and sentenced to four years in prison. He was motivated by an obsession with Q, believing that he was rescuing kids held captive in the basement of Comet Ping Pong, in reality the building had no basement.

QAnon appeared around the time of candidate Trump’s 2016 famed escalator ride at Trump Tower in New York that launched his presidential campaign. The heart of the conspiracy is a tall tale of  Hollywood elites “harvesting” the blood of children to extract adrenaline that’s supposedly used as a precursor chemical to manufacture a psychedelic drug called adrenochrome that’s intended to be an “elixir to remain young.” 

NCIS

NCIS is a civilian-run agency headed by law enforcement professionals reporting directly to the Secretary of the Navy. NCIS “special agents” investigated crimes from sexual abuse to drug trafficking during the Vietnam War adding espionage and by the 1990s foreign terrorism. NCIS is also concerned with domestic terrorism and white supremacist organizing. Its premise is that the military is a microcosm of society with the same crimes as civilian life.

The six cases covered in the FOIA documents all began with a tip. Two of the cases were opened months before the January 6th assault and focused on an allegation of anti-Semitic social media posts and a complaint about a potentially unstable sailor. The other four cases grew out of tips in the days and weeks following the January 6th Capitol invasion. 

The documents reveal agents scrambling to learn more about the emerging Q phenomenon while uncovering evidence of strange beliefs and associations with the shadowy militia group knows as the Boogaloo Bois.

Anti-Semitism in the lab.

Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, CA

On May 1st, 2020 NCIS got a “web based intelligence tip regarding a possible insider threat.” An ‘insider threat’ is a “malign figure” with unauthorized access and knowledge of an organization. The tipster said that a United States Navy officer had made anti-Semitic and extremist posts on his Instagram account. Freedom of speech may protect a citizen who expresses vile ideas, but in the military it’s illegal to advocate ideas that disrupts discipline. 

The case was opened on May 1, 2020 and lasted for 10 months as NCIS investigated the officer’s life and political beliefs and was closed without criminal charges on March 23, 2021 with the officer assigned counseling as a “preventive activity.” The tipster and the NCIS special agent handling the case are anonymous throughout the 47 page law enforcement record. Names, words, lines of text and entire paragraphs are often censored with thick black lines, but a significant amount is readable.

The officer was a student in Electronics Systems Engineering and Applied Mathematics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey located near California’s rugged Big Sur coastline. The school’s website says graduates often go on to work at the National Information Warfare Center (NIWC) involved in “undersea warfare” and “unmanned systems.”

The offending social media posts were discovered after NCIS subpoenaed the officer’s Instagram account. Screenshots were redacted but described in an accompanying narrative. Prominent was a quote from Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, “If someone is attacked by the Jews, that is a sure sign of his virtue.” The NCIS opened an investigation into his possible violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice; “Failure to Obey and Order or Regulation” and Conduct Unbecoming of an Officer and Gentleman.” The Department of Defense prohibits military personnel from “actively advocating for and participating in supremacist, extremist or criminal gang doctrine, ideology or causes.” 

Presented with a copy of his Instagram posts the officer explained the screen shots as “things that interested him,” because the “truth wasn’t getting out in the current situation we’re in.” He told the agent he had eventually removed the posts because, “I felt I no longer wanted to get involved in that so I deleted it all.” 

He told the agent he got his information from  8kun, an Internet picture themed bulletin board frequented by extremists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, racists and that he followed QAnon’s through an app on his phone named “Q Alerts Lite," providing “updated information” on the most recent QAnon posts.”

Proud Boys and the Boogaloo

During the January 6th invasion of the US Capitol several groups stood out in their preparation and knowledge of a rudimentary plan to storm the seat of government. The Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, militant groups loyal to Trump, were joined by an amorphous group known as the Boogaloo Bois made up mostly of young men preparing for what the generally believe to be imminent armed revolt against the government. Boogaloo is a film term for a sequel and the movement has become a magnet for right-wing current and former members of the military with combat skills looking for a possible redo of the Civil War.

The Navy Postgraduate student told the NCIS Special Agent, “he found the Boogaloo Bois “kind of weird and stupid.” Adding, “The Proud Boys were having “absolutely asinine” fights, he knew a person who “went to the Naval Academy, and was with the Proud Boys… It’s not something I believe in,” he continued, “I posted it just for the absurdity of it.”

When confronted with an Instagram story he posted with the title “U.S. Military Intel Confirmed Protocols of Zion in 1919,” accompanied by a redacted picture and quote, the student explained to the agent he was a “Christian,” but that he “never read the Protocols of Zion.” 

The “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is an anti-Semitic hoax published in czarist Russia in 1903 purporting to be minutes of a meeting describing an imagined Jewish plot for world domination.

The NCIS agent then produced an image taken from his social media depicting a man aiming a rifle with the quote “Tempt Not the Righteous Man to Draw His Sword.” The officer explained that he “liked the picture and quote,” because he said, “there was too much anti-Christian information being pushed down the throats of the American people.”

The last entry in the report is dated May 14, 2020 indicating that the “Investigation continues.” The Dean of Students at the Naval Postgraduate School, Captain Markus J. Gudmundsson, eventually “concluded there was no misconduct” and the case was closed the next year. The NCIS report added that the incident would be “addressed through counseling,”and the officer was “cautioned to familiarize himself with DoD Instruction on extremists, protest and gang activities by Armed Forces members,” where the narrative ends.

Receipt of report concerning anti-government communication by USMC service member. 1st Marine Division, Camp Pendleton, California

On January 8th, 2021, two days after the invasion of the US Capitol the NCIS received an anonymous tip claiming that a “USMC service member” had discussed “executing political candidates” while at work. 

The tipster told the NCIS Special Agent about a Facebook conversation between the unnamed Marine identified as part of the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, 1st Marine Division and a civilian Marine veteran in November of 2020. The two allegedly “discussed negative consequences” of Democrat candidates being sworn-in. The service member remarked “that’s when we patriots fight back.”

The tipster told the Special Agent he was “particularly alarmed” but unsure of how to report the conversation following the events of January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol. The tip included screenshots of Facebook profiles, belonging to the Marine and the civilian employee.

The NCIS carried out an “extensive review” of of the Marine’s Facebook profile between January 8 and 28, 2021 and found that posts were removed from his Facebook profile that could not be viewed “when searched at a later date.”

The report described one post as a “diagram of the vote in the 2020 election” accompanying posts claiming the election was “fraudulent.” The Marine’s profile asserted members of the “world elites” and other powerful people were part of a “global sex ring.” The agent wrote that the sex ring allegation was “a conspiracy theory more commonly known as QAnon.” Copies of the Facebook profile were included in the “report of investigation” but as a blank piece of paper labeled “enclosure redacted.”

The NCIS report on the other party to the conversation, who was a civilian USMC veteran, contained several redacted photographs. The agent described the images as someone in “military uniform and/or holding firearms.” One photo was captioned “Veterans for Trump.” The report also described posts on “the possibility of a second U.S. civil war,” and a quote, “poke at the sleeping bear… then you will soon get what y’all deserve.” The post continued that veterans “aren’t gonna let America fall.” The screen shot of the civilian veteran’s profile was also blank and labeled “redacted.”

Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Receipt of NCIS Tip Line

Allegations of Executing Political Candidates

An informant used the NCIS Tip line on January 13 2021, generating a “report of investigation,” of a civilian United States Navy contractor, a male whose name was redacted. The tip, coming a week after the Capitol invasion, informed NCIS that the contractor, who had been working at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard since 2018, was a former active duty member of the Air Force alleged to have had discussion of “executing political candidates, taking the country back, and references to QAnon.”

Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is a high security base, no outside visitors allowed, located about 60 miles north of Boston. The oldest continuing operating Naval shipyard in the United States, PNS  employs 6500 civilian contractors who maintain and upgrade Virginia class nuclear attack submarines. The base motto is “From Sails to Atoms.” 

An NCIS special agent and another “participating agent” were dispatched to Portsmouth the day the tip was received. The contractor claimed he was a “digital soldier and member of QAnon.” He denied plans to visit Washington, D.C. or join any protests, he asserted his “mission” as spreading QAnon information. Volunteered a trove of information about his QAnon beliefs to the agent, while insisting that he would not “resort to violence” except to “protect his family.” 

His comments were a guide to QAnon beliefs. “President Trump is “pure as God,” and will be the “19th president.” That the lose knit “ANTIFA” group of anti-fascist anarchists “caused the trouble at the Capitol” and were transported to Washington, D.C. by local police and “QAnon sent Special Forces into the Capitol to steal laptops,” to get evidence of corruption.  

The theory that Trump is the 19th president is a more recent QAnon conspiracy popular among younger followers on TikTok; centered on the belief the United States became a “corporation” while Ulysses S. Grant was president, therefore each president elected in the 150 years between Grant and Trump was illegitimate. The 13th amendment to the United States Constitution outlawing slavery was signed by President Abraham Lincoln 4 years prior to Grant’s election.

The contractor denied violent intent but his assertions to the agents were decidedly violent. Days before President Joe Biden’s inauguration he claimed the new president would never take the oath of office. The National Guard would “execute a mass arrest” and that Democrats would be taken to a “military tribunal” and “executed.”

 He claimed he worked with General [Mike] Flynn, and insisted that [Vice President Mike] “Pence is a traitor.” He also “made various references to ‘Adrenochrome,’ claiming the drug “works like Monsters Inc, the movie”

Great Britain “runs the United States“ he said, adding; “all wars are illegal ops controlled by the illuminati,” a US submarine “fired two missiles at Air Force One in an attempt to kill President Trump and there have been 50 attempts on President Trump’s life.” Embracing the theory that the CIA killed President John F. Kennedy, and that “Bush was behind the JFK assassination,” while Pope Francis was “arrested on 80 counts of human trafficking,” and would be “executed.”

The report is rounded out with other claims, “including, but not limited to, secret bunkers, reptilian humanoids, shapeshifters and other dark energy theories.”

He told the agent that his information came from a friend in the US Navy and from watching YouTube podcasts but many of these ideas are rooted in history and retold in wildly popular books by British conspiracy theorist David Icke. Popularizing the idea of “reptilians,” combining the conspiracy with the Atlantis myth, modern tales of alien abduction and the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 

The case of the Portsmouth contractor was closed by NCIS on January 19, 2021 with no further action reported.

Tip regarding civilian NAVSEA employee posting suspicious political commentary on social media 

Washington, D.C.

Not far from the home of the Washington Nationals baseball team, where the Anacostia River meets the Potomac in Washington, DC cameras and signs warn trespassers to steer clear of an iron fence. The low brick and glass buildings of the Washington Navy Yard lay behind the security. The oldest land based Navy unit created by Congress in 1799. Where the celebrated USS Constitution, the first American warship was built.

Today the Washington Navy Yard is headquarters to Naval Sea Systems Command or NAVSEA. The largest of the Navy’s commands with about 3000 workers NAVSEA is responsible for building the Navy’s surface and submarine fleets.

On January 9, 2021 NCIS received a tip that a “financial analyst with NAVSEA” made threats of violence against Congress on social media.” A female federal employee was involved and is the only “she” referenced in the NCIS documents.

The tipster told NCIS the NAVSEA employee “possibly attended the January 6 ‘rally,’ and had “posted about protesters returning to the Capitol with weapons.” The Report of Investigation indicated he had a secret clearance and a pay grade of $127,000 a year, equivalent to a top professional with an advanced academic degree.

“Secret" security clearance is part of a hierarchy of state secret classifications located just below Top Secret and above “Confidential” clearance. There are other even more secret “need-to-know” classifications used by the government including Q clearance for the highest-level nuclear secrets used by the Department of Energy. The term “Q Clearance Patriot” was one of the first uses of the name as part of a conspiracy appearing in 2017 to identify certain “Q drops” that warned of potential political violence in support of Trump’s policies. 

“Secret” clearance prohibits disclosing information that could cause “grave damage” to the national security and requires at least a month long background check before allowing access to classified documents. According to a government web site the holder of “Secret” clearance is part of “an elite group of individuals committed to safe guarding their country.”

NCIS also investigated the federal employee; “she appears to be in attendance at the January 6 rally.” The employee’s Facebook and Twitter profiles were also searched; “146 social media posts… disparaging President-elect Biden… including references to QAnon.”

NCIS additionally reported using “Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and social media checks,” but NCIS found the posts “not criminal in nature” and the case was closed on January 18, 2021.

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NAS Fallon, Dam Neck C school, Sailor makes suicide threats, keeps a large gun collection off base.

An intriguing Report of Investigation resulted from a contact by the Fleet Intelligence Detachment (FID) of the Naval Information Warfare Training Group (NIWTG), Naval Air Station (NAS) Fallon, Nevada with NCIS. FID also known as Naval Information Forces commands about 600 employees who “generate IW readiness across the fleet,” according to FID’s LinkedIn social media web page. IW is defined as “information warfare” and its purpose is providing “integrated intelligence essential for wargaming, research, warfare analysis.”

NCIS “contact” with the sailor at Fallon occurred on May 13, 2021 when he failed a room inspection. The incurring investigation fills a 67 page report that was closed on October 20 2021, three weeks after the subject of the investigation shipped out on the aircraft carrier USS Truman from Norfolk. The report describes a young man obsessed with video games and collecting WWII memorabilia who had an arsenal of high powered weapons. 

The report focused on a bulletin board in his barracks room covered with patches and photographs; “supportive of militias, guns, Boogaloo movement,” and the June 4, 2004 “Kamatsu dozer incident in Granby, Colorado.” The sailor admitted to an “unknown number of weapons in a storage unit off base.” He began to cry and then told the agent he’d rather “jump off the ship than deploy with certain female officers.” The agent noted that he was “reminded of the similarities of the Pearl Harbor shooter.” Gabriel Romero a 22-year old Navy sailor, on guard duty near a submarine at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, who opened fire with an automatic rifle on December 4, 2019, killing two and wounding a third civilian Navy employee before using his service pistol to kill himself. Romero was being treated for anger management and was facing a “captain’s mast,” a form of Navy criminal prosecution. 

An investigation report of the shooting “suggested a pattern” of behavior by the Navy of “under” diagnosing Romero’s mental illness, so that “the fast-attack submarine Columbia wouldn’t lose a sailor on its muster sheet.” Suggesting it was a matter of convenience to turn a blind eye to the troubled sailor and hope for the best. The sailor, like Romero, denied being suicidal or intending to hurt himself or others. The agent consulted with the NCIS “Threat Assessment Unit’ to “conduct holistic threat management during this investigation,” and to “to prevent further escalation or movement toward any unwanted outcomes.” Holistic threat management is the practice of identifying risks and their interconnections to an organization.

During several months of interviews the subject stated he was a ”casual gun owner and gun rights supporter.. who believes in limited government.” He said he’s a gun rights supporter, but “does not belong to any illegal organizations.” He denied membership in any “Boogaloo or Boogaloo-related militia groups.” He said the National Rifle Association was a “joke,” and that he supported the Gun Owners of America and the Firearms Policy Coalition.

Gun Owners of America is an organization describing itself as more determined to fight gun regulation than the NRA, supporting more guns as an answer to gun violence. They deny that President Joe Biden had won the 2020 election. The Firearms Policy Coalitions is a “grassroots’ advocacy organization promoting “maximal human liberty.”

The sailor’s anger after failing room inspection and his hostility towards a female commanding officer he felt “had it in for him,” concerned the NCIS agent. Exclaiming he would “jump off the side of the boat” if he deployed with her. Asked if he wanted to hurt himself he tearfully said “I don’t know, “I just want to pack up and leave and get away from everything.”

He talked about his home in North Carolina and his dream of becoming a gunsmith after the Navy and revealed the location of a storage shed for his guns, confiding that he wasn’t willing to “hand over” the key to his gun locker because “taking away my hobby is not a good thing.”

The storage locker was located near a family restaurant  popular with service members in Fallon. A hand drawn diagram included in the report showed the location of his gun safe. The contents of the safe were listed in the report as “two AR-15 5.56 rifles… a Glock-19 Generation-5 9mm pistol, a Beretta 96A1 .40 caliber pistol; a S&W 386 .357 mag revolver, a Mossberg Maverick 88 12-gauge shotgun and a Browning BPS 12-gauge shotgun.” He added that one of the rifles was at his parent's house.

The sailor poured his heart out to the agent about a “best friend,” who like him was “socially awkward.”  He said his father was in the Air Force, he had been Junior ROTC in college and his mom wanted him to “go nuke” in the Navy. He switched to his current job after failing to qualify by 1-point. His job in the Navy is never stated. NAS Fallon is one of the largest Navy facilities, located in the Nevada desert, and the home of the Top Gun fighter pilot school as well as military intelligence and other training programs.

The patches discovered in the sailor’s barracks room immediately caught the attention of the investigators and color photos are included in the investigation report. One patch read; “I’m just here for the boogaloo,” another; “join your local militia,” and a segmented snake with the words, “We will not comply.” A patch showed the flower symbol of the Hong Kong resistance, it reads “When tyranny becomes law resistance becomes duty.” Another read “Charge demolition M112 with Taggant (1-1/4 LBS Comp C-4) Universal Problem Solver,” C-4 is an explosive used by the military. There were also patches mentioning large scale populist protests in Canada against COVID lockdowns that shook the government.

The patch that attracted the most attention from the authorities depicted a bulldozer, covered in armor, with the date and place Granby, Co., June 4, 2004, around the edge the patch it read; “Sometimes reasonable men must do unreasonable things.”

The patch referenced the 2004 “Kamatsu dozer” incident when a frustrated shop owner Marvin Heemeyer took out a grudge against the town government of Granby by using an armored bulldozer he’d built himself to demolish the town hall.

The NCIS agent warned the sailor that the political message on the patch could be “construed” by co-workers. The sailor replied that he was willing to cooperate and answer questions about the patches so no one would “misunderstand his intent.”

He recounted he started collecting the patches when he was attending A and C school in Dam Neck, Virginia. He had difficulty getting his security clearance approved and told the agent he had been “stuck” in Dam Neck for more than a year waiting to start his C school training.

Navy A school is a constellation of schools located around the country for basic instruction in a specific area of expertise for new service members. More detailed training occurs at C school. He told the agent he needed to complete a “four year contract” and that required “Strike and GEOINT training.”

The Dam Neck Annex, located near Virginia Beach, was formed by merging the Strike Warfare Intelligence Analyst Course and Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT). The schools are run by Information Warfare Training Command (IWTC). A Navy website says the school has 65 courses in information technology, cryptology, and intelligence. The Annex is one of four schools comprising the Center for Information Warfare Training producing “journeymen intelligence specialists.”

He considered Canada a country “bad with gun rights,” adding that he purchased the patches from Canada and from a store in Virginia Beach. He explained boogaloo tot he agent; “it all belongs to gun rights and the attacks on gun laws…. Boogaloo didn’t want any gun laws… like most Americans.”

Eventually he was ordered to go on a diet, do more physical the training and calisthenics, and see a chaplain and Navy therapist. The NCIS agent wrote that the sailor showed “significant improvement in working with others” before adding, “All investigative leads are complete. The investigation is closed.”

Conclusion

The discovery of highly trained military personnel expressing extremist, white supremacist views with a penchant for high performance weaponry are the result of the most detailed information revealed to date of the breadth of extremism among active duty military.

The cases were closed with no serious repercussions, although NCIS investigators were concerned that  some of the individuals were potentially dangerous. Access to secret information and military training added a potentially subversive and violent dimension to their beliefs. The subjects were all potentially “insider threats.”

The United Stated Congress, Department of Justice and the FBI have taken particular interest in looking for active duty and former military and police members who entered the US Capitol in 2021 and attempted to halt the election process on behalf of former president Donald Trump. Death threats against Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were heard and recorded and at least two potential bombs were discovered nearby. The possibility of a civil war “boogaloo” in the United States remains remote, but violent acts by well trained “lone wolves,” are keeping law enforcement up at night as they look for possible threats. 

Paul DeRienzo is news director and headline editor for listener-sponsored WBAI/Pacifica radio in New York City. He contributed this investigative piece to ThisCantBeHappening!