National Security
The Informant at the Heart of the Gretchen Whitmer Kidnapping Plot Was a Liability. So Federal Agents Shut Him Up.
A month before the 2020 presidential election, the Justice Department announced that the FBI had foiled a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whose pandemic lockdown measures drew harsh criticism from President Donald Trump and his supporters.
The alleged plot coincided with growing concern about far-right political violence in America. But the FBI quickly realized it had a problem: A key informant in the case, a career snitch with a long rap sheet, had helped to orchestrate the kidnapping plot. During the undercover sting, the FBI ignored crimes that the informant, Stephen Robeson, appeared to have committed, including fraud and illegal possession of a sniper rifle.
The Whitmer kidnapping case followed a pattern familiar from hundreds of previous FBI counterterrorism stings that have targeted Muslims in the post-9/11 era. Those cases too raised questions about whether the crimes could have happened at all without the prodding of undercover agents and informants.
- Thousands of pages of internal FBI reports and hundreds of hours of undercover recordings obtained by The Intercept offer an extraordinary view into the alleged conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
- The Intercept exclusively obtained a five-hour recording of the FBI’s interrogation of Stephen Robeson, a paid informant central to the alleged kidnapping plot.
- The reports and recordings reveal how the FBI has adapted abusive war-on-terror sting tactics to target perceived domestic extremists and raise questions about whether the FBI pursued a larger effort to encourage political violence ahead of the 2020 election.
- Federal agents running the Whitmer kidnapping investigation put the public in danger to avoid undermining their operation, the files show.
- When FBI agents feared their informant might reveal the investigation’s flaws, they sought to coerce him into silence, at one point telling him: “A saying we have in my office is, ‘Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story,’ right?”
For the FBI, the stakes in the Whitmer case were high. If defense lawyers learned of Robeson’s role in the kidnapping plot, the FBI agents feared, they’d be accused of entrapment. The collapse of the case, built over nearly a year using as many as a dozen informants, two undercover agents, and bureau field offices in at least four states, would have been a public relations coup for right-wing politicians and news media. Both groups have used the problematic investigation as evidence that the Justice Department has been “weaponized” against conservatives — despite a decadeslong public record proving the opposite — and as fuel for conspiracy theories that the January 6 Capitol riot was engineered by the FBI.
But the truth about the Whitmer kidnapping case is far more complicated. This story is based on thousands of pages of internal FBI reports and more than 250 hours of undercover recordings obtained by The Intercept. The secret files offer an extraordinary view inside a high-profile domestic terrorism investigation, revealing in stark relief how federal agents have turned the war on terror inward, using informant-led stings to chase after potential domestic extremists just as the bureau spent the previous two decades setting up entrapment stings that targeted Muslims in supposed Islamist extremist plots. The files also suggest that federal agents have become reckless, turning a blind eye to public safety risks that, if addressed, could disrupt the government’s cases.
The FBI documents and recordings reveal that federal agents at times put Americans in danger as the Whitmer plot metastasized. In one instance, the FBI knew that Wolverine Watchmen militia members would enter the Michigan Capitol with firearms — and agents suspected that one man might even have had a live grenade — but did not stop them. (The grenade turned out to be nonfunctional.) Another time, federal agents intervened when local police officers in Michigan were about to confiscate firearms from two of the FBI’s targets, who were on a terrorist watchlist. Local law enforcement had received reports from concerned citizens who saw the men loading their guns before entering a hardware store.
The files also raise questions about whether the FBI pursued a larger, secret effort to encourage political violence in the run-up to the 2020 election. At least one undercover FBI agent and two informants in the Michigan case were also involved in stings centering on plots to assassinate the governor of Virginia and the attorney general of Colorado.
The FBI refused to answer a list of questions. “Unfortunately, due to ongoing litigation, we are unable to comment,” said Gabrielle Szlenkier, a spokesperson for the FBI in Michigan. Robeson, through his lawyer, also declined to comment.
Federal agents paid Robeson nearly $20,000 to participate in a conspiracy that evolved into a loose plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, according to the documents. But FBI agents knew that two other informants and some of the defendants in the Whitmer case believed that Robeson was the plot’s true architect.
So on December 10, 2020, agents called Robeson into the FBI’s office in Milwaukee in an apparent attempt to silence him. In an extraordinary five-hour conversation, which FBI agents recorded, one of Robeson’s handlers told him: “A saying we have in my office is, ‘Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story,’ right?” Despite federal and state trials involving the kidnapping plot, this recording — which goes to the heart of questions about whether the FBI entrapped the would-be kidnappers — was never allowed into evidence. The Intercept exclusively obtained the full recording and is publishing key portions for the first time.
“A saying we have in my office is, ‘Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.’”
The FBI agents asked Robeson to sign a nondisclosure agreement and proceeded to coach and threaten him to shape his story and ensure that he would never testify before a jury. Their coercion of Robeson undermines the Justice Department’s claim, in court records, that Robeson was a “double agent” whose actions weren’t under the government’s control. The agents also made it clear that they had leverage: They knew Robeson had committed crimes while working for the FBI.
“We know we have power, right?” an FBI agent told Robeson during this meeting. “We know we have leverage. We’re not going to bullshit you.”
“We’re speaking from a position of power. That’s why we’re here. We planned this out. We know we have power.”
Robeson’s role as an informant in the Whitmer kidnapping plot was supposed to be a tightly held secret. FBI agents had written the charging documents to conceal his identity.
But the FBI’s paperwork was sloppy. Supporters of the 14 defendants began to piece together clues from details like the FBI’s descriptions of passengers in a car that had been driven near Whitmer’s vacation home in Antrim County, Michigan. The clues appeared to point to Robeson as a snitch — or, in the FBI’s terminology, a confidential human source. After the October 2020 arrests, a panicked Robeson started calling targets of the FBI investigation and denying that he was an informant.
“So when you call, your intentions are to keep some of the heat off of you, right?” an FBI agent asked Robeson during the December 2020 meeting. “To point people in the other direction?”
“Anywhere but me,” Robeson answered. “Not at anyone specific, just away from me.”
FBI Special Agent Henrik “Hank” Impola, one of the lead investigators in the Whitmer kidnapping conspiracy, testifies in a Michigan court on Aug. 31, 2020.
Photo: Eric L. VanDussen
Robeson was talking to Henrik “Hank” Impola and Jayson Chambers, two of the lead FBI agents in the Michigan case. Chambers, who previously played in a rock band that “bases all of its music on the fact that Christians are in a spiritual war,” was the registered owner of a private intelligence company whose purported CEO ran a Twitter account known for right-wing trolling and that appeared to tweet about the Michigan case before it was announced.
The two agents started up a good-cop, bad-cop routine with Robeson. Chambers assured him they had done all they could to conceal his role as an informant. Impola, meanwhile, said they needed to come up with a plausible cover story.
Adam Fox, left, and Stephen Robeson, right, in a 2020 photo, became fast friends. The FBI tried to position Fox as the leader of the Whitmer kidnapping plot, but Robeson was also deeply involved, FBI records show.
Photo: FBI evidence
“Robey’s Idea From Day One”
From the start of the investigation, the FBI knew that Robeson, like many paid informants, had credibility problems. Robeson has been in and out of the criminal justice system since the early ’80s, charged with having sex with a minor, writing bad checks, bail jumping, and many other offenses. Robeson also acknowledged to the agents that he was previously a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang. “I can’t blame what I did on anybody else,” Robeson told FBI agents of his criminal record. “I’m doing what I hope is better now.”
Sexual misconduct is a repeated claim in allegations involving Robeson, and his handlers at the FBI knew this. A local police report in the FBI’s files describes how a 17-year-old claimed Robeson coerced her to have sex in return for a promise to put her pictures in a calendar. He pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor charge.
More recently, according to an internal FBI report, a woman who lived in Robeson’s garage in Wisconsin told federal agents that Robeson pressured her for sex because he said she wasn’t contributing enough to the household. “I would not call it rape,” the woman said, though she acknowledged to federal agents that she did not believe she had a choice. The woman also told FBI agents that Robeson sold marijuana and prescription drugs out of his house, according to internal bureau documents. She reported that she suspected he was selling firearms as well. (The Intercept is not publishing these reports because they contain identifying information about alleged sex crime victims.)
Robeson’s career as a government cooperator appears to have coincided with his career as a criminal. In 1985, he testified that a member of a violent motorcycle gang with whom he had shared a jail cell confessed to him that he had “hit a girl on top of the head” before her body was found in a burned-out bar, which was allegedly set ablaze for insurance money. More recently, in the mid-2000s, Robeson helped police set up a Wisconsin farmer, who wanted to harm a romantic rival, in a murder-for-hire scheme.
Defense lawyers say the FBI used a nondisclosure agreement with Robeson — which they claim was never turned over as evidence in the Whitmer cases — to prevent Robeson from talking publicly about his work as an informant. As Special Agent Chambers reminded Robeson in their recorded meeting: “So when you get asked, ‘Why did you have to go to the FBI, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?’ You don’t have to talk about what we’re talking about here.”
Federal agents were particularly troubled by messages Robeson had sent to Barry Croft Jr., a primary target in the investigation, that alluded to using violence against elected officials. Croft’s lawyer could use those messages to suggest that the kidnapping plot had been Robeson’s idea, not Croft’s, the agents feared.
“This is something that we’re all going to have to overcome,” Impola told Robeson, adding a few minutes later: “It quickly becomes, from a defense strategy, ‘Well, this was Robey’s idea from day one.’”
Joe Morrison (third from right), Paul Bellar (second from right), and Pete Musico (right) of the Wolverine Watchmen were among protesters inside the Michigan Capitol on April 30, 2020.
Photo: Seth Herald/REUTERS
“I Let the FBI Know”
In the spring of 2020, as the United States grappled with a deadly coronavirus pandemic, Whitmer, a Democrat, issued a “stay home, stay safe” order in Michigan that barred “in-person work that is not necessary to sustain or protect life.” Covid-19 skeptics, along with many Republicans, were enraged. On April 17, Trump weighed in with a tweet: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”
Two weeks later, as many as 1,000 protesters attended a rally at the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing in what a state senator later described as a “dress rehearsal” for January 6. The so-called American Patriot Rally was organized by Ryan Kelly, a former Republican gubernatorial candidate in Michigan who was later sentenced to 60 days in prison for taking part in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Many of the protesters inside the Michigan Capitol were armed, including an FBI informant and former Army sergeant named Dan Chappel. The FBI had hired Chappel to infiltrate a ragtag group of gun enthusiasts he’d met through Facebook who called themselves the Wolverine Watchmen. “I let the FBI know that there was talks of storming the Capitol,” Chappel, known to the militia group as “Big Dan,” later testified.
About 10 members of the Wolverine Watchmen were with Chappel at the state Capitol, unaware that he was working for the FBI. Although he informed the FBI in advance that the Wolverine Watchmen planned to storm the Capitol that day, federal agents did not try to stop them, Chappel later testified. FBI agents knew the militia members had discussed the locations of police officers at the Capitol and how to start “the boogaloo,” code for a civil war. (A year after arrests were made in the Whitmer kidnapping plot, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel confirmed in a podcast interview that law enforcement perceived violence at the Capitol as a real threat. “There was a plan for mass execution that day,” Nessel said.)
The April rally in Lansing was so successful that the same organizers held another, on June 18, 2020. The protesters, including Chappel and other members of the Wolverine Watchmen, milled about outside the Capitol that day, showing off their firearms and military cosplay for the news cameras.
That’s where Chappel first met Adam Fox, who lived in the basement of a vacuum repair shop and liked to work out, smoke marijuana, and rant on social media. A stout man with a beard, Fox had already met Robeson, who was the Wisconsin chapter president of the Patriot Three Percenters militia and had started working for the FBI as an informant in October 2019, according to the bureau.
![A well-regulated militia" at the Michigan State Capitol in downtown Lansing Thursday evening, June 18, 2020. [MATTHEW DAE SMITH/USA Today Network] Md7 9858](https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/USATSI_14436846-Adam-Fox.jpg?fit=2500%2C1952&w=1200)
Adam Fox, photographed outside the Michigan Capitol on June 18, 2020, lived in the basement of a vacuum repair shop. He liked to work out, smoke marijuana, rant on social media, and had become fascinated by the militia movement.
Photo: Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State/USA Today Network
Robeson had come to the FBI’s attention in part through a secret program known as Operation Bronze Griffon — first revealed publicly in 2022 to Republican House investigators by a whistleblower who misspelled it as Bronze Griffin — through which Facebook provides user activity information to federal agents without a search warrant or subpoena. According to an FBI report obtained by The Intercept, agents received a Bronze Griffon lead on Robeson for posting “possibly violent rhetoric in support of the militia movement and the Boogaloo concept.” The FBI recruited Robeson to be an informant, and he told agents that he knew of fellow militia members who had spoken about attacking law enforcement officials.
Once on the FBI payroll, Robeson organized and led several militia planning meetings, including one in Dublin, Ohio, that Fox and Croft attended on June 6, 2020.
Chappel’s face-to-face meeting with Fox at the Michigan Capitol would bridge two federal investigations, known internally as Operation Cold Snap and Operation Kessel Run, and link two informants, Chappel and Robeson, each of whom was unaware that the other worked for the FBI.
Chappel’s face-to-face meeting with Fox would bridge two federal investigation and link two informants, Chappel and Robeson, each of whom was unaware that the other worked for the FBI.
The informants went to great lengths to position Fox as a leader. Robeson suggested that Fox launch a Michigan chapter of the Patriot Three Percenters. On June 21, 2020, just three days after Fox met Chappel, a third FBI informant, Jenny Plunk, created a private Facebook group called “Michigan Patriot III%ers.” (The FBI classifies Three Percenters as a domestic terrorism threat.)
The Facebook group’s first members were Plunk and Robeson, both on the FBI’s payroll, and Fox and his girlfriend, Amanda Keller. Plunk lived in Tennessee, where, according to her FBI cover story, she led a small militia. While Plunk and Robeson administered the Facebook group, Fox invited several Wolverine Watchmen and other gun enthusiasts to join, bringing the group’s membership roster to 28. Although the FBI’s informants had created the Facebook group for Fox, Robeson announced in a welcome message that Fox was the “C.O.” — a military acronym for “commanding officer.”
Robeson often spoke in the vernacular of a soldier. He never served in the military, but he was so gung-ho that he had obtained forged paperwork that made it appear he’d been a Marine, according to FBI reports. Using military lingo, Robeson posted an invitation to the new Facebook group for a weekend tactical training session in Cambria, Wisconsin, about 40 miles north of Madison.
More than 30 people attended that weekend event in July 2020, including Fox, his girlfriend, and a few members of the Wolverine Watchmen. At the time, Robeson was running scams related to a fake charity he called Race to Unite Races, whose mission was “to bridge the racial divide.” Internal FBI reports indicate that Robeson used proceeds from the fake charity to buy supplies to build a shooting range to train in close-quarters combat, known as a “kill house.”
Militia members practice inside a “kill house” during a July 2020 training session in Wisconsin organized and partially financed by FBI informant Stephen Robeson.
Screenshot: The Intercept/FBI evidence
Videos from the FBI files show the attendees shooting at targets in the kill house. Robeson, a firearm holstered at his side, can be seen giving directions. Chappel, who had combat experience in Iraq, also appears in several videos demonstrating tactics. FBI agents gave Chappel permission in advance to share combat tactics with the militia members, telling him: “You can do what’s on YouTube.”
In a group photo from the event, many attendees hold up rifles, offering the reluctant half-smiles of an awkward family picture. Robeson is off to the left, wearing flip-flops, American-flag swimming trunks, and a sleeveless T-shirt that hangs over his large belly. He’s holding up three fingers, the sign of the Three Percenters.
The events of that weekend were critical to the Justice Department’s case, as they appeared to show the men training for scenarios they’d encounter in their supposed attempt to kidnap Michigan’s governor. But by the time the FBI spoke to Robeson in December 2020, federal agents were deeply concerned that the fine details of that weekend might suggest entrapment.
“You’ve got a Wisconsin Patriot Three Percenter role-playing the kidnapping with Wolverine Watchman at the training you’ve set up, right?” Impola, the FBI agent, said to Robeson.
“It wasn’t just me,” Robeson said. “I set it up and —”
“These are things we need to discuss,” Chambers interrupted.
“You’ve got a Wisconsin Patriot Three Percenter role-playing the kidnapping, with Wolverine Watchmen at the training you set up, right?”
Impola told Robeson that the FBI’s case notes show that a Wisconsin agent was aware of the training, but that federal agents did not know that Robeson was the one who had organized it.
“I don’t want to put these words in your mouth, but the question is —” Impola said.
“Did I do it under FBI directive?” Robeson interrupted.
“Right,” Impola answered.
“No, it wasn’t just — What I’m saying is, it wasn’t me. It was Adam [Fox] that asked if they could do that —”
“Yup,” the two FBI agents said in unison.
“It was Barry [Croft] who asked if we could get a joint one together. It was Illinois. And I asked before I said yes.”
“The question becomes: Did a bunch of terrorists Shanghai your training for their purposes, or did you set up a training for terrorists?” Impola asked. “That’s the question, right? There’s a training that happened in which a terrorist operation was planned and played out, and you’re involved in setting it up.”
“I Need to Come Play With Y’all”
Robeson’s organizing and financing of the weekend training in Wisconsin wasn’t the FBI’s only problem.
In multiple videos from the training, Robeson can be seen using firearms. As a felon, he wasn’t allowed to have guns. But FBI agents apparently believed that handling firearms would be critical to his credibility among the militia members, so they had asked the Justice Department for a waiver to let Robeson handle “nonfunctional” weapons in his undercover capacity, according to internal emails.
In photos and videos taken during the FBI sting, informant Stephen Robeson can be seen with firearms even though the Justice Department had instructed the FBI not to allow Robeson, a convicted felon, to use guns during the operation.
Photo: FBI evidence
The Justice Department said no, reminding Robeson’s handlers that he was prohibited from handling even an inoperable firearm. “Just the receiver satisfies the federal definition of a firearm,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Rita Rumbelow told the FBI in a May 21, 2020, email, referring to the tube that houses the firearm’s bolt.
Internal FBI records show that Robeson and his handlers found creative ways to get around the Justice Department’s directive. One month after the Wisconsin training event, the FBI assigned Robeson a new handler, Corey Baumgardner, an agent in Wisconsin. Baumgardner later testified that he collected a firearm from Robeson: an AR-15-style rifle with an illegal suppressor and a launcher attachment. Instead of handing the firearm to the agent, Robeson left it on the ground in front of his truck. Baumgardner collected the gun, without having to see Robeson handle it.
The gambit appeared to allow Robeson and the FBI to have it both ways: Robeson could have access to guns, maintaining his credibility with the militia members, and FBI agents wouldn’t directly see him handle firearms.
Federal agents went to great lengths to maintain this sleight of hand. As part of the sting, the FBI in early August 2020 went to Delaware, where Robeson and Plunk met with a group that included Croft, a truck driver Robeson started messaging online in 2019 about targeting politicians for violence, and Frank Butler, a Navy veteran from Virginia.
Butler had been in contact online and in person with both Robeson and Chappel, and Chappel had discussed with him a fantastical plan to fly an explosives-laden drone into the Virginia governor’s North Carolina vacation home, though the plot went nowhere. Butler, who was never charged with a crime, later told investigators that Robeson and Chappel “were literally brainwashing me” and “weaponizing me.” (Prosecutors acknowledged in a court filing that Robeson had offered to provide money to “purchase weapons for attacks” and “the use of a drone, to aid in acts of domestic terrorism.”)
After their meeting in Delaware, Robeson had something for Croft. Baumgardner, the FBI agent in Wisconsin, had driven the AR-15-style rifle he’d collected next to Robeson’s truck more than 900 miles to Delaware. The rifle had originally belonged to Croft, and Robeson tried to give the weapon back to him. According to internal FBI reports, Croft refused to accept it, saying he couldn’t keep it at that moment. Plunk, the other FBI informant, took the illegal gun instead.
The following month, two undercover FBI agents and three FBI informants — Robeson, Chappel, and Plunk — gathered for another training event in Luther, Michigan, with around 26 others, including Croft from Delaware and Fox from Michigan. Plunk secretly recorded audio and video during the training event. In one recording, Robeson proclaimed that he was now the national leader of the Patriot Three Percenters militia and had appointed someone else to run his chapter in Wisconsin. “I’m no longer the state C.O.,” Robeson said. “I’m the national C.O.”
Also during this training event, on the afternoon of September 13, 2020, Plunk gave the rifle to Croft, who, in turn, handed it over to Chappel, according to FBI reports.
The story of the firearm only revealed the FBI’s heavy hand in the investigation.
FBI agents appeared to view the rifle with an illegal suppressor and attached launcher as a critical piece of evidence in their conspiracy case. But the story of the firearm only revealed the FBI’s heavy hand in the investigation. The illegal rifle made a full circle, from the FBI and back, through the hands of three paid informants, never staying long with any targets of the investigation.
The gun anecdote is emblematic of the larger sting: The FBI’s informants were ham-fistedly encouraging their targets to discuss plots to harm elected officials. Those efforts reached farcical levels on September 12, 2020, during a meeting and training exercises in Luther.
For that meeting, Chappel brought a friend nicknamed “Red,” a slender man with a 187th Airborne sleeve tattoo on his right arm. “Red” was in fact Timothy Bates, an undercover FBI agent who identifies himself in government recordings as “UCE 7775,” referring to his FBI undercover employee number. Just three weeks earlier, Bates had been in Denver, where he encouraged political violence. In Colorado, an FBI informant named Mickey Windecker introduced Bates to a racial justice activist who expressed interest in assassinating the state’s attorney general — a plot that, like the one targeting Virginia’s governor, ultimately fizzled.
Bates and Chappel, both Army veterans, led a close-quarters combat training for the Wolverine Watchmen. Bates also told the group gathered in Michigan that he could supply explosives. The group’s rough plan to kidnap Whitmer at her vacation home involved possibly blowing up a nearby bridge to slow rescue efforts.
“So my guy up in Minnesota, he can pretty much get whatever. He has access to whatever one would want,” Bates said in an undercover recording. Bates had brought along several videos showing men assembling and detonating homemade bombs. These videos were all stage-managed by the FBI, with agents pretending to be rogue bomb-makers.
In this screenshot from a video produced by the FBI, a man demonstrates how a pipe bomb can destroy a vehicle. An FBI undercover agent showed this video to attendees at a training session in Luther, Mich., on Sept. 12, 2020.
Photo: FBI evidence
One showed an SUV obliterated by a pipe bomb. “It’s a short video,” Bates told the group.
“Oh, yeah!” Robeson said, laughing approvingly at the explosion.
Bates explained that some of the bombs used C-4 inside pipes, with timing devices. Others used liquid explosives, he said.
“I need to come play with y’all,” Plunk said excitedly.
As he watched the video, Fox asked Bates: “What kind of price tag we looking at?”
“Depending on how big you want it,” Bates answered. “For that right there? That’s pretty cheap — 1,600 bucks, maybe. Maybe a thousand bucks.”
It wasn’t the first time Bates had offered bargain prices. In Colorado, Bates suggested he could hire a hitman for $500 to kill the state’s attorney general. In Michigan, he was offering explosives for pennies on the dollar.
That evening, Robeson, Chappel, Bates, and a few militia members drove near Whitmer’s vacation home. They inspected the bridge they’d bomb, tried to view Whitmer’s home from across the lake, and drove down her road. This apparent reconnaissance trip was central to the government’s case.
But true to form, Robeson mucked up the evidence. Fellow Wisconsinite Brian Higgins was the one who drove past Whitmer’s home — a seemingly incriminating act — but Higgins later told federal agents that Robeson had said they were hunting for sexual predators. In his December meeting with FBI agents, Robeson confirmed that Higgins was not initially aware of the kidnapping plot and instead believed they were out “hunting pedophiles.” But once he was in Michigan, Higgins learned that some of the attendees had a rough plan to kidnap Whitmer. Higgins drove down Whitmer’s road using a dash camera and provided the video to Chappel. After he returned to Wisconsin, Higgins claims he told Robeson he didn’t want to be involved in the plot.
The FBI’s own informant was telling a man he thought was the target of an investigation to destroy evidence.
Feeling guilty for tricking him, Robeson tried to protect Higgins from criminal exposure — a fact federal prosecutors admitted to in a court filing. Robeson called Chappel, still unaware that he was also an FBI informant, and told him to destroy his copy of Higgins’s dash-cam video. The FBI’s own informant was telling a man he thought was the target of an investigation to destroy evidence.
During the December 10, 2020, recorded interview with Robeson, Impola tried to coerce the informant into changing his story about what Higgins knew before the drive: “If you’re sticking with the story that [Higgins] was out there on a pedophile ring,” the FBI special agent said, “you’ll be his star witness in the defense. There’s zero options for that.”
A Confederate flag hangs from a porch on a property in Munith, Mich., where members of the Wolverine Watchmen militia group trained with an FBI informant named Dan Chappel.
Photo: Nicole Hester/Ann Arbor News via AP
“We Have One Chief”
When arrests and charges were announced in the Whitmer plot, the Justice Department portrayed Adam Fox as the leader. But FBI recordings suggest the informants were the ones in charge.
On October 7, 2020, as the government was making arrests in the case, Robeson, Chappel, and Plunk were on a recorded phone line talking about who should make future calls to action — in other words, who should be the leader.
“I was thinking we should have one person … to make the call for both states.”
“I mean, I’m good with Robey, because you’re the national guy, the president,” Chappel said, adding a minute later: “We have one chief.”
“We can definitely roll,” Robeson said. “That’s fine.”
The FBI arrested 13 people that day, and the foiled kidnapping plot made national news. (Higgins, the 14th defendant, was arrested a week later.) After the initial arrests, Robeson made a series of calls to Chappel; the girlfriend of one of the militia members; and others who orbited the supposed kidnapping plot. Robeson offered several outlandish claims, including that he believed Croft, a primary target of the investigation, had leaked information that caused the arrests. FBI reports indicate that Robeson again called Chappel, still unaware that he was also working for the FBI, and told him to throw the rifle with the illegal suppressor and attached launcher into a lake. Chappel, however, had already returned the gun to his bureau handlers.
During these calls, Robeson told fellow informant Plunk that he believed Chappel was an informant. Robeson appeared to be flailing after the arrests, pointing fingers to avoid being revealed as a government snitch.
His behavior in the immediate aftermath of the arrests was so concerning to FBI agents that federal and state prosecutors discussed charging him with witness tampering, according to emails that circulated among more than a dozen FBI agents the day after the kidnapping plot was announced. The bureau then began to investigate Robeson, internal records show. Agents reinterviewed the woman living in his garage, who claimed he had coerced her into having sex with him. That woman told the FBI that during the undercover sting, Robeson had an arsenal of weapons in his bedroom; that he was bringing in drugs from out of state; and that he had proposed taking her to rallies and training events in other parts of the country so she could make money, which she described to the FBI as “sex trafficking.”
For his part, Robeson appeared to realize that he had crossed the line from informant to participant in the kidnapping plot, putting himself in legal jeopardy. An internal FBI report said Robeson told another informant that he was worried he could be linked to “product,” by which he meant explosives.
Illustration: Jess Suttner for The Intercept
“I Did This Trying to Keep My Undercover Position”
The Whitmer kidnapping plot has yielded five acquittals, five convictions, and four guilty pleas in federal and state courts. Robeson didn’t testify in any of the trials. When defense lawyers tried to compel him, he told the federal court that he would assert his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. The Justice Department claimed that Robeson was a “double agent” whose statements would not be “binding admissions of the government itself.”
The recording of Robeson’s December 2020 meeting with the FBI reveals that the “double agent” ploy was a carefully planned strategy. When Robeson was called into that Wisconsin FBI office, agents described three possible scenarios for him.
The first was that all the defendants would take plea deals, in which case “your name is not on the witness list,” Impola said. The second was that Robeson could be a government witness or, in the third option, a witness for the defendants whose testimony could support their claims of entrapment.
At the time, the agents errantly assumed that option one was the likeliest. “I am fairly confident that when anybody looks at that witness list, they’re not going to trial now because they know the ramifications,” said Impola.
But what he didn’t say was that the second and third options — involving Robeson testifying in court — weren’t real options at all, at least not in the view of the FBI. There was also a fourth option that the agents didn’t mention: The Justice Department could jam Robeson, a felon, with firearms charges for crimes he committed while working undercover for the FBI.
And that’s what happened. On March 3, 2021, the Justice Department indicted Robeson in Wisconsin on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Prosecutors alleged that Robeson bought a .50-caliber sniper rifle, among the most powerful firearms available to civilians in the United States, and later sold it on Facebook — all while working for the FBI.
At his plea hearing, Robeson claimed he’d bought the gun to bolster his FBI cover. “I did this trying to keep my undercover position where I was at and kind of make me look a little more aggressive in the organization,” Robeson said in court.
Robeson was sentenced to probation on a federal felony charge that could have carried a 10-year sentence. He and his handlers knew he had illegally possessed, purchased, and sold multiple firearms in the course of the sting; the single gun charge represented a threat of more to come if he were to testify in any of the state or federal prosecutions.
With that threat, FBI agents stopped the facts from getting in the way of their “good story” about the Whitmer kidnapping plot. In their zeal to protect a career-making case, those federal agents also poured jet fuel on conspiracy theories about the “deep state” and the January 6 Capitol riot that will be central to this year’s presidential election.
The post The Informant at the Heart of the Gretchen Whitmer Kidnapping Plot Was a Liability. So Federal Agents Shut Him Up. appeared first on The Intercept.
Three More Members of Congress Call on Pentagon to Make Amends to Somali Family
An expanding chorus in Congress is urging the Pentagon to make amends to a Somali family following an investigation by The Intercept into a 2018 U.S. drone strike that killed a woman and her 4-year-old daughter.
The growing pressure on the Pentagon coincided with a government watchdog’s rebuke of the Defense Department for failing to accurately track law of war violations. The Government Accountability Office last month singled out officials at U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, who they said “may not be reporting all alleged law of war violations as required.”
Since late January, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Jim McGovern, D-Mass., have called on the Pentagon to compensate the family of the woman and child killed in the U.S. strike, Luul Dahir Mohamed and Mariam Shilow Muse. They’ve joined Reps. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who made the same demand earlier this year. In December 2023, two dozen human rights organizations — 14 Somali and 10 international groups — also called on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to compensate the family for the deaths.
“We cannot condemn other nations for civilian casualties if we are not following best practices.”
The April 1, 2018, attack in Somalia killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including Luul and Mariam. A formerly secret U.S. military investigation, obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act, acknowledged the deaths of a woman and child in the strike but concluded their identities might never be known. This reporter traveled to Somalia and spoke with seven members of Luul and Mariam’s family. For more than five years, they have tried to contact the U.S. government, including through AFRICOM’s online civilian casualty reporting portal, but never received a reply.
“America needs to apologize, take responsibility, and make amends. We can’t take away the pain and suffering felt by this family, but the fact that we haven’t even tried is awful,” McGovern told The Intercept. “We cannot condemn other nations for civilian casualties if we are not following best practices. It makes no difference that these civilian casualties happened under the previous administration.”
In December, the Defense Department released its long-awaited “Instruction on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response,” or DoD-I, which established the Pentagon’s “policies, responsibilities, and procedures for mitigating and responding to civilian harm” and directed the military to “respond to individuals and communities affected by U.S. military operations,” including by “expressing condolences” and providing so-called ex gratia payments to next of kin.
“I have worked to provide the Department of Defense the authority and the funds to make amends for civilian harm as a result of U.S military action,” Warren told The Intercept. “I am deeply concerned that the failure to make payments to impacted families seriously undercuts the credibility of the Department’s commitment to preventing and addressing civilian harm.”
The GAO report issued last month criticized Pentagon policies concerning potential war crimes. “DOD lacks comprehensive records of alleged law of war violations,” reads the investigation, which calls out both AFRICOM and U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM.
“AFRICOM and CENTCOM have issued policies to implement the [law of war violation] reporting process, but AFRICOM’s policy is outdated and not fully aligned with current DOD policy,” the GAO found. “As a result, AFRICOM may not be aware of all such allegations or be in a position to forward reporting to DOD leadership as required.”
Similarly, the investigation found that “CENTCOM did not have records for all of the alleged law of war violations … that occurred within its area of responsibility.” The GAO noted that these were more than mere clerical errors. “Without a system to comprehensively retain records of allegations of law of war violations,” the report says, “DOD leadership may not be well positioned to fully implement the law of war.”
In June 2023, The Intercept asked AFRICOM to answer detailed questions about its law of war and civilian casualty policies and requested interviews with officials versed in such matters. Despite multiple follow-ups, Courtney Dock, AFRICOM’s deputy director public affairs, has yet to respond.
The Pentagon’s inquiry into the attack that killed Luul and Mariam found that the Americans who conducted the strike were confused and inexperienced and that they argued about basic details, like how many passengers were in the targeted vehicle. The U.S. strike cell members mistook a woman and a child for an adult male, killing Luul and Mariam in a follow-up attack as they ran from the truck in which they had hitched a ride to visit relatives. Despite this, the investigation — by the unit that conducted the strike — concluded that standard operating procedures and the rules of engagement were followed. No one was ever held accountable for the deaths.
“This case — and others — reflect the tragic cost of the decades-long war on terror, a war that is increasingly fought remotely,” Lee, the California representative, told The Intercept. “The Pentagon needs to re-examine this and other cases, hold itself accountable for missteps, and make amends with innocent victims of U.S. actions.”
The post Three More Members of Congress Call on Pentagon to Make Amends to Somali Family appeared first on The Intercept.
Biden Is Bankrolling Israel’s War Amid Growing Financial Hardship at Home
This story was supported by the journalism nonprofit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
In late October, President Joe Biden issued two supplemental funding requests. The first, primarily to support Israel’s war on Gaza and Ukraine’s war against Russia, became the $95 billion National Security Act, which the Senate passed in February. This week, Biden urged House leadership to pass the bill as soon as possible.
Never has the president appeared more committed to advancing one of his priorities. Biden delivered a rare Oval Office address specifically to market the plan — something he hasn’t done for any other proposal — and designated the funding as “emergency requirements.” In the weeks and months that followed, he ensured that it remained at the top of Congress’s agenda, even if that meant delays to other legislative business. His hard work paid off: The current bill gives Biden pretty much exactly what he asked for.
The second proposal is half the size of the first and funds domestic programs such as grants to child care providers and disaster relief. This request wasn’t designated as emergency spending.
While Biden personally and repeatedly urged Congress to approve his foreign policy plan, there is not a single instance of him even mentioning his domestic proposal in a statement since offering it on October 25. It hasn’t made an appearance on his personal or presidential X accounts either. Indeed, the way the proposal is written suggests that Biden never intended it to be taken seriously. The foreign policy request is a 69-page, fully drafted legislative proposal that’s formally addressed to the House speaker; the domestic request is a two-page summary table.
The disproportionate amount of political — and regular — capital Biden put into his military spending proposal compared to his domestic, anti-poverty measure characterizes the disconnect between Washington’s idea of “national security” and what security actually means to working-class people and families. If there were alignment, the domestic proposal would be a bill by now.
The National Security Act 2024 puts the U.S. on track to spend more on its military this year than it did annually on average during World War II. Seventy percent of the $95 billion bill is designated for the Pentagon, as is another $886 billion Congress authorized in December. Altogether, the pending fiscal year 2024 Pentagon budget stands at $953 billion.
But as Biden pushes for the largest military budget in the postwar era, 63 percent of U.S. adults say rising prices are a source of hardship; 41 percent report difficulty paying for basic needs like food, housing, child care, and utilities; and 23 percent said they were unable to pay an energy bill in full in the last year. These measures of financial distress are all higher than what they were on average in fiscal years 2021, 2022, or 2023. In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, the president’s focus is on weapons.
In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, the president’s focus is on weapons.
The largest provision in the domestic plan is a one-year, $16 billion extension to the American Rescue Plan’s Child Care Stabilization program, which saved the already-fragile child care sector from collapse during the pandemic by keeping workers employed and costs down for families. More than 220,000 child care programs received assistance, including the Sammy Center, a nonprofit preschool in Salt Lake City, Utah. “I am eternally grateful for the stabilization grants,” founder Maria Soter told me. “The funding was my lifeline.”
The expiration of stabilization grants on September 30 set in motion an unfolding disaster. To compensate for the funding shortfall, child care programs across the country are closing, downsizing, cutting wages, or raising costs. In October, more than a third of providers who once received stabilization funding said they had already increased tuition. Knowing she would have to raise tuition at her preschool, Soter said that in the lead-up to the grants’ expiration, “there were nights I didn’t sleep.” Although most parents could afford the extra $300 per month to keep their child enrolled, she lost four students because of the increase.
Absent new stabilization funding, 3.2 million children could lose access to child care. Financial hardship will likely get worse too: Many working parents are now paying more for child care or working less to assume those duties themselves. Households are projected to lose nearly $9 billion in earnings annually from parents reducing their work hours or leaving their jobs entirely to cover the new gaps in child care coverage.
Israel’s War on Gaza
Spending $16 billion on child care would blunt rising financial hardship and promote children’s well-being. The National Security Act, meanwhile, spends $16.5 billion to sustain Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 12,500 Palestinian children.
This bill shouldn’t exist for another reason. Providing military aid to Ukraine wouldn’t require a supplemental bill had Biden not excluded funding for it from the $886 billion Pentagon budget hoping to avoid trade-offs.
To the delight of military contractors, his plan worked. All told, the U.S. arms industry should expect a windfall of about $64 billion from the National Security Act, or four times the money it would take to mitigate America’s child care crisis.
The post Biden Is Bankrolling Israel’s War Amid Growing Financial Hardship at Home appeared first on The Intercept.
Aaron Bushnell, Who Self-Immolated for Palestine, Had Grown Deeply Disillusioned With the Military
Aaron Bushnell, the active-duty U.S. Air Force airman who set himself on fire Sunday to protest Israel’s war on Gaza, appears to have grown disillusioned with the U.S. military and his own role as a service member, according to posts on the online forum Reddit under a handle matching one used by Bushnell.
Bushnell, 25, made international news when he professed that he would “no longer be complicit in genocide” and recorded himself shouting “Free Palestine!” as he burned to death in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington on Sunday. “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest,” Bushnell had announced on a livestream before his self-immolation, “but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers is not extreme at all.”
The Reddit posts, by a user named acebush1 and mostly from the past four years, chronicle a young person’s experience struggling with money as the pandemic took hold. The Reddit poster turned to the military and was initially enamored with the Air Force, but quickly came to denounce it.
In the months leading up to Bushnell’s act of self-immolation, several of acebush1’s posts showed how sharply their view of the military had shifted. On the r/Airforce subreddit, a user asked veterans whether, in hindsight, they would still choose to join the military. Acebush1 answered, “Absolutely not.”
“I have been complicit in the violent domination of the world,” they said, “and I will never get the blood off my hands.”
The Intercept analysis linked the acebush1 Reddit account to Bushnell by analyzing his social media activity. In a post on Facebook the same day as his self-immolation, Bushnell had posted a link to the video streaming platform Twitch with the username LillyAnarKitty. Using a Twitch username history tool that identifies a user’s prior account names, The Intercept found that the same Twitch User ID number used by LillyAnarKitty previously employed the handle acebush1.
A Reddit user with the same username — acebush1 — posted over a thousand times since 2014. The Reddit posts mention details that align closely with Bushnell’s life, including being in the Air Force, having a friend who was a conscientious objector, and studying computer science.
As this story was being drafted, acebush1’s posts started to be removed from Reddit. The posts were archived and, though Reddit instantly deletes posts from their new interface, visiting the old-style Reddit user profile page reveals their recently deleted posts.
“A Regret I Will Carry”
The acebush1 Reddit user joined the military soon after posting about their financial struggles at the beginning of the pandemic. On March 19, 2020, acebush1 inquired about becoming an Uber Eats driver. The following month they posted asking for financial help: “HELP – Can’t get stimulus or unemployment benefits, about to run out of money.”
In May, acebush1 posted a photo with the caption “My Dad getting suited up to give me a goodbye? hug before I leave for BMT” — basic military training. According to Bushnell’s LinkedIn page, he enrolled in “Basic & Technical Training” in the Air Force in May 2020.
Several months into enrollment, acebush1 appeared excited by the Air Force, reposting a video of a military aircraft in August 2020 and giving it a heading that said: “Man, the Air Force does some cool-ass shit.”
Acebush1 also regularly posted in various video game Reddit communities, including one dedicated to the video game “Valheim.” In Bushnell’s self-immolation livestream, the liquid container he is carrying has a sticker with the slogan ‘the bees are happy,’ a meme from “Valheim.”
In November 2021, acebush1 made multiple posts asking about advice in pursuing a computer science degree. Bushnell’s LinkedIn profile, which has been memorialized “as a tribute to Aaron Bushnell’s professional legacy,” lists him as having been in the process of pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer software engineering.
Nearly a year later, acebush1’s posts shifted from largely video game-based content to posts with titles like “Solidarity with Prisoners!” with a link to a Guardian article about an Alabama prison strike, and to reposting a meme image of anarchist philosopher Max Stirner. In 2023, acebush1 made a post with the title “Free Palestine!” and linked to a video of an activist takeover of UAV Tactical Systems, a drone company operated in part by the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems.
“I didn’t realize what a huge mistake it was until I was more than halfway through.”
Shortly after the pro-Palestine post, in June 2023, acebush1 wrote, “I’m sticking it out to the end of my contract as I didn’t realize what a huge mistake it was until I was more than halfway through, and I only have a year left at this point. However it is a regret I will carry the rest of my life.”
The poster mentioned a friend who left the armed services on the basis of conscientious objection; Bushnell’s friend Levi Pierpont, according to the Washington Post, objected and left the military.
Israel’s War on Gaza
Acebush1’s posts became more stridently pro-Palestinian as Israel’s war in Gaza got underway. In one, they denounce Israel as a “settler colonialist apartheid state,” and exclaim that there are no Israeli “civilians” because the entire country is engaged in oppression. They refuse on several occasion to denounce armed Palestinian resistance, saying in the apartheid post that they “work for the air force and would also have no right to complain about violent resistance against my actions.”
In November 2023, acebush1 made another post describing “the moral necessity of getting out.”
In the last few months, acebush1 accelerated their posting across various anarchism-related Reddit communities, as well as on other various communities. “Piracy is always ethical,” acebush1 posted. “If you think that you’re making a difference with who you do and don’t choose to give your money to, you don’t understand how markets work.”
Acebush1’s last Reddit post was on February 24, expounding on how “whiteness erases culture” — a day before Bushnell’s self-immolating direct action. In an earlier post, acebush1 had written, “I’ve never been one for bullshit.”
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“Logistics” Outpost in Jordan Where 3 U.S. Troops Died Is Secretly a Drone Base
Tower 22, the U.S. base in Jordan where three American service members were killed last month, is not simply a “logistics support base,” as the Pentagon has described it.
What the Pentagon hasn’t mentioned is that Tower 22 is also a drone base conducting long-range reconnaissance on militants in neighboring Syria and Iraq for airstrikes, according to two U.S. military sources. The base also serves as a staging facility for special operations forces and a medevac helicopter home base.
And while the Pentagon says Tower 22’s mission was to combat the Islamic State, or ISIS, since Hamas’s assault on Israel in October, its focus has turned to Iran-backed militia groups.
“To call Tower 22 a logistics support base is complete bullshit.”
“To call Tower 22 a logistics support base is complete bullshit,” an Air Force airman, whose unit was recently stationed at the base, told The Intercept. Logistics was a small part of the mission, amounting to weekly food and fuel deliveries to the nearby Al-Tanf base.
“The main purpose of Tower 22 is to operate drones to spy on insurgents in Iraq and Syria, for targeting purposes,” the airman said. “The main objective I witnessed was taking out targets.”
Tower 22 provided targeting intelligence to Air Force assets stationed at other bases in Jordan, such as Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, to use in strikes, the airman said.
An early news story on the drone attack that killed the U.S. service members cited unnamed officials discussing a preliminary report that the drone managed to enter Tower 22 because it was mistaken for another friendly drone returning to the base. (The Intercept later reported that the base lacked adequate air defenses.) Despite the account pointing to a drone presence, few questioned the Pentagon’s refrain that base’s purpose was logistics.
In interviews with defense sources and experts, however, a picture emerges of Tower 22’s purpose as a key base from which to support hostilities with Iran-aligned groups, even as the Biden administration insists that it does not want war with Tehran. The shift in its mission, from fighting ISIS to fighting groups linked with Iran, has not been acknowledged by the Defense Department, which still insists that this is part of its war on ISIS. (The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.)
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that the troops killed by a kamikaze drone on January 28 were deployed there “to work for the lasting defeat of ISIS.” U.S. forces continue to operate in Syria under the legal basis of Operation Inherent Resolve, the Pentagon’s name for the international campaign against ISIS that began in 2014. But experts say it’s unlikely that counter-ISIS mission is the main focus.
Brian Finucane, a former State Department legal adviser and now with the International Crisis Group, a think tank that works to prevent and resolve wars, said, “Whatever they’re doing there, there’s very little evidence that it’s counter-ISIS.”
Counter-ISIS Mission?
When ISIS was driven from their strongholds years ago, the withdrawal of U.S forces from Syria finally seemed within reach. “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there,” former President Donald Trump said in 2018, later announcing that he would withdraw all U.S. troops from the country.
Finucane explained that Trump was outmaneuvered by hawks, like his national security adviser at the time, John Bolton, who wanted to maintain the troop presence but with a new focus: Iran.
One of Tower 22’s functions is to provide support to Al-Tanf, a nearby U.S. military base in Syria whose official purpose is to combat ISIS. A Pentagon inspector general report last year found that there were “no kinetic engagements,” or combat incidents, by coalition forces at Al-Tanf.
While Tower 22 may have provided logistics such as food and fuel for training operations at Al-Tanf, the lack of combat involving troops at the larger base indicates a diminished role for both facilities in the fight against ISIS.
“If Tanf doesn’t have a counter-ISIS function, it’s hard to see how a support facility for Tanf does,” said Finucane.
The inspector general report, covering data through September 30, preceded Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza has spurred an intensified conflict with Iranian-backed groups in the region. The group that claimed credit for the attack on Tower 22 that killed three troops cited as its motivation U.S. support for Israel in the war, as The Intercept has previously reported.
Israel’s War on Gaza
Amid the increase in fighting, the U.S. is faced with a conundrum: how to respond to attacks from groups that the anti-ISIS coalition was not meant to fight.
“The counter-ISIS mission is the only legal basis there is for the U.S. to be there,” said Finucane. “There’s no legal basis to have U.S. troops in Syria to be countering Iran.”
The Pentagon’s solution has been to cast military operations against these Iranian-aligned groups as defensive in nature and necessary for force protection, which the legal basis for the anti-ISIS mission allows for.
On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that it had killed a militia commander for participating in attacks on U.S. forces in the region, a likely reference to Tower 22.
“The United States will continue to take necessary action to protect our people,” the Defense Department said, emphasizing the self-defense framing. “We will not hesitate to hold responsible all those who threaten our forces’ safety.”
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American Base in Jordan Where Drone Killed 3 U.S. Troops Dogged by Inadequate Air Defenses
Tower 22, the U.S. base in Jordan where three U.S. troops were killed by a one-way attack drone late last month, suffered from inadequate anti-drone defenses, said military sources who have served on the base.
The lethal attack followed a spate of one-way drone attacks on U.S. bases in neighboring Syria and Iraq in recent weeks, an escalation by anti-American militants since the outbreak of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. No one was reported killed in the previous attacks, including one on Al-Tanf in Syria, a base just 12 miles away from Tower 22.
Despite the repeated attacks and a well-funded Pentagon’s investment in counter-drone technology, the U.S. military failed to stop the Tower 22 drone attack.
“We had a radar system called TPS-75 that was broken 80 percent of the time I was there.”
“The air defenses were minimal, if any,” an Air Force airman, who served at Tower 22 last year, told The Intercept. “We relied heavily on aircraft from MSAB” — Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, a nearby Jordanian base that houses a U.S. military presence — “to stop any targets. We had a radar system called TPS-75 that was broken 80 percent of the time I was there.”
A preliminary military investigation reported in the Washington Post on Tuesday concluded that the drone was never detected, likely by flying too low for the bases antiquated radar system. Just a week before the attack, the military announced an $84 million contract to work on a replacement to the TPS-75, a mobile, ground-based radar array from the 1960s.
With inadequate defenses in place, the Tower 22 drone attack led to the deaths of the three U.S. service members and injuries to at least 40 others, casualties that spurred deepening U.S. military involvement in a tense Middle East.
“The small U.S. military contingents in Iraq and Syria have long represented a vulnerability — as convenient targets for anyone wishing to make a violent anti-U.S. statement,” said Paul Pillar, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies. “Over the past four months those targets have become an extension of the Gaza war.”
After the Tower 22 deaths, prominent Republicans in Congress, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called for the U.S. to directly bomb Iran, which backs the militias that took responsibility for the attack. Last Friday, U.S. Central Command, the Pentagon’s combat command for the Middle East, announced that it had conducted airstrikes on over 85 Iranian-aligned targets in Iraq and Syria, the largest U.S. strike on the militias since Israel’s war on Gaza war began.
The recriminations would only deepen U.S. involvement in the conflict, Pillar said: “The U.S. airstrikes on targets in Syria and Iraq — as retaliation for retaliation for the U.S. support for Israel — represents a further extension of the war in Gaza.”
“Plenty of Reason to Harden Defenses”
American service members familiar with Tower 22 outlined the small outpost’s paltry capabilities to detect and defend against air attacks.
“They have outposts surrounding the base, but that does little to nothing when faced with attacking aircraft,” said the airman, who, like other members of the military who had been deployed to Tower 22, requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the sensitive base. “Only solution was to ‘blackout,’” he added, referring to the practice of turning off lights to obscure locations during an air raid. “And even when we had blackouts no one adhered to the rules of the blackout.”
An Army soldier currently deployed to another base in Jordan and who has served at Tower 22 echoed the airman’s account, saying bases in the area lacked key countermeasures for aerial threats, including capable alert systems and two defense systems designed for small, low-flying drones and rocket and artillery attacks, respectively. The network of small outposts in Jordan, Syria, and Iraq have to rely on warnings provided to them from outside the base through a secure phone system, sometimes resulting in service members warning others by knocking on doors, the Army soldier said.
The Associated Press appeared to reference the problem earlier this week, reporting that although the base has some counter-drone systems like the Coyote, “there are no large air defense systems” at Tower 22. The Army has not confirmed the presence of the Coyote, nor whether it was activated or employed during the drone attack. The Coyote is a Raytheon-manufactured small turbine engine-powered missile that is launched in the sky and loiters before undertaking a high-speed attack on low-flying drones.
Spokespeople for the Pentagon could only tell The Intercept that Tower 22 possessed some kind of counter-unmanned aircraft system. When pressed on what specific capabilities the base had on the day of the attack, they declined to comment, citing operational security.
“To maintain operational security, it would not be prudent for us to discuss Tower 22’s defense capabilities,” Pentagon spokesperson Peter Nguyen said.
Israel’s War on Gaza
When White House national security spokesperson John Kirby was asked how the drone “might have gotten past the defense systems at Tower 22,” he demurred. Kirby said, “I think I’m going to let the Defense Department talk about the forensics on this.”
At a Pentagon press briefing on Monday, deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said, “We are still assessing what happened and how a one-way attack drone was able to impact the facility.”
The drone attack at Tower 22 was the first instance of U.S. troops being killed by enemy forces since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, but it was far from the first attack on U.S. personnel.
On January 20, U.S. Central Command announced that three one-way drones attacked the Al-Tanf garrison, another U.S. base in Jordan just 12 miles from Tower 22. Multiple drones have also attacked U.S. bases in southern Syria, which Jordan borders.
The airman who spoke with The Intercept said, “The drone attacks at Al-Tanf should’ve given military leadership plenty of reason to harden defenses prior to the attack on Tower 22.”
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White House Falsely Declared It Warned Iraq of Impending Airstrikes
The U.S. did not notify the Iraqi government before conducting airstrikes in the country on Friday, contrary to an assertion by the White House that it did.
During a press call on Friday, White House national security spokesperson retired Adm. John Kirby said, “We did inform the Iraqi government prior to the strikes occurring.”
On Monday, in response to questions from The Intercept, the White House said the Iraqis had not gotten advance warning of the strikes.
“For operational security, we did not provide any kind of official pre-notification with specific details on these strikes,” a National Security Council spokesperson acknowledged.
During Monday’s State Department press briefing, spokesperson Vedant Patel also acknowledged the Iraqis had not gotten a warning. (The State Department had referred The Intercept’s questions to the White House.)
The Iraqi government has denied that the U.S. provided any warning and has alleged that the strikes killed several civilians. On Saturday, the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs delivered an official note of protest to the chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad decrying “American aggression.”
“As well Iraq further emphasized its rejection to be a ground for settling scores between rival countries, as our country is not a place for sending messages, and show of force between adversaries,” a readout of the meeting says.
The U.S. airstrikes came in response to attacks by local militant groups in Iraq and Syria, The Iranian-backed groups have escalated their attacks on American targets in the region since the start of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.
The U.S. maintains a force of about 2,500 troops in Iraq, a nominal U.S. ally with close ties to neighboring Iran. The American presence, at Iraq’s invitation, is part of an effort to keep remnants of the Islamic State at bay.
Last month, a coalition of the Iran-backed militias took responsibility for a drone attack against a U.S. base in Jordan that resulted in the death of three U.S. service members, a strike they said was motivated by U.S. support for Israel, as The Intercept has previously reported.
The U.S. retaliation last week focused on 85 targets, the largest attack on Iranian-backed militias since Israel’s war on Gaza began.
Despite the rising tensions in the region, the Biden administration has been at pains to say that its strikes are not part of Israel’s war on Gaza.
“I absolutely don’t agree with your description of a ‘same larger conflict,’” Kirby said in response to a question about the regional fighting. Though he was not asked about Israel’s war, Kirby added, “There’s a conflict going on between Israel and Hamas.”
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U.S. Military Personnel in Iraq Put on Standby to Support Ground Involvement in Israel’s War on Gaza
A January U.S. Air Force personnel memo obtained by The Intercept describes military orders to be “on standby to forward deploy to support troops in the case of on ground US involvement in the Israel Hamas war.” According to a separate personnel document, the standby order related to personnel deployed last year to Iraq.
While the documents do not suggest that U.S. military ground involvement in the war is forthcoming, the January memo is the latest intimation of the Pentagon’s preparations to support Israel in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack. Days after the attack, the U.S. military reportedly put 2,000 troops on prepare-to-deploy orders for potential support to Israel, though from neighboring countries — orders that were confirmed by a procurement document obtained by The Intercept.
The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment on the personnel memo about preparing for ground involvement, but in the past the White House has stressed that its support for Israel in the Gaza war would not include boots on the ground.
“There are no plans or intentions to put U.S. boots on the ground in combat in Israel,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on October 17. “But as we’ve also said, we have significant national security interests in the region.”
Two days after Kirby’s remarks, the White House inadvertently shared a picture of President Joe Biden in Israel posing alongside members of the secretive U.S. special operations units, before quickly deleting it. In late October, the New York Times reported that American special operations personnel were in Israel to help with hostage rescue efforts.
U.S. Still in the Middle East
The documents obtained by The Intercept provide a stark reminder of the pervasive U.S. military presence in the Middle East, with personnel deployed to theaters where many Americans think the mission ended long ago — and how quickly those orders can be repurposed for new conflicts.
The records, for instance, involve personnel deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. military’s name for the war against the Islamic State group. Though ISIS was driven from its last strongholds years ago, the war persists, providing a legal basis for continued U.S. military presence in Iraq and Syria.
Israel’s War on Gaza
“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” former President Donald Trump tweeted in December 2018. Shortly thereafter, Trump announced that U.S. troops in the country are “all coming back and they’re coming back now.” Trump would later announce that all U.S. troops in Iraq would be withdrawn as well.
Despite the announcements, U.S. forces remained in Syria as well as Iraq, where they are still present to this day. The deployments are “part of a comprehensive strategy to defeat ISIS,” the White House informed Congress in December, “to limit the potential for resurgence of these groups and to mitigate threats to the United States homeland.”
A grim reminder of the longevity of the anti-ISIS deployment emerged Sunday, when three American soldiers were killed in a drone attack on a secret U.S. base in Jordan, near the border of Syria.
“These three fallen heroes were deployed to Jordan in support of Operation Inherent Resolve and the international coalition working to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS,” Defense Department deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a press briefing on Monday.
ISIS, however, did not launch the drone that killed the American soldiers. It was an alliance of Iraqi militias backed by Iran, according to the Pentagon.
The deaths represent the first U.S. troops killed since the October 7 Hamas attack. And they may not be the last, if the militia claiming responsibility for the attacks is to be believed. A senior official from an alliance of Iraqi militia groups claiming credit for the attack tied it to U.S. support for Israel in its Gaza war, as The Intercept previously reported.
“As we said before, if the U.S. keeps supporting Israel, there will [be] escalations,” the senior militia official said. “All U.S. interests in the region are legitimate targets, and we don’t care about U.S. threats to respond.”
With U.S. troops stationed all over the Middle East fighting wars long declared over, there are plenty of targets.
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Ilhan Omar Demands Pentagon Compensate Somali Drone Strike Victims
Rep. Ilhan OmaR, D-Minn., joined a growing chorus of elected officials and advocates urging the Pentagon to make amends to a Somali family following an investigation by The Intercept into a 2018 U.S. drone strike that killed a woman and her 4-year-old daughter.
Omar, a Somali American, called on the Pentagon to contact the family of Luul Dahir Mohamed and Mariam Shilow Muse and offer compensation. “To date, the Department of Defense has refused to even respond or acknowledge repeated outreach from Luul and Mariam’s family, much less offer condolence payments,” Omar told The Intercept. “We owe it to the families of victims to acknowledge the truth of what happened, provide the compensation that Congress has repeatedly authorized, and allow independent investigations into these attacks.”
Omar added that the U.S. drone program is fundamentally flawed and has killed thousands of innocent people over 20 years. “When we say we champion human rights and peace, we should mean it,” she said.
Omar’s call for action follows a similar demand by Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., earlier this month and a December 2023 open letter from two dozen human rights organizations — 14 Somali and 10 international groups — calling on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to compensate the family for the deaths.
The April 1, 2018, attack in Somalia killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including Luul and her daughter. A formerly secret U.S. military investigation, obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act, acknowledged the deaths of a woman and child in the strike but concluded their identities might never be known. This reporter traveled to Somalia and spoke with seven members of Luul and Mariam’s family. For more than five years, they have tried to contact the U.S. government, including through U.S. Africa Command’s online civilian casualty reporting portal, but never received a reply.
Last month, the Defense Department released its long-awaited “Instruction on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response,” or DoD-I, which established the Pentagon’s “policies, responsibilities, and procedures for mitigating and responding to civilian harm” and directed the military to “respond to individuals and communities affected by U.S. military operations” including “expressing condolences” and providing so-called ex gratia payments to next of kin.
“Congress appropriates $3 million every year specifically to make payments to civilian victims and survivors of U.S. operations,” Omar said. “However, those funds have never been used in Somalia — despite confirmed civilian deaths there.”
“Families around the world live in fear and terror that they or their children will be killed in a drone strike.”
Pentagon spokesperson Lisa Lawrence said that the Defense Department is “committed to mitigating civilian harm” and “responding appropriately if harm occurs” but could not say if Austin even intends to contact Luul and Mariam’s family. “I don’t have that information,” she told The Intercept.
“Thousands of civilians have been killed in unaccountable strikes over the past two decades,” said Omar. “Families around the world live in fear and terror that they or their children will be killed in a drone strike.” She told The Intercept that the “Biden Administration has made commendable progress on civilian harm in our drone program, but this strike and its aftermath is more proof that there is simply no way to conduct the program humanely.”
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U.S. Troops in Jordan Killed in Retaliation for American Support of Israel
When an Iraqi militant group killed three U.S. service members at a base in Jordan over the weekend, the militants were clear about their motives: It was retaliation for American support for Israel.
“As we said before, if the U.S. keeps supporting Israel, there will [be] escalations,” a senior official from an alliance of Iraqi militia groups said in claiming responsibility for the attack. “All the U.S. interests in the region are legitimate targets, and we don’t care about U.S. threats to respond.”
The statement is not new or surprising. While the need for U.S. troops to be stationed at the Tower 22 military base — a dusty outpost on the Syria–Jordan border — has a dubious, if any, relationship to U.S. national security, the U.S. presence has been very helpful to Israel. The U.S. military in the region serves to deter Iran as well as Israel’s many other enemies.
Now, establishing deterrence against Israel’s adversaries is threatening to suck the U.S. back into a broader, open conflict in the Middle East. Take, for example, the recent U.S. attacks against the Houthis in Yemen, which began after the rebels attacked ships in the Red Sea to force an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza.
Especially at a time when the U.S. is trying to pivot away from the region, Israel increasingly looks like a liability to U.S. interests in the Middle East. American officials are forced to expend significant economic, political, and military resources to shield Israel’s government from local threats and deflect international outrage over its campaign in Gaza. Israel, it turns out, extracts a tremendous cost from the U.S. — often in treasure but, as the world saw over the weekend in Jordan, sometimes in blood — with few discernible strategic gains for the Americans.
“Israel’s main selling point to its Western sponsors and allies has been its depiction as an omnipotent local gendarme, and the best bulwark of Western interests in the Middle East,” said Mouin Rabbani, a Middle East affairs expert and co-editor of the Arab Studies Institute’s online publication Jadaliyya. “But now that premise doesn’t really hold.”
Today, some Americans are questioning why the U.S. has become so deeply involved in Israel’s war on Gaza, which has inflicted a horrifying civilian toll and is now bringing U.S. troops into conflict across the region.
Yet an observer would be hard-pressed to find any acknowledgement of wavering commitment within Washington. Prominent American politicians have loudly professed the importance of Israel to U.S. strategic interests and values since October 7. In the days after Hamas attacked Israel, President Joe Biden proclaimed, “Well, the truth of the matter is, if there weren’t an Israel, we’d have to invent one” — a refrain he’s used for decades to make the case that supporting Israel is critical to U.S. interests.
Presidential candidates vying to take over Biden’s job have been just as effusive about the U.S.–Israel relationship. Robert F. Kennedy likened the state of Israel to the U.S. “having an aircraft carrier in the Middle East.” In a recent Republican presidential debate, Nikki Haley went so far as to say, “Israel doesn’t need us, we need Israel.”
“U.S. military and diplomatic protection has disincentivized the Israelis from pursuing compromises.”
Israel’s usefulness to the U.S. was arguably at its height during the Cold War. As neighboring Arab states built military and intelligence relationships with the Soviet Union, Israel fought these regimes and portrayed itself as a bulwark of U.S. influence in the region. Since then, the relationship has been almost entirely lopsided, as the U.S. has played a far more helpful role to Israel by helping it confront enemies like Iran and develop strategic ties with the Gulf Arab nations. Despite portraying itself as an ally during the U.S. occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and counterterror campaigns against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, Israel was mostly absent — likely because its involvement would provoke condemnation and retaliation, not to mention that few Middle Eastern governments crucial to the coalitions’ operations recognize Israel.
Without a national security rationale for maintaining relations with Israel, domestic political pressure appears to be the primary driver of steadfast U.S. support. The political gains for pro-Israel politicians have ultimately enabled Israel to reject solutions to end the political turmoil in the region, while forcing the U.S. to continue intervening on its behalf.
“U.S military and diplomatic protection has disincentivized the Israelis from pursuing compromises,” said Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “When we give unquestioned support and blank checks, we feed the worst behavior of countries that we consider allies.”
A U.S. soldier takes part in the Eager Lion multinational military maneuver in the Zarqa governorate in Jordan on Sept. 14, 2022.
Photo: Khalil Mazraawi/AFP via Getty Images
Lopsided Relationship
For years, the Tower 22 outpost and other U.S. military bases in Iraq, Syria, and neighboring countries like Jordan have been criticized for making U.S. troops sitting ducks with no benefit to U.S. interests.
And yet thousands of troops are stationed throughout the Middle East, some for the protection of maritime shipping or counterterrorism operations, but many for fighting a proxy war against Iran. The U.S. has made huge efforts for years to deter Iran on Israel’s behalf — owing mostly to hostile and frequently antisemitic rhetoric from Iran — while hawkish Israeli leaders have sabotaged efforts at détente like the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
U.S. military officials periodically criticize the impact of uncritical U.S. support for Israel on American interests in the region, where Israel remains unpopular for its policies against Palestinians. These complaints, even from U.S. military officials, have often been walked back under political pressure. Despite repeated vows by American leaders to reduce the country’s footprint in the Middle East, the U.S.’s commitment to Israel has turned into military involvement across the region. There are strikes against the Houthis in Yemen, aircraft carriers in the eastern Mediterranean to deter Hezbollah in Lebanon, and skirmishes with Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq.
The costs for the U.S. from this new era of conflict are rapidly adding up. According to a recent report in Politico, an estimated $1.6 billion has already been spent on unanticipated U.S. military expenses in the region since October 7 — a price tag Pentagon officials say they cannot pay without a new budget from Congress. Global ammunition shortages are also forcing the U.S. to scramble to replenish its depleted supplies at a time when it is also struggling to contain threats in Europe and East Asia.
For Israel, however, the U.S.’s presence only fortifies its strategic initiatives. “The Israelis view the American presence in the region as very important, because it creates a backstop for them,” said Parsi. “The U.S. presence gives Israel greater maneuverability to carry out strikes in places like Syria and Lebanon, but also a sense of deterrence against those who would like to retaliate against them, since it may mean that the U.S. is dragged into the conflict as well.”
It is increasingly clear that the longer the U.S. maintains a lopsided relationship with Israel, not only will it remain stuck in the region, but also the less likely that Israel will compromise with its neighbors to achieve peace.
Over seven decades after its creation, Israel has failed to come to terms with most of its neighbors and refused many diplomatic opportunities that could have ended much of the violence in the Mideast. Arab governments have recently proposed a new plan that would end the war and create a Palestinian state in exchange for regional recognition of Israel, which Israeli leaders have already rejected.
The Israelis themselves had been clear about these dynamics. Despite progress on limited agreements like the Abraham Accords, which would normalize Israeli relations with Gulf Arab monarchies, Israeli officials have reiterated that they are averse to any more significant deals that would allow the U.S. to draw down its presence in the region. That will make it much harder to leave a part of the world where the U.S. has few interests, yet continues to lose much in terms of resources, reputation, and lives.
“As more and more people have come to the conclusion that the U.S. doesn’t need to be in the Middle East at the same level militarily,” Parsi said, “they will begin to question what the purpose is of having this military alliance with Israel.”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched on Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 15, 2024, in New York.
Photo: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/VIEWpress via Getty Images
Domestic Interests
Absent a compelling foreign policy rationale, the strongest advocacy for U.S. support for Israel largely comes from the American political establishment. Powerful pro-Israel lobby groups in the U.S. like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee use a combination of money, political messaging, and coercion to push for uniform pro-Israel support in Congress. Their fight has only become fiercer as public support for the U.S.–Israel relationship declines among younger Americans and liberals.
“The routine description of the U.S.–Israeli relationship as a close alliance is mostly a function of American domestic politics, and how Israel fits into those politics, rather than an apolitical consideration of U.S. interests overseas or national strategy,” said Paul Pillar, a former CIA analyst and expert on the Middle East.
After two decades of bloody and fruitless conflicts in the Middle East, Biden may find himself between Iraq and a hard place. A strong military response to the drone strike against U.S. troops in Jordan that risks triggering a broader war is unlikely to be popular among Americans, many of whom have made no secret of their clear desire to end U.S. involvement in the region. The escalating crisis is revealing U.S. and Israeli priorities to be mismatched.
“Recent events, particularly the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, underscore the substantial gulf between our interests and the policies being pursued by the Israeli government,” Pillar said. “It is plain for all to see that these differences are substantial, even as the Biden administration has bent over backwards to support the Israeli government, despite the enormous horror taking place in Gaza.”
Israel’s War on Gaza
U.S. intelligence and political officials are currently trying to engineer a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in Gaza, an agreement that would be in the U.S.’s interest toward an end to the war and deescalation of regional conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, has suggested that those discussions may run counter to his own interests.
“As long as the war continues, he will retain his position, power, and political coalition, while fending off the day he will have to face a political reckoning,” said Pillar. “From his point of view, expanding the war and dragging the U.S. in deeper, even beyond what is going on in Yemen and the Red Sea, would be in his interest, even as it would be against U.S. interests.”
And so it is that, with little choice left, the Biden administration promised to retaliate forcefully for the deaths of the three troops in Jordan. With growing anti-war sentiment in the U.S., however, it is not clear how far its response will go. Biden is left facing a situation where domestic politics, particularly the influence of pro-Israel groups and politicians, continue to pull the U.S. military into a region where it is losing precious lives and resources, all with little to show in return.
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