Russians were behind furor over Jade Helm
Former agency director says success with military exercise encouraged election hack
Russians were behind the Texas furor over the Jade Helm 15 federal military exercise, which drew so much concern that Gov. Greg Abbott directed the State Guard to monitor it, former CIA director Michael Hayden says.
AUSTIN — Russians were behind the Texas furor over the Jade Helm 15 federal military exercise nearly three years ago, which drew so much concern that Gov. Greg Abbott directed the State Guard to monitor the operation, former CIA director Michael Hayden said Thursday.
Hayden, a retired Air Force general who headed the National Security Agency from 1999-2005, said Russian bots amplified conspiracy theories about the U.S. Special Operations Command exercise.
He believes the bots, mostly likely created by a Russian organization called the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, flooded American social media with unsubstantiated claims about the exercise, which took place in Texas and six other states.
The organization did the same thing after President Donald Trump condemned NFL athletes for kneeling in protest of police brutality against African-Americans at the start of football games, he told the San Antonio ExpressNews, noting that the Russian agency used social media hashtags that included “#takeaknee” and “#nfl” to fuel the controversy.
“They’ve got the Russians feeding this story that Jade Helm is an attempt by the Obama administration to round up political opponents, and actually the Russians didn’t have to create the story. That story came out of American alt-right media, Alex Jones, Infowars,” said Hayden, who detailed the operation in a new book. “The bots and the alt-right media were blaring that this exercise was merely a ruse, a cover story, for Obama to arrest political opponents.”
Published this week, Hayden’s book, “The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies,” explores Russia’s focus on information warfare. He contended that the Russians “took their game to North America in 2015.”
It became a test run for something much bigger — widespread interference in the U.S. presidential campaign. Hayden, a commander of what was then known as the Air Intelligence Agency on Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland from 1996-97, said he believed the success of the Jade Helm disinformation campaign caused Moscow to take things to the next level.
“At that point, I’m figuring the Russians are saying, ‘We can go big time,’” he told MSNBC earlier Thursday. “At that point, I think they made the decision, ‘we’re going to play in the electoral process.’”
‘Don’t worry’
Hayden noted that online stories detailed allegations that abandoned Walmart stores were “being prepared as concentration camps and empty box cars with leg irons in them showing up in Texas, and I write in the (book) it became so prominent that your governor, in order to calm people down, had to call out the National Guard to say, ‘Don’t worry, I’m keeping an eye on it.’”
Abbott’s office did not comment.
But Hayden apparently confused the Texas National Guard with a support organization called the State Guard, an all-volunteer group that helps Army and Air National Guard troops such state emergencies as hurricane recovery. The State Guard is routinely listed as part of what some officials call the Texas Military Department.
The governor directed a State Guard official, Maj. Gen. Gerald Jake Betty, to observe the exercise, saying in an April 28, 2015, letter that he wanted to “address concerns of Texas citizens to ensure that Texas communities remain safe, secure and informed about military procedures occurring in their vicinity.”
“The big story here is the Russians stirred it up,” Hayden retorted. “The Russians and the altright created a crisis.”
Abbott’s letter, written after claims spread on the internet and talk radio that Jade Helm 15 was a prelude to a suspension of civil liberties, triggered concern and derision, with the Obama White House questioning the governor’s rationale. The governor’s involvement followed a contentious Bastrop County hearing in which roughly one-third of about 150 people expressed opposition to the military exercise.
One person held a sign saying, “No Gestapo in Bastropo.”
The exercise involved 1,200 troops in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida and Texas, and included plans for a nighttime parachute drop over Camp Bullis that ended up being canceled. Military exercises are common in the summer months and routinely include fictitious scenarios.
‘Already in tyranny’
Jones, a noted conspiracy theorist, cast the exercise in dark terms during a broadcast on his Austin-based website Infowars.com, saying, “By every historical measurement we’re already in a tyranny and then Operation Jade Helm gets announced. We said Jade Helm, infiltrating police departments, practicing taking over America … was part of a long-term strategic plan to sell the military on this new, unconstitutional mission.”
The Express-News, which obtained correspondence to and from Abbott’s office regarding the exercise, found that many people wrote or called with concerns about the possibility of martial law. The military training went off without incident.