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The story is part of an ongoing collaboration between ProPublica and FRONTLINE, which includes an upcoming documentary.
Hours after the attack on the Capitol, a self-proclaimed “son of freedom” posted a short video to the social media platform Parler, which appeared to indicate that members of the organization were directly involved in the uprising. The video showed someone rushing through metal roadblocks around the building with a crumbling smartphone. Other fragments show that on the white marble steps outside the Capitol, thugs are fighting with police officers holding batons.
Before Parler went offline-when Amazon refused to continue hosting the network, its operations were at least temporarily suspended-Last Sons issued a large number of statements indicating that members of the group joined the mob that swept the Capitol and were not aware of the chaos and violence that occurred. Regrettably, on January 6, “The Last Son” also did some quick mathematical operations: the government suffered only one death. It was the 42-year-old Capitol Policeman Brian Sicknick, who reportedly had his head The head is equipped with a fire extinguisher. However, the rioters have lost four people, including Ashli ​​Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran who was shot by an officer while trying to rush into the building.
In a series of posts by The Last Son, her death should be “revenged” and appeared to call for the murder of three more police officers.
The organization is part of the Boogaloo movement, which was a decentralized, online successor to the militia movement in the 1980s and 1990s, and its followers focused on attacking law enforcement agencies and violently overthrowing the US government. Researchers say the movement began to merge online in 2019, when people (mainly young people) were angry at what they thought were increasing government oppression and found each other in Facebook groups and private chats. In the vernacular movement, Boogaloo refers to the inevitable imminent armed rebellion, and members often call themselves Boogaloo Bois, boogs or goons.
Within a few weeks from January 6, a series of extremist groups were appointed as participants in the invasion of the Capitol. Proud boy. QAnon believers. White nationalists. Keeper of the oath. But Boogaloo Bois is known for the depth of his commitment to overthrow the US government and the confusing criminal history of many members.
Mike Dunn, from a small town on the fringe of rural southern Virginia, is 20 years old this year and is the commander of the “last son”. “A few days after the attack on the Congressional Uprising, Dunn said in an interview with ProPublica and FRONTLINE: “I really feel that we are looking for possibilities that are stronger than at any time since the 1860s. Although Dunn did not participate directly, he said that members of his Boogaloo faction helped anger the crowd and “maybe” had penetrated the building.
He said: “This is an opportunity to annoy the federal government again.” “They don’t participate in MAGA. They are not with Trump.”
Dunn added that he was “willing to die on the streets” while fighting law enforcement or security forces.
The short-lived facts prove that the Boogaloo movement attracts active or former military personnel, who use their combat skills and gun expertise to advance the Boogaloo career. Before becoming one of the faces of the movement, Dunn worked briefly in the US Marine Corps. He said that his career was interrupted by a heart attack and served as a prison guard in Virginia.
Through interviews, extensive research on social media, and a review of court records (not previously reported), ProPublica and FRONTLINE identified more than 20 Boogaloo Bois or sympathizers serving in the military. In the past 18 months, 13 of them have been arrested on charges ranging from possession of illegal automatic weapons to manufacturing explosives to murder.
The story is part of an ongoing collaboration between ProPublica and FRONTLINE, which includes an upcoming documentary.
Most individuals identified by news agencies participated in the movement after leaving the military. At least four people have been charged with Boogaloo-related crimes while serving in one of the military departments.
Last year, a FBI task force in San Francisco launched a domestic terror investigation against Aaron Horrocks, a 39-year-old former Marine Corps reserve officer. Horrocks spent eight years in the reserve and then left the Legion in 2017.
The bureau panicked in September 2020 when agents received a prompt stating that Horrocks, who lives in Pleasanton, California, was “planning to carry out violent and violent attacks against the government or law enforcement agencies,” according to With this request, he grabbed the person’s gun. The investigation in the October State Court had not been reported before, linking Horrocks to the Bugallo Movement. He was not charged.
Horrocks did not respond to a request for comment, although he has uploaded a video to YouTube, which appears to show federal law enforcement officials searching his storage unit in the form of clothing. “Fuck yourself,” he told them.
In June 2020, in Texas, police briefly detained Taylor Bechtol, a 29-year-old former Air Force Chief of Staff and an ammunition loader, and was detained by the 90th Aircraft Maintenance Unit. During service, Bechtol handled 1,000 pounds of precision-guided bombs.
According to an intelligence report generated by the Austin Regional Intelligence Center of the Multi-Agency Fusion Center, when the Austin police stopped the vehicle, the former pilot was in a pickup truck with two other suspected Boogaloo Bois. The officer found five guns, hundreds of bullets and gas masks on the truck. This report was obtained by ProPublica and FRONTLINE after the hackers leaked it. They pointed out that these people expressed “sympathy” for Boogaloo Bois and should be treated “extremely cautious” by law enforcement agencies.
A man in the car, 23-year-old Ivan Hunter (Ivan Hunter), was charged for allegedly shooting a Minneapolis police district with an assault rifle and helping to burn the building. There is no trial date for the convicted hunter.
Bechtol, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing related to traffic parking, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Air Force Special Investigation Office spokesperson Linda Card (Linda Card) is responsible for the department’s most complex and serious criminal matters. He said that Bechtol left the department in December 2018 and has never been investigated in the Air Force.
In the most high-profile incident involving the organization, several Boogaloo Bois were arrested in October on suspicion of a conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. One of them was Joseph Morrison, who was a reserve officer in the Marine Corps and served in the Fourth Marine Corps during his arrest and interrogation. Morrison, who faces terrorism charges, is named Boogaloo Bunyan on social media. He also posted a sticker with the Boogaloo logo on the rear window of the truck-with Hawaiian floral patterns and an igloo. The other two people accused in the conspiracy spent time in the army.
Captain Joseph Butterfield said: “Association or participation with any kind of hate or extremist groups directly contradicts the core values ​​of honor, courage and commitment represented by the Marine Corps we represent,”
There are no reliable figures on the number of current or former military members of the movement.
However, Pentagon military officials told ProPublica and FRONTLINE that they have been concerned about the increase in extremist activity. An official said: “The behavior we are paying attention to has increased.” He emphasized that military leaders have responded “very positively” to the prompts and are conducting a thorough investigation of service personnel connected with anti-government organizations.
Boogaloo Bois with military experience may share their expertise with members who have never served in the armed forces, thereby establishing more effective and deadly operations. “These people can bring discipline to sports. These people can bring skills to sports.” Jason Blazakis) said.
Although some Boogaloo groups made major mistakes, including sharing information with secret FBI agents and communicating with unencrypted messaging services, the movement’s familiarity with weapons and basic infantry technology clearly poses a serious challenge to law enforcement.
“We have an advantage,” Dunn said. “Many people know that ordinary civilians don’t. The police are not used to fighting this knowledge.”
The combination of extremist ideology and military skills was evident in last year’s alleged conspiracy to attack the police in racial justice protests.
On a hot spring night in May last year, an FBI SWAT team met three suspected Boogaloo Bois in the parking lot of the 24-hour fitness club on the east side of Las Vegas. Agents found a small arsenal in the vehicle of the three: a bullet gun, a pistol, two rifles, a large amount of ammunition, body armor and materials that can be used to make Molotov cocktails-glass bottles, gasoline and rags Small pieces.
All three have military experience. One of them served in the Air Force. Another navy. The third, 24-year-old Andrew Lynam (Andrew Lynam) was in the U.S. Army Reserve at the time of his arrest. As a teenager, Lynam studied at the New Mexico Military Institute, a public school that prepares high school and college students for careers in the armed forces.
In court, federal prosecutor Nicholas Dickinson described Lynam as the head of the organization, which is a cell called Battle Born Igloo in Boogaloo, Nevada. “A defendant related to the Boogaloo movement; a transcript shows that the prosecutor told the court at the June detention hearing that he called himself Boogaloo Boi. Dickinson continued that Lynam corresponds to other Boogaloo groups, Especially in California, Denver, and Arizona. Essentially, the defendant has radicalized to the point where he wants to show it. This is not talking.”
The prosecutor said that these people intend to participate in protests against the death of George Freud and throw bombs at the police. They have planned to bomb an electric substation and a federal building. They hope these actions will trigger a wider anti-government uprising.
Dickinson said in court: “They want to destroy or destroy a certain government building or infrastructure in order to get a response from law enforcement, and hope that the federal government will overreact.”
ProPublica screened thousands of videos taken by Parler users to create an immersive first-person view of the Capitol riots.
The prosecutor said he found that Lynam was serving in the military while conspiring to attack government infrastructure as particularly “disturbing”.
At the June hearing, defense attorney Sylvia Irvin backed down, criticizing the “obvious weakness” in the government case, challenging the credibility of the FBI informant, and implying Linna (Lynam) is indeed a secondary member of the organization.
Lynam, who refused to plead not guilty, is now represented by lawyer Thomas Pitaro, who did not respond to a request for comment. Lynam and his co-defendants Stephen Parshall and William Loomis also face similar charges brought by state prosecutors in state courts. Parshall and Loomis pleaded not guilty.
A spokesperson for the Army Reserve said that Lynam, a medical expert who joined in 2016, currently holds the rank of private first-class in this service. He has never deployed to a war zone. Lieutenant Colonel Simon Fleck said: “Extremist ideology and activities are directly contrary to our values ​​and beliefs, and those who support extremism have no place in our ranks.” He pointed out that Linham was in the criminal case. When the case was closed, he was facing disciplinary action from the Army.
The Unified Military Justice Code, the criminal law system that regulates the armed forces, does not explicitly prohibit joining extremist groups.
However, the 2009 Pentagon directive (which covers all military departments) prohibits participation in criminal gangs, white supremacist organizations, and anti-government militias. Service personnel who violate the ban may face military court sanctions for failing to comply with legal orders or regulations or other crimes related to their extremist activities (such as making false statements to their superiors). Military prosecutors can also use the comprehensive provisions of the military regulations called Article 134 (or general clauses) to charge service personnel who are involved in acts that “shame” the armed forces or harm the “good order and discipline” of the military . Geoffrey Corn, a retired Army officer, said he was a military lawyer and now teaches national security law at the South Texas Law School in Houston.
When talking about Timothy McVeigh, the bomber in Oklahoma City, who enlisted in the army and participated in the first Gulf War, he said that for decades, the military has been somewhat It is no secret that it has always been a “hotbed” of extremism. McVeigh gave the city’s Alfred P. Mura (Alfred P.
Military officials admitted that extremist activities and domestic terrorism cases have increased in recent years.
The Chief of Intelligence of the Army Criminal Investigation Command, Joe Etridge, spoke to a Congressional committee last year that his staff had conducted 7 investigations into allegations of extremist activities in 2019, compared with the average number of investigations in the previous five years. Is 2.4 times. He told members of the House Armed Forces Committee: “During the same period, the Federal Bureau of Investigation notified the Department of Defense to increase the scope of domestic terrorism investigations involving soldiers or former soldiers as suspects.”
Esrich also pointed out that most soldiers flagged as extremist behaviors will face administrative sanctions, including counseling or retraining, rather than criminal prosecution.
After the attack on the Capitol and a series of news reports that military personnel were involved in the chaos, the Department of Defense announced that it would conduct a comprehensive review of the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s policies regarding extremist and white supremacist activities.
Garry Reid, director of defense intelligence at the Pentagon, told ProPublica and FRONTLINE: “The Department of Defense is doing everything possible to eliminate extremism.” “All military personnel, including members of the National Guard, have gone through background checks, been continuously evaluated, and participated in the internal threat procedure.”
The military is clearly worried about Boogaloo Bois training civilians. Last year, the Naval Criminal Investigation Bureau, the law enforcement agency responsible for investigating serious crimes involving sailors and members of the Marine Corps, issued an intelligence bulletin.
The announcement was called Threat Awareness News, detailing Lynam and others arrested in Las Vegas, and pointed out that Boogaloo’s followers were involved in discussions about “recruiting military or former military personnel to learn about combat training” .
At the end of the announcement, NCIS issued a warning: The agency cannot ignore the possibility of individuals participating in the Boogaloo movement serving in the entire army. “NCIS continues to emphasize the importance of reporting suspicious Bugalu activities through the command system.”
In a court hearing in Michigan, Paul Bellar raised this question. Paul Bellar was one of them arrested for a plot to kidnap Whitmer. “As far as I know, Mr. Bellar used his military training to teach members of the terrorist organization combat procedures,” said Judge Frederick Bishop, who explained that he did not wish to be heard in October. At the meeting, Belar’s bail was lowered. Bellar has since been released on bail and he has pleaded not guilty.
In another case, the former Marines gathered at least six men in a wooded property in McLeod, Oklahoma, a small town outside Oklahoma City, Oklahoma And teach them how to rush into the building. In a video posted to YouTube last year, former Marine Christopher Ledbetter showed the team how to enter the house and kill the enemy combatants in it. The video was shot by a GoPro camera and ended with Ledbetter, who served in the Marine Corps from 2011 to 2015 and shot a wooden target with a bullet from a fully automatic AK-47 carbine.
A series of Facebook Messenger conversations obtained by the FBI showed that the 30-year-old Ledbetter agreed with the Boogaloo movement and was preparing for the upcoming armed uprising, which he believed was an “explosion.” In an interview, Ledbetter told the agents that he had been making grenades and admitted that he had modified his AK-47 so that it could fire automatically.
Ledbetter pleaded guilty in December, pleading guilty to illegal possession of a machine gun. He is currently serving 57 months in federal custody.
In a one-hour podcast released in May 2020, the two Boogaloo Bois discussed in detail how to fight the government.
One of the men used a guerrilla coach to distribute combat advice online. He said he had enlisted but eventually became fascinated and left the army. Another man who called himself Jack said that he is currently serving as a military police in the Army National Guard.
The guerrilla coaches believe that in the upcoming civil war, traditional infantry tactics will not be particularly useful. They believe that sabotage and assassination will be more helpful to the anti-government insurgents. He said it was very simple: Boogaloo Boi could walk on the street to a government figure or law enforcement officer, and then “run away”.
But there is another assassination technique that is particularly attractive to guerrilla instructors. He said: “I firmly believe that driving in will be our biggest tool,” he sketched out a scene in which three Boogs would jump on the SUV, spray guns at the target, “kill some handsome guys” and accelerate.
About three weeks after the podcast was uploaded to Apple and other podcast distributors, a security camera tracked a white Ford truck as a white Ford van drove through the dark streets of downtown Oakland, California. 9:43 p.m.
The prosecutor said that inside the car were Boogaloo Bois Steven Carrillo (holding an automatic short-barreled rifle) and Robert Justus, Jr., who was driving. Allegedly, while the truck was rolling along Jefferson Street, Carrillo (Carrillo) abandon the sliding door and fired a burst of gunfire, hitting the post on Ronald V. Durham (Ronald V Dellums) Two Federal Protection Service personnel outside the Federal Building and the Court Building. The barrage hit 53, and the 53-year-old David Patrick Underwood (David Patrick Underwood), injured Chambert Mifkovic (Sombat Mifkovic) has not been released yet.
At this point, there is no evidence that Carrillo is a 32-year-old Air Force Staff Sergeant who is stationed at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California and has never listened to or recorded a podcast. Of people have communicated. However, it is clear that his alleged crime is very similar to the assassination strategy discussed in the show, which is still available online. He is facing murder and attempted murder charges in federal court, for which he has not pleaded guilty.
According to the FBI, Carrillo used an exotic and highly illegal weapon for shooting: an automatic rifle with a very short barrel and a silencer. The weapon can fire 9mm ammunition and is a so-called ghost gun-it lacks any serial number and is therefore difficult to track.
Members of the Boogaloo movement use machined aluminum, heavy polymers, and even 3D printed plastic to build ghost guns. Many of them take an absolute stand in the Second Amendment and believe that the government has no right to restrict gun ownership.
Last year, New York State Police arrested an Army drone operator and accused Boogaloo Boi of possessing an illegal ghost gun. According to an Army spokesperson, Noah Latham is a private person in Fort Drum who visited Iraq as a drone operator. Latham was dismissed after being arrested by the police in Troy in June 2020.
The shooting at the Oakland Courthouse was only the first chapter of what Carrillo called a rampage. In the following days, he drove about 80 miles south to a small town located in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There he allegedly had a gun battle with representatives of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff and the state police. The gun battle killed 38-year-old deputy Damon Guzweiler and wounded two other law enforcement officers. According to the prosecutor’s charges, they charged Carrillo with deliberate murder and other felony charges in state courts. Carrillo also threw homemade bombs at police and representatives, and hijacked Toyota Camry to escape.
Before abandoning the car, Carrillo apparently used his own blood (was hit on the hip in the skirmish) to write the word “Boog” on the car hood.
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Anti-Hate and Extremism Project, has been monitoring the connection between military groups and extremist organizations for many years, tracking every policy adjustment and every criminal case. She believes that Carrillo’s tragic narrative is a product of the military’s refusal to adequately address the problems of internal militants. She said: “The armed forces have failed to solve this problem” and have “released to the public trained people how to kill”.
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