From drones to terrorists, authorities are having a laugh at the public’s expense. If you’re in the growing population of Americans that is tired of being fed streams of sensational and inexplicable news stories, while authorities that appear to delight in public confusion sit back with buttoned lips, yesterday might have been the last straw. We are officially Gaslit Nation:

Friday, January 3rd 2025, was one of the weirder news days in recent history. In late afternoon former Navy Seal and CIA contractor Shawn Ryan interviewed former intelligence officer Sam Shoemate, who revealed what he alleged to be an email from suspected Las Vegas Cybertruck bomber Matthew Livelsberger. It read like the answer to the AI chat prompt, “Design the ultimate conspiracy theory”:

In case I do not make it to my decision point or on to the Mexico border, I am sending this now. Please do not release this until 1JAN and keep my identity private until then…

What we have been seeing with “drones” is the operational use of gravitic propulsion systems powered aircraft by, most recently, China in the East Coast, but throughout history, the U.S. Only we and China have this capability… China has been launching them from the Atlantic from submarines for years, but this activity recently has picked up… The ‘so what?’ is because of the speed and stealth of these unmanned AC. They are the most dangerous threat to national security that has ever existed. They basically have an unlimited payload capacity and can park it over the WH if they wanted. It’s checkmate.

USG needs to give the history of this, how we are employing and weaponizing it, how China is employing them, and what the way forward is. China is poised to attack anywhere in the East Coast.

This introduction was just the appetizer. The note went on:

I’ve been followed for over a week now, from likely Homeland or FBI, and they are looking to move on me and are unlikely going to let me cross into Mexico… they know I am armed and I have a massive VBIED. I’ve been trying to maintain a very visible profile and have kept my phone and they are definitely digitally tracking me… I have knowledge of this program and also war crimes that were covered up during airstrikes in Nimruz Province Afghanistan in 2019 by the admin, DoD, DEA, and CIA. I conducted targeting for these strikes of over 125 buildings… that killed hundreds of civilians in a single day.

In unfurling his scoop Ryan announced “my family and I are disappearing for a few days,” since what he’d released was “mind boggling and will raise a lot of questions.” Whether it was real, nonsense, or a combination of both, all this was brilliant theater, on par with Alfred Hitchcock’s marketing of Psycho. Rumors circulated that Livelsberger left other messages behind. Shoemate warned Joe Rogan and Fox News that if they “scrub their emails right now, they could probably find a message from this guy.”

As has been the case with many recent news stories, it couldn’t have been scripted better. The Livelsberger story had already been seeded with the public (with podcast partner Walter Kirn and I perhaps unwitting participants) as riddled with ridiculous contradictions. Family members and even Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill expressed doubt that the corpse “burned beyond recognition” that was recovered from the exploded Cybertruck this week was, in fact, Livelsberger. Meanwhile, images of text exchanges between Livelsberger and an ex-girlfriend included mention that “I’m building drones in my new position you would love it”:

About an hour after Ryan’s broadcast, FBI Agent Spencer Evans stood at a podium in Las Vegas and addressed the development. This was the moment that sent me smacking my forehead in frustration.

“In terms of the so-called manifesto that’s circulating online, we have strong evidence to suggest that it was the subject that wrote it,” Evans said. “That evidence relates to other evidence that we’re finding that we’re able to compare that lead us to believe it was in fact him who sent it.”

If you’re keeping score: a Special Forces “supersoldier” rumored to be able to blow up a suspension bridge with a match and bubblegum detonates the world’s most amateur car bomb in Las Vegas, leaving behind a manifesto alleging knowledge of both civilian massacres in Afghanistan and a coverup of Chinese “gravitistic propulsion” drones buzzing New Jersey. For good measure, the manifesto adds he’s carrying a “massive VBIED,” i.e. a vehicular bomb. The FBI, which opened its presser confirming different Livelsberger manfestos (more below), only later, and offhandedly, says it has “strong evidence” the more cinematic Ryan/Shoemate letter was also written by their subject.

I live in Morris County, New Jersey, not far from the Picatinny Arsenal, the location of enough recent drone sightings to prompt a statement from the Department of Defense. Last night, my son and I booked a court to play tennis in a nearby town. In the drive there and back the sky was filthy with low-flying things. I was like Ray Liotta at the end of Goodfellas, craning my head under the dashboard, scaring my little boy with staccato guesses about how far above us visitors were hovering. By the time we got home I was furious. For how much longer is the government planning on yanking our chain over this stuff?

Since this preposterous ordeal began I’ve been double- and triple-checking official statements in an effort to keep from imagining things. If this is a mass psychogenic event, many officials are caught up in it. Stewart airfield in upstate New York shut down in mid-December due to “drone activity,” and an Air Force base in Ohio did the same. Ocean County, New Jersey Sheriff Michael Mastronardy described launching his own drones to chase after 50 flying objects a deputy saw “coming from the ocean” off Island Beach State Park. “The drone came up to our drone, shut off its lights then took off at 60 mph,” Mastronardy said, in a pitch-perfect imitation of the old reports about “cigar-shaped objects.”

Governors and a slew of local legislators have complained to federal officials, who’ve essentially stonewalled everyone from the public to sitting Senators, issuing “remain calm” notices. Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas gave my favorite statement: “I want to assure the American people that we are on it.” That was three weeks ago, and after the Department of Defense reportedly shot down and retrieved one of a “large number” of drones caught trailing a Coast Guard vessel earlier last month.

To preserve mental health, I try to ignore all news after work hours, silencing notifications and enforcing a strict sports-only Internet rule after dusk. But no one can ignore weird blinking aircraft zooming over your state, especially if they scare your kids. So, we have an unignorable news phenomenon expanding in a conspicuous vacuum of official explanation, into which we’ve now injected this Livelsberger story.

While I do believe in DOD civilian massacres, I don’t believe in “gravitistic propulsion,” nor do I believe there’s a Men in Black-style squad out chasing and perhaps assassinating rogue Green Berets. I refuse absolutely to bite on that part of the story. But there’s no longer any way to ignore the proposition that the government is playing mind games with the public when it comes to the release of information.

The FAA this past week imposed new bans on drone usage in nine New Jersey towns, the latest in a string of 57 such edicts issued since late November “at the request of federal partners.” These moves scream Gaslight to me. Are we to believe “federal partners” are concerned about drone hobbyists? What do FAA bans accomplish?

(To those asking why an investigative reporter doesn’t answer some of these questions on his own: as Racket readers will see next week, I’m still slogging through papers from eight or nine scandals ago, and don’t have a lot of sources I can call about mystery drones. But it’s a fair point.)

The official media response to the recent terrorist incidents is equally bizarre, and feeds the drone lunacy. The New York Times this morning covered Livelsberger, but naturally didn’t mention the alleged drone/massacre manifesto. Instead, it built a story around the other manifesto-type writings from Livelsberger’s phone the FBI discussed yesterday. In “notes recovered by investigators from one of his phones,” the Times wrote, Livelsberger:

Praised President-elect Donald J. Trump and wrote that “our soldiers are done fighting wars without end states or clear objectives…”

“This was not a terrorist attack,” the note said. “It was a wake-up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives?”

The Times went on to note Livelsberger said he “needed to cleanse my mind of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took,” adding:

The writings found on Sergeant Livelsberger’s phone suggest that he had been increasingly concerned about politics. In one note shared by the police, Sergeant Livelsberger said that people should “try peaceful means first but be prepared to fight” to get Democrats out of the federal government.

In another, he said that “masculinity is good and men must be leaders,” adding that people should rally around Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive and a top donor to the Trump campaign…

The writer of the first “manifesto” doesn’t sound much like the other, which would make sense if Livelsberger wasn’t the author of the email sent to Shoemate, as has been theorized for a variety of reasons. The canny reader will also notice the twin sets of Livelsberger manifestoes seem perfectly tailored for left and right audiences, with the Shawn Ryan deep state action-flick jetting across conservative media, and the PTSD-stricken toxic-masculinity bomber tale getting full play in papers like the Times and Washington Post. There is very little coverage crossover. This is how the Washington Post summarized the “gravitistic propulsion” story:

In the days before the explosion, Livelsberger had corresponded with a social media account popular with military veterans in an apparent attempt to raise concerns about military drone technology, incidents he observed in Afghanistan, and his certainty he was being followed by law enforcement as he drove the Cybertruck from Denver to Las Vegas.

“Corresponded… in an apparent attempt to raise concerns about military drone technology” is a pretty odd paraphrase of “Alleged the New Jersey drone phenomenon is a Chinese invasion being covered up by the state.” Why edit that out? It makes it seem less ridiculous, not more.

Agencies like the FBI and the CIA have been effective in the Trump era in deflecting criticism by pumping cosmpolitan audiences full of conspiratorial bosh about things like Russian collusion. They’ve struggled with the Trump audience for obvious reasons, but I’m beginning to wonder if someone hasn’t realized one can paralyze skeptical audiences with ostentatious displays of incompetent or contradictory behavior. Last week’s string of bizarre official statements were like a container ship of conspiratorial catnip, which will leave millions asking questions like, “What do they know?” or “Why are they letting reporters into crime scenes?” or “Are we really supposed to believe they just found those notes?” perhaps instead of being angry about other issues or abuses.

I don’t know what officials are up to, when they leak like sieves about some issues (Russiagate, Luigi Mangione) and refuse to provide even basic answers about others (New Jersey drones, Thomas Crooks, Covid origins). All we know is there’s an elaborate media strategy at work, one that in the content moderation age extends to outright removal of certain materials, like Shamsud din Jabbar’s Facebook videos. Trying to unwind the logic of these decisions is tiring enough when it’s voluntary, but living in a country that won’t explain things flying over your house is absurd. I get that the president is a corpse, but can’t someone be found to give an old-fashioned Oval Office speech? Why leave us to chew over so much crazy?

Matt Taibbi. Racket News

Jan 04, 2025