A special contribution to The Gateway Pundit by David Howell, retired Army National Guard Physician Assistant and former State Surgeon; four combat tours in Desert Storm, Iraq (2), and Afghanistan; awarded Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal (2), and Army Meritorious Service Medal (3).
In 2002, as the Battalion Physician Assistant for the 160th Military Police Battalion, part of my assignment was to perform the initial medical screening on every planeload of detainees arriving at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base directly from Afghanistan and triage any that were in need of immediate medical attention. Standing beside me were always a number of representatives from those government organizations that I refer to as ‘3-letter agencies,’ including agents from the FBI, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and National Security Agency (NSA).
Ten years and three combat deployments later, I found myself deep in the Hindu Kush Mountains of northeast Afghanistan at a Forward Operating Base near the city of Kunduz with the Soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 125th Infantry Regiment of the Michigan Army National Guard. Supporting us were civilian contractors working for the DIA and NSA who were carrying out various intelligence & counterintelligence missions and operating a large unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that provided much-needed reconnaissance and overhead surveillance.
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that leaders from these same agencies, along with elements of the National Security Council and the Department of Homeland Security, would use their vast resources to nullify and impede a sitting President of the United States and censor the American people.
Several weeks ago, Tucker Carlson interviewed Mike Benz, the Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, a cyber security expert, and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Policy at the State Department during a portion of the Trump Administration.
Mr. Benz explained that as the internet began to take hold in the early 1990s, the military developed many of its capabilities, such as VPN, encryption, the Dark Web, and search engines like Google, which we take for granted today.
Over the years, the State Department saw ways in which it could be used to positively influence democracy movements and harm our adversaries in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. The best example of this would be the Arab Spring of 2011-2012, in which the State Department & National Security State worked through fledgling democracy movements to censor and overthrow the authoritarian rulers in Egypt and Tunisia while helping other democratic movements in Libya, Syria, Turkey, and Iran to take hold.
However, things began to change in 2014 when Russian mercenaries invaded eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
When the subsequent elections that were conducted in both of those areas resulted in an election victory for Ukrainians who favored alignment with Russia, the State Department knew that it had a big problem on its hands. In response, the State Department and the National Security State orchestrated the ‘Color Revolution’ which was a coup to overthrow the elected Russia-leaning President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych, and install a new Acting President, Oleksandr Turchynov, who was more favorable to the United States.
Shortly thereafter, populist-nationalist political parties in Eastern Europe and the BREXIT movement in Great Britain that did not favor globalism and mass migration began to win elections and take power. NATO, the European Union, and globalist oligarchs in the West viewed these developments as a threat to their existence.
In response, all of the tools of the National Security State were turned against the populist-nationalist political parties and movements in Europe. However, in short order, the populist-nationalist spread to the United States in the form of one Donald J. Trump, the leading candidate of the Republican Party for President of the United States.
With the support of the mainstream media, all of the major social media platforms, and the elites of both major political parties, the Nullification Movement was born in 2015 to oppose Trump’s candidacy and the eventual Trump Administration. It was manifested by the ‘Russia Collusion Hoax,’ the Mueller Investigation, unlawful FISA Warrants, the unlawful wiretapping of Trump’s personal residence at Trump Tower, the illegal release of transcripts of conversations between President Trump and various world leaders, two pseudo-whistleblower complaints to members of Congress by operatives linked to the National Security Council, two Presidential Impeachment Proceedings, and hundreds of anonymous leaks by members of the National Security State to willing accomplices in the mainstream media.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, they co-opted all of major social media platforms in order to circumvent the First Amendment, withheld information on the origins of Covid-19 and several viable Covid-19 treatment regimens, censored opposing political viewpoints on the internet, interfered with the 2022 General Election by suppressing derogatory information harmful to Trump’s Democratic Party opponent, and silenced the views of critics who were opposed to mask mandates, Covid-19 vaccine mandates, and the long-term closures of most businesses and all schools across the United States.
Most notorious of all were the BLM riots that spread unfettered in many of the largest cities across the country for months during the summer of 2021.
Also, the incursion at the US Capital on January 6th that spiraled into a riot partly after federal law enforcement authorities & Capital Police leaders failed to take steps to prevent it – and the subsequent detention and imprisonment of thousands of January 6th Trump supporters who were arrested by the FBI, tried by the Justice Department, and convicted in the United States Federal District Court for the District of Columbia for misdemeanors and felonies related to unlawful acts and demonstrations that occurred both outside and within the Capital building.
Tucker Carlson’s interview with Mike Benz is fascinating and lasts just over an hour. Once you start watching, it’s very hard to stop. You can watch the interview in its entirety here:
Everything You Need to Know about the Government’s Mass Censorship Campaign
David Howell currently serves as a volunteer docent at the Michigan History Museum and takes care of rescued horses with his wife on a small farm west of Lansing.
