{"id":77747,"date":"2026-08-24T08:36:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T12:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=77747"},"modified":"2026-08-24T11:20:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T15:20:20","slug":"77747","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=77747","title":{"rendered":"

A Spectre is Haunting the JFKA Research Community<\/b> (Part I)<\/h2>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/p>\n

J. KEVEN HOFELING, ESQ.<\/strong><\/p>\n

JFK ASSASSINATION RESEARCH \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 DISTRIBUTION LIST WORK PRODUCT<\/strong><\/p>\n

Salt Lake City, Utah \u00a0\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0j.keven.jd@jkhofelinglaw.org\u00a0\u00a0\u00b7\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0https:\/\/jkhofelinglaw.org\/<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING THE JFKA RESEARCH COMMUNITY<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014 A RESPONSE IN THREE PARTS \u2014 PART I OF III<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Apparatus and Its Published Doctrine<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dispatch 1035-960, COINTELPRO, and the Continuum That Runs From Mail Covers to JTRIG<\/strong><\/p>\n

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J. KEVEN HOFELING, ESQ. \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 AUGUST 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nTHIS SERIES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part I \u2014<\/b>\u00a0The Apparatus and Its Published Doctrine\u00a0(this installment)<\/i><\/p>\n

Part II \u2014<\/b>\u00a0My Own Account<\/p>\n

Part III \u2014<\/b>\u00a0The Ultimate Price, and a Field Manual<\/p>\n

Each part stands alone; together they answer the whole question. The three installments are being circulated a day apart.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nCONTENTS OF PART I<\/strong><\/p>\n

Foreword \u2014 The Question, and the Larger Question Behind It<\/p>\n

I. What This Is Not, and What It Is<\/p>\n

II. Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark<\/p>\n

III. The Continuum: From COINTELPRO to JTRIG<\/p>\n

IV. What Comes Next in This Series<\/p>\n

Sources for Part I (Hyperlinked)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Foreword \u2014 The Question, and the Larger Question Behind It<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Robert, thank you for asking. I have been meaning for years to set down in one place what I know from my own experience about the surveillance, co-optation, and harassment of researchers who look too closely at the criminal political events of the 1960s and their long shadow. Your inquiry on the\u00a0Education Forum (Topic 32227<\/u>)<\/a>, and Dr. Peter Dale Scott\u2019s striking answer to it, gave me the push.<\/p>\n

Because the answer runs long, and because Bill Simpich has fairly reminded me that my missives do, I am going to give it to you in three installments you can actually finish, a day apart.\u00a0Part I<\/b>, this one, sets out the apparatus and its published doctrine \u2014 what the government itself has admitted, in its own paper.\u00a0Part II<\/b>\u00a0is my own account, from a pool hall in Murray, Utah in the early 1990s to a three-minute window in April 2025.\u00a0Part III<\/b>\u00a0is the price \u2014 what it cost the journalist Gary Webb \u2014 and a field manual for the researcher who would rather not pay it.<\/p>\n

But this is not only an answer to you. It is addressed, with respect and some urgency, to the far larger number of researchers who did\u00a0not<\/i>\u00a0answer you \u2014 and to the one observation in the thread I cannot get out of my head. John Simkin, who has done more than any living person to preserve this field\u2019s record, wrote on August 14:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n\u201cI am surprised that not more people have not posted on this thread. Maybe, after all these years, the ruling elite do not think our work is important enough to discredit us.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 John Simkin, Education Forum, Topic 32227 (Aug. 14, 2026)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I want to take that sentence seriously, because I think it is exactly backwards \u2014 and because the fact that a man of Mr. Simkin\u2019s stature can arrive at it is itself the best evidence for the thesis of this series. The silence in that thread is not evidence that no one is being worked on. It is the\u00a0product<\/i>\u00a0of the work. A counterintelligence program that leaves its targets convinced they are too unimportant to be targeted has not failed. It has succeeded completely.<\/p>\n

So:\u00a0a spectre is haunting the JFKA research community.<\/em>\u00a0Most of us have been trained \u2014 by the movies, by the sneer that attaches to the words \u201cparanoid\u201d and “conspiracy theorist,” and by a great deal of patient effort on the part of people who are paid to produce that sneer \u2014 to treat clandestine political operations as a genre of entertainment rather than a documented feature of American life with a fifty-year paper trail. Meanwhile every legitimate researcher in this field is a pawn on a chess board where the stakes include the public disclosure of government crimes, the possibility of prosecution, and the shutting down of a financial gravy train without precedent in human history. Those are not small stakes. People do not leave stakes like that unattended.<\/p>\n

What follows is my account and my evidence. I have tried to make it useful rather than merely alarming: every substantiating document, video, and archive I rely on is linked where I rely on it, and gathered again in a source table at the foot of each installment, so that the\u00a0bona fide<\/em>\u00a0researcher who wants to get to the bottom of these matters has the underlying material in hand rather than my summary of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n\u201cFull knowledge leads to right action, and without full knowledge, right action is impossible.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Founding principle of the Inner-Direct Sect, ca. 1991, based upon Jeffersonian Democratic Theory<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I. What This Is Not, and What It Is<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Let me say at the outset what I am not claiming. I have never found a bug in my telephone. I have never come home to a jimmied door and a missing hard drive. I cannot tell you that there is a file on me, because I have not seen it, and neither has anyone else who has not seen it.<\/p>\n

What I can tell you is narrower and, I think, more useful \u2014 because it is documented, and because it happened to me. The counterintelligence apparatus this community talks about does not spend most of its effort kicking in doors. Kicking in doors is expensive, legally exposed, and it creates martyrs. The cheap and far more effective work is done upstream: identify the person early; evaluate whether he can be turned; turn him if he can be; and if he cannot, degrade his reach and his credibility until he is talking only to himself.<\/p>\n

That is not my theory. That is published doctrine, and I will cite it below. I believe I have been on the receiving end of both halves of the sequence \u2014 the recruitment approach as a very young man, and the reach-degradation as an old one. That is Part II\u2019s business. This installment establishes that the machinery I say was pointed at me exists, is admitted, and is still running.<\/p>\n

II. Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I read David S. Lifton\u2019s\u00a0Best Evidence<\/i>\u00a0(Macmillan, 1980) when I was fourteen years old, in the early 1980s. It did to me what it did to a great many people: it moved the assassination out of the category of history and into the category of evidence. Once you understand that the medical evidence is where this case actually lives, and that the medical evidence does not say what the Warren Report says it says, you cannot go back.<\/p>\n

From there I read everything I could locate \u2014 and what I found alongside the assassination literature was a second literature: the record of what the intelligence agencies had done to the people who investigated the first one. By my late teens I was subscribing to\u00a0The Nation<\/i>,\u00a0Mother Jones<\/i>, and\u00a0The Progressive<\/i>, which is an unusual reading list for a teenager in Murray, Utah, and which is precisely the point I will return to in Part II.<\/p>\n

Two documents from that period matter for everything that follows, and both are now beyond dispute.<\/p>\n

The first is\u00a0CIA Dispatch 1035-960, \u201cCountering Criticism of the Warren Report,\u201d<\/b>\u00a0dated 1 April 1967 \u2014 the Agency\u2019s own instruction to its stations, released under FOIA in 1976 and archived at\u00a0History Matters as RIF 104-10406-10110<\/a><\/u>. It directs officers \u201cto discuss the publicity problem with \u2026 friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors),\u201d and \u201cto employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics,\u201d noting that \u201c[b]ook reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.\u201d It further instructs that critics be answered with the suggestion that \u201cparts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists.\u201d That dispatch is the origin point of the reflex by which the phrase \u201cconspiracy theorist\u201d now does the work that evidence used to do.<\/p>\n

The second is the\u00a0Church Committee\u2019s Final Report, Book III (1976)<\/b>\u00a0(Senate Select Committee, full PDF<\/a><\/u>), which set out COINTELPRO\u2019s stated purpose in the Bureau\u2019s own vocabulary \u2014 to \u201cexpose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize\u201d domestic political activity \u2014 and which concluded, in language every researcher in this field should have memorized, that \u201cthe Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither of these is a theory. Both are government paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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DOCUMENT EXHIBIT A<\/strong><\/p>\n

CIA Dispatch 1035-960 \u2014 \u201cCountering Criticism of the Warren Report\u201d (1 April 1967)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"V3rypHo.gif\"<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.history-matters.com\/archive\/jfk\/cia\/russholmes\/104-10406\/104-10406-10110\/html\/104-10406-10110_0002a.htm<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/archive.org\/details\/CIADOC1035960<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
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DOCUMENT EXHIBIT B<\/strong><\/p>\n

Church Committee, Final Report, Book III (1976) \u2014 COINTELPRO<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"3RveL6x.gif\"<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.intelligence.senate.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/94755_III.pdf<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The dissent that wasn\u2019t<\/strong><\/p>\n

I started college at about the time Oliver Stone\u2019s\u00a0JFK<\/i>\u00a0was released in December 1991. By then I knew enough of the actual record to watch the reaction with a certain grim clarity \u2014 because the most ferocious attacks on the film did not come from the right. They came from the respectable left. Alexander Cockburn devoted column after column in\u00a0The Nation<\/i>\u00a0to demolishing Stone and the assassination critics generally, and Noam Chomsky published\u00a0Rethinking Camelot<\/i>\u00a0(South End Press, 1993) in the same register: that it does not much matter who killed Kennedy, because Kennedy was no different from Johnson.<\/p>\n

To a young man who had already read the autopsy evidence, this was the moment the picture came into focus. The magazines I had subscribed to\u00a0precisely because<\/i>\u00a0they were supposed to be adversarial to the national security state were among those ones running interference for it on the single clearest case of its criminality.\u00a0Something smelled rotten in Denmark.<\/em><\/p>\n

I do not assert that Cockburn or Chomsky were assets, and I will not. I assert something I think is more interesting and better supported: the boundary-policing function described in CIA Dispatch 1035-960 does not\u00a0require<\/i>\u00a0assets. It requires only that a respectable person\u2019s professional standing be made to depend on his not going there. Once the Agency has spent two decades cultivating \u201cfriendly elite contacts\u201d in the press \u2014 the practice Carl Bernstein documented at length in\u00a0\u201cThe CIA and the Media,\u201d Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977<\/u><\/a>, drawing on the Church Committee\u2019s own files \u2014 the boundary maintains itself. That is the durable meaning of what is loosely called Operation Mockingbird: not a permanent payroll, but a permanent reflex.<\/p>\n

Mr. Simkin\u2019s own testimony in your thread is the cleanest confirmation of this I have seen from inside the profession. He worked for\u00a0The Guardian<\/i>, he wrote, \u201cthe UK\u2019s most liberal newspaper,\u201d and \u201cthey would not publish articles that questioned the Warren Commission report.\u201d Denise Hazelwood reported in the same thread that she was banned from\u00a0Daily Kos<\/i>\u00a0as a \u201cconspiracy theorist\u201d for submitting a piece on the evidentiary anomalies. Neither of those is a wiretap. Both are the dispatch, working as designed, sixty years on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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ARTICLE EXHIBIT C<\/strong><\/p>\n

Carl Bernstein, \u201cThe CIA and the Media,\u201d Rolling Stone (Oct. 20, 1977)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"http:\/\/www.carlbernstein.com\/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-stone-10-20-1977<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

III. The Continuum: From COINTELPRO to JTRIG<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The mistake most researchers make is to treat COINTELPRO as history. It is not history. It is the first generation of a program that was never dismantled \u2014 only professionalized, privatized, digitized, and made deniable. The table below is the shape of the thing.<\/p>\n

TABLE 1 \u2014 THE CONTINUUM OF DOMESTIC COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AGAINST RESEARCHERS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Era<\/th>\nNamed Doctrine<\/th>\nCharacteristic Methods<\/th>\nWho Pays, and How It Is Deniable<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
1956\u20131971
\nAnalog<\/td>\n		COINTELPRO (FBI); CIA Dispatch 1035-960 (1967); domestic mail covers<\/td>\nInfiltration; mail opening; wiretaps; anonymous letters; planted press items; \u201cneutralization\u201d of individuals by reputation attack<\/td>\nDirect federal employees. Deniability rests on classification alone \u2014 which is why it collapsed in 1971\u20131976.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1972\u20132000
\nTransitional<\/td>\n		Cultivation of assets; \u201cfriendly elite contacts\u201d; Domestic Contact Service debriefings of returning travelers<\/td>\nRecruitment approaches to promising young activists; honey traps; professional placement of critics into institutional roles; media boundary maintenance<\/td>\nContract and cut-out relationships. Deniability rests on the fact that a debriefed businessman is not an \u201cofficer.\u201d<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2001\u2013present
\nDigital<\/td>\n		\u201cCognitive infiltration\u201d (Sunstein & Vermeule, 2008); DARPA SMISC (2011); GCHQ JTRIG \u2014 the Four D\u2019s: Deny, Disrupt, Degrade, Deceive<\/td>\nSock-puppet swarms; false-flag postings; reputation destruction; algorithmic suppression; bad-faith copyright takedowns; procedural warfare on moderated forums<\/td>\nCleared private contractors and platform trust-and-safety desks. Deniability is total: the government does not act \u2014 the platform does.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
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Core Demonstrative<\/b><\/p>\n

The Continuum: COINTELPRO \u2192 JTRIG<\/b><\/p>\n

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The doctrine, in print, under authors\u2019 names<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2008, Professor Cass R. Sunstein \u2014 later Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and later still a member of President Obama\u2019s NSA review panel \u2014 and Adrian Vermeule published\u00a0\u201cConspiracy Theories\u201d<\/a><\/u>, proposing that government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-independent advocates to\u00a0\u201ccognitively infiltrate\u201d<\/b>\u00a0online groups and websites. That is not a leak and not an allegation. It is a law review paper with a byline.<\/p>\n

In 2011, DARPA announced its\u00a0Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC)<\/a><\/u>\u00a0program, soliciting research into detecting\u00a0and conducting<\/i>\u00a0persuasion campaigns on social platforms.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Edward Snowden\u2019s GCHQ material was published by Glenn Greenwald in\u00a0The Intercept<\/i>\u00a0as\u00a0\u201cHow Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations\u201d<\/a><\/u>, exposing the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group and publishing its training deck,\u00a0\u201cThe Art of Deception: Training for a New Generation of Online Covert Operations\u201d<\/a><\/u>\u00a0(mirrors:\u00a0ACLU<\/a><\/u>;\u00a0DocumentCloud #1021430<\/a><\/u>).<\/p>\n

Read the deck in the original, because it is not coy. Greenwald summarizes JTRIG\u2019s two self-identified core purposes as: \u201c(1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable.\u201d The named tactics include\u00a0false flag operations<\/i>\u00a0\u2014 posting material and falsely attributing it to someone else \u2014 fake victim blog posts, honey traps, destructive viruses, and posting \u201cnegative information\u201d on forums. There is a \u201cHuman Science Operations Cell\u201d devoted to \u201conline human intelligence\u201d and \u201cstrategic influence and disruption,\u201d and slides on exploiting hindsight bias, confirmation bias, anchoring and priming.<\/p>\n

And this is the passage I put in front of anyone who tells me I am being paranoid: GCHQ\u2019s own title page acknowledges that it is\u00a0\u201cpushing the boundaries\u201d<\/b>\u00a0by aiming these techniques at people who have\u00a0nothing to do with terrorism or national security threats<\/i>.<\/p>\n

TABLE 2 \u2014 THE JTRIG PLAYBOOK, AND WHAT EACH MOVE IS DESIGNED TO ACCOMPLISH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Named Tactic<\/th>\nMechanism<\/th>\nEffect on the Researcher<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Reputation destruction<\/b><\/td>\nDeliberate publication of false material about the target, including messages to family, friends, and professional colleagues<\/td>\nIsolation; loss of standing; the target spends his energy on defence rather than research<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
False-flag posting<\/b><\/td>\nMaterial posted to the internet and falsely attributed to the target<\/td>\nThe target\u2019s own record becomes unreliable evidence against him<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Fake victim blog posts<\/b><\/td>\nAn operative poses as a person the target has supposedly wronged<\/td>\nManufactured grievance that no rebuttal can fully clear<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Honey traps<\/b><\/td>\nLuring the target into a compromising situation, online or physical<\/td>\nBlackmail material; permanent leverage<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Infiltration & synthetic consensus<\/b><\/td>\nMultiple accounts creating the appearance that the target\u2019s position is universally rejected by peers<\/td>\nBystanders conclude the evidence has been refuted, though it has not been addressed<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Four D\u2019s<\/b><\/td>\nDeny \u00b7 Disrupt \u00b7 Degrade \u00b7 Deceive \u2014 the stated operating framework<\/td>\nNot persuasion. Attrition.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
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VIDEO EXHIBIT D<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOnline Government Trolls Have Infiltrated the Internet\u201d (approx. 4:30)<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/rumble.com\/v6ztjoy-online-government-trolls-have-infiltrated-the-internet.html<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

\"wy15aLf.gif\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Timestamped Bullet Point Summary of\u00a0Government\u00a0Online\u00a0Manipulation Operations:<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Cass Sunstein’s Cognitive Infiltration Strategy<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[00:00] The video begins by explaining how Cass Sunstein’s recommendations for the\u00a0government\u00a0to “cognitively infiltrate conspiracy theory groups\u00a0online\u00a0with\u00a0government\u00a0propaganda” were implemented by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0DARPA’s Social Media Strategic Communication Program<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[00:17] In 2011, DARPA unveiled its social media and strategic communication program, soliciting proposals for “innovative research” and “emerging technologies” to improve methods of detecting and conducting propaganda campaigns on social media platforms.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Official\u00a0Government\u00a0Propaganda Objectives<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[00:35] DARPA seeks to develop tools to identify “misinformation or deception campaigns” and counter them with “truthful information,” while reducing adversaries’ ability to manipulate events – essentially requesting new technologies to carry out Sunstein’s cognitive infiltration strategy.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Global\u00a0Government\u00a0xxxxx\u00a0Operations<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[00:53] The concept of manipulating public opinion with\u00a0online\u00a0propaganda is a common tactic practiced worldwide: Israel pays college students to promote Zionist agenda, China pays commenters to spin bad news, Russia\u00a0has\u00a0xxxxx\u00a0armies, and even Canada participates.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Edward Snowden’s GCHQ Document Leaks<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[01:26] In 2014, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked documents to Glenn Greenwald revealing presentation slides from the UK’s\u00a0Government\u00a0Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the NSA.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG)<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[01:41] The leaked documents expose a previously secret unit called JTRIG that\u00a0has\u00a0been “systematically attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate and warp\u00a0online\u00a0discourse” through covert operations.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0“The Art of Deception” Training Manual<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[01:57] The leaked document is titled “The Art of Deception: Training for\u00a0Online\u00a0Covert Operations,” providing internal\u00a0government\u00a0memos on how to conduct\u00a0online\u00a0manipulation campaigns.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Five Eyes Intelligence Cooperation<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[02:10] The Five Eyes alliance (US, Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada) share intelligence and coordinate these operations, allowing them to circumvent domestic laws by having partner nations conduct operations they cannot legally perform themselves.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Online\u00a0Covert Action Techniques<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[02:44] The documents detail various means to engage in “influence and info ops” as well as “disruption and computer net attack,” using\u00a0online\u00a0techniques to make things happen in both the real and cyber worlds.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0The Four D’s Strategy<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[02:55] GCHQ’s\u00a0online\u00a0covert action operates under “The Four D’s”: Deny, Disrupt, Degrade, and Deceive – a comprehensive framework for manipulating\u00a0online\u00a0discourse and public opinion.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Psychological Manipulation Tactics<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[03:09] The documents dissect how human beings can be manipulated using “leaders, trust, obedience and compliance,” essentially providing a manual on how to get people to submit to authority.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Media Leader Compliance Strategy<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[03:17] A key tactic involves getting “trusted leaders in the media” to support\u00a0government\u00a0positions, telling the public “no, no, this is right. The\u00a0government\u00a0is right. Now everybody comply.”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Conspiracy Story Planting Operations<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[03:28] The leaked slides show\u00a0government\u00a0agents deliberately plant “conspiracy stories”\u00a0online\u00a0as part of their manipulation campaigns, using false narratives to discredit legitimate concerns.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Cognitive Bias Exploitation<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[03:35] The documents detail exploitation of psychological vulnerabilities including “hindsight bias, confirmation bias, anchoring and priming,” using these tactics to make people believe false information by confirming existing biases.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Acknowledged Propaganda Operations<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[03:48] The manual explicitly acknowledges they\u00a0are\u00a0conducting “propaganda, branding, marketing” operations, with\u00a0government\u00a0agents knowingly spreading propaganda through media channels.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Social Network Manipulation<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[03:57] The strategy involves using “compliance, obedience, and social networks” to spread\u00a0government\u00a0messaging, leveraging social pressure and authority figures to influence public opinion.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Propaganda Manual Revelation<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[04:06] The presenter emphasizes this represents a complete “Propaganda 101 manual” that reveals exactly what the\u00a0government\u00a0is doing to manipulate\u00a0online\u00a0discourse and public perception.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Recognition of\u00a0Government\u00a0Manipulation<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[04:13] The video concludes by encouraging viewers to recognize these tactics when they encounter them\u00a0online, now that the\u00a0government’s methods\u00a0have\u00a0been exposed through the leaked documents.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\u2022\u00a0Big Brother Surveillance State Warning<\/b><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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[04:21] The presenter warns that “Big Brother is here” and\u00a0has\u00a0developed “unbelievable propaganda” capabilities, representing a significant threat to free discourse and independent thought.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ARTICLE & DOCUMENT EXHIBIT E<\/strong><\/p>\n

Greenwald, \u201cHow Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet \u2026\u201d (Feb. 24, 2014) and the JTRIG deck<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
\nhttps:\/\/theintercept.com\/2014\/02\/24\/jtrig-manipulation\/<\/a><\/u>
\nhttps:\/\/theintercept.com\/document\/art-deception-training-new-generation-online-covert-operations\/<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The scale \u2014 and a heresy about it<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dana Priest and William Arkin\u2019s\u00a0\u201cTop Secret America\u201d<\/a><\/u>\u00a0survey for\u00a0The Washington Post<\/i>\u00a0found roughly 854,000 people holding Top Secret clearances across some 10,000 locations, with about a third of those clearances held by private contractors. Add to that the Five Eyes arrangement \u2014 the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand \u2014 under which allied services routinely do at home what a partner\u2019s charter forbids it to do in its own country. The CIA is nominally barred from domestic operations. Its four English-speaking partners are not barred from operating here at all.<\/p>\n

Now the heresy, and I offer it because I think it is important and because it cuts against the grandiosity that this subject invites. During my first research forays into the radical left in the early 1990s \u2014 the socialist organizations in Salt Lake City, their meetings, their audiences \u2014 my honest impression was that a startling share of the people in those rooms were undercover federal agents. If that impression was even half right, the implication is not that those tiny organizations were dangerous. The implication is that an apparatus with effectively unlimited resources will generate activity to fill the budget it has been given.<\/p>\n

Which means that some \u2014 perhaps much \u2014 of the covert attention paid to people like us is not paid because we constitute a genuine threat to national security. It is paid because the line item exists and must be justified. I find this more disturbing than the alternative, not less. A machine that targets you because you matter can be reasoned with. A machine that targets you because it has payroll to spend cannot.<\/p>\n

IV. What Comes Next in This Series<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

That is the machinery, and every element of it is on the public record under a government letterhead or an author\u2019s byline. Nothing in this installment required me to tell you a single thing about myself. That was deliberate: I wanted the doctrine on the table before the anecdote, so that when the anecdote comes you can measure it against something other than my say-so.<\/p>\n

Part II<\/i>\u00a0is that anecdote, and it is the part of this that I have never set down in full for anyone. It is about a student organization I founded, a stranger who walked into a billiards club in Murray, Utah and opened with the exact philosophy that organization was built on, a five-hour conversation, a business card reading \u201cfamily therapist,\u201d and what my father\u2019s first cousins told me about that man years later. It is also about a keylogger in 2016, an account presenting as a beautiful woman that changed its story under questioning and volunteered that stranger\u2019s name, and three copyright strikes filed 180 seconds apart in April 2025 that destroyed a decade of work.\u00a0Part III<\/i>\u00a0takes up what all of this cost a journalist named Gary Webb, who made his evidence accessible to the masses and paid the ultimate price for it \u2014 and closes with a field manual for recognizing, in real time, what is being done to you.<\/p>\n

More in a day or two.<\/p>\n

Keven<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

J. Keven Hofeling, Esq. (Retired)\u00a0 \u2022\u00a0 Sunday, August 23, 2026 \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 Salt Lake City, Utah \u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/www.jkhofelinglaw.org\/<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

Sources for Part I (Hyperlinked)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Item<\/th>\nURL (spelled out)<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
CIA Dispatch 1035-960, \u201cCountering Criticism of the Warren Report\u201d (1 Apr. 1967) \u2014 History Matters, RIF 104-10406-10110<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/www.history-matters.com\/archive\/jfk\/cia\/russholmes\/104-10406\/104-10406-10110\/html\/104-10406-10110_0002a.htm<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
CIA Dispatch 1035-960 \u2014 Internet Archive mirror<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/archive.org\/details\/CIADOC1035960<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Church Committee, Final Report, Book III (1976) \u2014 COINTELPRO<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/www.intelligence.senate.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/94755_III.pdf<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Carl Bernstein, \u201cThe CIA and the Media,\u201d Rolling Stone (Oct. 20, 1977)<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/goodtimesweb.org\/industry-govt-agents\/rs-bernstein-cia-media-oct-20-1977.html<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Sunstein & Vermeule, \u201cConspiracy Theories\u201d (2008) \u2014 SSRN<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/chicagounbound.uchicago.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1118&context=law_and_economics<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Sunstein & Vermeule, \u201cConspiracy Theories\u201d \u2014 Chicago Unbound<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/chicagounbound.uchicago.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1118&context=law_and_economics<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
DARPA, Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC), 2011<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/www.darpa.mil\/research\/programs\/social-media-in-strategic-communication<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Glenn Greenwald, \u201cHow Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet\u2026,\u201d The Intercept (Feb. 24, 2014)<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/theintercept.com\/2014\/02\/24\/jtrig-manipulation\/<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
GCHQ\/JTRIG, \u201cThe Art of Deception\u201d \u2014 The Intercept document library<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/theintercept.com\/document\/art-deception-training-new-generation-online-covert-operations\/<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u201cThe Art of Deception\u201d \u2014 ACLU mirror<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/www.aclu.org\/documents\/art-deception-training-online-covert-operations<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u201cThe Art of Deception\u201d \u2014 DocumentCloud #1021430<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/1021430-the-art-of-deception-training-for-a-new\/<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u201cOnline Government Trolls Have Infiltrated the Internet\u201d (video)<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/rumble.com\/v6ztjoy-online-government-trolls-have-infiltrated-the-internet.html<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Priest & Arkin, \u201cTop Secret America,\u201d The Washington Post<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/secure.afa.org\/edOp\/2010\/Washington_Post_Intelligence_Series.pdf<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Robert Morrow\u2019s thread \u2014 Education Forum, Topic 32227<\/td>\nhttps:\/\/educationforum.ipbhost.com\/topic\/32227-jfk-assassination-researchers-have-you-ever-been-spied-on-wiretapped-or-harassed-by-the-american-government-in-your-years-of-jfk-research\/<\/a><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
PART I OF III \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 \u201cA SPECTRE IS HAUNTING THE JFKA RESEARCH COMMUNITY\u201d \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 NEXT: PART II \u2014 MY OWN ACCOUNT<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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