Case Study

Vetting Intelligence

In professional military intelligence, a lot of “processing” and vetting goes into a

analyzing intelligence information to determine how accurate and confirmable it is.

With this post, I am going to go through the process of vetting an article published on NaturalNews.com titled: “US authorities uncover massive, nationwide weapons trafficking ring run by communist China to arm Black Lives Matter terrorists with powerful weapons of war”

Original is here:https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-07-15-us-authorities-uncover-nationwide-weapons-trafficking-ring-china-black-lives-matter.html

Source profile

One of the first things done when receiving human intelligence information (HUMINT) or open source intelligence information (OSINT) is looking at the source. A record is kept of sources used, and they are graded by reliability and confirmability. Additionally, information considering the sources motivations and access to information is tracked. We’ll look at the source profile towards the end.

 

Assault rifles or machine guns:

“US authorities uncover massive, nationwide weapons trafficking ring run by communist China to arm Black Lives Matter terrorists with powerful weapons of war

Wednesday, July 15, 2020 by: Mike Adams

(Natural News) On July 3rd of this year, Natural News reported that communist China was trafficking full-auto weapons parts into Florida as a way to arm Black Lives Matter terrorists in advance of a planned armed uprising / revolution. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had interdicted and seized a shipment of over 10,000 full-auto upgrade parts that convert semi-auto rifles into full-auto weapons of war.”

So here we have a claim: that “US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had interdicted and seized a shipment of over 10,000 full-auto upgrade parts that convert semi-auto rifles into full-auto weapons of war.”

But what does CBP actually say?

Here is the actual CBP story: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/10800-assault-weapons-parts-seized-cbp-louisville

From that article: “LOUISVILLE, Ky—At the Express Consignment Operations hubs in Louisville U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers seized a shipment from China that contained over 10,000 Assault Weapons parts being smuggled into the country. Firearm Seizure

The shipment was seized on May 22. Officers inspected the item, which was arriving from Shenzhen, China, destined for a residence in Melbourne, Florida. The parcel was manifested as containing 100 Steel Pin Samples. This is a common practice of smugglers manifesting the contraband as a harmless or a legitimate commodity in hopes of eluding further examination….Officers referred the shipment to the CBP Center of Excellence and Expertise, Machinery team who appraised the shipment with a domestic value of $129,600.”

Now we have a discrepancy between the two stories… CBP says they are assault weapon parts, while Mike Adams claims they are conversions for full auto.

When faced with a discrepancy, we ask the question: “What would we expect?” That really comes into play here for several reasons.

(“drop in auto sear” is the conversion part… they were sold through the 1990’s until ATF said they were illegal due to “constructive possession”)

If the parts were indeed conversions to make an AR-15 into full auto, we would expect the CBP to say that. Law enforcement always wants to show how big there enforcement actions are having an effect. Imagine instead of “(CBP) officers seized a shipment from China that contained over 10,000 Assault Weapons parts being smuggled into the country” they would have said: “(CBP) officers seized a shipment from China that contained over 10,000 machine gun conversions being smuggled into the country” That would certainly make the CBP look better to their law enforcement peers, and to the government that funds them.

If this were the only difference, we might chalk it up as an oversight by the CBP public relations… confusing assault weapon, with full auto, but there is more.

The second part of the CBP quote values the 10,800 parts at $129,600.00. That divides nicely to $12.00 per part. (that happens to be the retail value of an AR-15 takedown pin, a machined steel pin that holds the upper and lower receivers together.)

If the parts were indeed drop in auto sears, they would have been values at just under $1.2 million. Auto sears were being sold for about $120 each before they were outlawed.

We would expect CBP to put the largest monetary value they could on the bust because, again, it makes them look better.

While not absolute, we can assess with a high degree of confidence that the parts seized by CBP were indeed AR-15 takedown pins, and not drop in auto sears to convert them to machine guns.

Suppressors for Antifa

The next paragraph, Adams says: “Now, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have seized an operation in Detroit that smuggle suppressors (silencers) into the United States from China, also for the purpose of arming Black Lives Matter militant extremists.”

However the link provided: https://thenationalpulse.com/news/china-detroit-guns/ , there is not a single mention of BLM or militant extremists. Additionally, I found numerous discussions on message boards that focus on legal suppressors, and quite a few people ordered these, and legally registered them as NFA suppressors.

Again, we would expect someone smuggling suppressors to militant groups would not ALSO sell them on the web, and advertise online, thus bringing unwanted attention to themselves.

We can confidently asses that Adams leap in logic that the Chinese are supplying suppressors to BLM is false.

 

Lets count them twice

Later in the article, Adams writes: “The National Pulse also documents how “11,000 assault weapons parts” have recently been caught during an attempt to smuggle them into Louisville, Kentucky. The origin of the parts? Shenzen, China. China weapons smuggling now confirmed in three U.S. cities… with more to be uncovered”
Except reading the National Pulse article, it just points back to the original CBP story of the 10,800 steel pins seized in Louisville. They were destined for Florida, but by repeating the story incorrectly, it sounds like more parts and more cities are involved.

 

Foreign Influence?

Adams also writes: “The July 13th announcement also casts a report from the Wall Street Journal noting the appearance of illegal firearms and accessories appearing around Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests across the country in a curious – and perhaps foreign – light.” Except the WSJ article talks about one pistol, and a few knives found around protest sites, and not a single mention of foreign influence. Again we have headline inflation…. The facts do not fit the narrative.

 

 

But wait, there’s more!

Adams article goes on with more outrageous claims… Biden is involved, Governor Gavin Newsome is involved, BLM is stealing APCs, etc… I could go through each claim, and pretty thoroughly debunk them… EVERY one, their linked sources do not support the claims made… But I don’t want this to become longer than the book “War and Peace”.

So we will get back to my first topic:

Source Profile revisited

So back to the source profile. Mike Adams, and NaturalNews.com.

First a quick background: Adams owns Naturalnews.com, Trump.news, and 62 other websites… He also is a frequent contributor to Infowars/Alex Jones, and DCClothesline/DCDirtyLaundry.

 

What would motivate him to publish these inflammatory stories? While we don’t know for certain, money and ego are two very likely motives. He gets ad revenue from clicks through his websites, additionally he gets some sales from his health supplement business that advertises on NaturalNews.com.

All of this notoriety has gotten him interviewed quite a few times on Infowars and other conspiracy theory oriented media (which also gains him more web traffic) these are both important motivators.

By also pushing third party content from other writers on his sites, it gives more “legitimacy” because some of the articles ARE true… even some that he posts, basically discuss some event that factually happened.

Another tactic Adams uses is using some of his other sites as references in his articles…. He may have loads of links to look like there are more people supporting position, but ultimately, they all come back to him.

 

If we were to grade him as a source, we would find he has had lots of stories that later prove to be false.

Such as:

“Millie Weaver wasn’t arrested; she was ABDUCTED by the deep state and is being held for possible interrogation” (https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-08-14-millie-weaver-wasnt-arrested-she-was-abducted-by-the-deep-state.html )

Proven false: https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2020/08/infowars-millie-weaver-boyfriend-and-brother-threw-mother-to-the-ground-and-took-her-cellphone-police-report-says.html

OR

“Pentagon now using Jade Helm exercises to teach Skynet how to kill humans”

https://www.naturalnews.com/050528_jade_helm_skynet_ai_robots.html

 

Finally, in source profiling, we look at access. Would you expect the source to have access to the presented information. While we wouldn’t expect a McDonalds cashier in Peoria Illinois to have access to top level military plans, we could expect someone who works in the pentagon to have access to those same plans.

So, how does a health supplement salesman in Cody Wyoming have access to Governor Newsomes innermost plans, Chinese government plans, Chinese military top secret weapons (In one article Adams discuss Chinas top secret EMP weapon, and their plans to use it.) etc…?

The answer is: he doesn’t… all just another factor when considering his credibility.

So in keeping a source profile on Mike Adams, one red flag may just mean caution, but when his work has so many red flags, I would rate Adams or any of his websites: Usually unreliable, and unconfirmable… Do Not Use!

(also attached as PDF)

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