“And then, on top of it, the flag was actually attached to the tailgate of his car. So he’s flying this black ISIS flag except it’s upside down. So, you know, he’s suddenly a fanatical member of ISIS but can’t read Arabic and doesn’t know up from down with respect to the Arabic language.”
– Larry Johnson, from this week’s interview
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The new year got off to a raucus start right on January 1.
According to police, at 3:15am local time, a rented Ford F-150 pick-up truck drove at high speed into a crowd of New Year’s revellers in New Orleans killing 15 and injuring 35. [1]
A few hours later, a Tesla Cybertruck parked for about an hour in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, exploded injuring several people in the vicinity. [2]
Each of the drivers are known to be U.S. Army veterans. Both were stationed at Fort Bragg, the North Carolina military base now known as Fort Liberty. [3]
Then, barely a week into 2025, a totally new item hit the mainstream media screens everywhere. The Pacific Palisades became the site of one of the most destructive fires ever to hit California. Expensive homes were reduced to blackened rubble. Thousands of buildings had been destroyed. Celebrities like Jennifer Aniston, Steve Guttenberg, Tom Hanks, and James Woods have lost their houses. Plenty of Los Angeles residents were forced to flee their cars so as to escape the fiery clutches of the wildfires. [4]
Experts would appear on the screens explaining that climate change created as a result of burning fossil fuels was to blame for the tragic swath of enraged natural inferno. [5]
These stories got a lot of attention at first. The first two stories were effectively summed up as two loners who both served in the U.S. military, who both served in Afghanistan, and both rented their vehicles from the service Turo. So sayeth the all-knowing, all seeing FBI. [6]
As for the fires, media figures say “climate change” as readily as any trained parrot would. [7]
But if one decides to probe a little deeper, one would find many other jarring details that might shake the common person’s perspective on what’s happened this month. The idea that the perpetrator of the first attack was working all alone doesn’t make sense. The details surrounding the second attack also fall apart. And the wildfires are not behaving like wildfires throughout history.
In this week’s Global Research News Hour, we are going to talk about these activities and attempt to come up with a new hypothesis for what really took place in America over the last 30 days.
In our first half hour, we talk to Larry Johnson, a veteran of U.S. Intelligence services, about the details of the two above-mentioned truck drivers and why the FBI investigating the incidents can no longer be trusted. In our second half hour we talk to forensic arborist Robert Brame about the curious way some objects did burn and some others did not. And finally, we are joined by Elena Freeland, a writer on Geoengineering, who gives us another mechanism for causing the fires both in California recently and in Maui in 2023.
Larry C. Johnson is a veteran of the CIA and the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. He is the founder and managing partner of BERG Associates, which was established in 1998. Larry provided training to the US Military’s Special Operations community for 24 years. He has been vilified by the right and the left, which means he must be doing something right. You can also follow him on telegram (t.me/sonar https://t.me/sonar_21, Patreon and Substack https://larrycjohnson.substack.com) His site is https:sonar21.com
Robert Brame is a botanist and a forensic arborist who has been studying plants in nature with Science plant books in hand for nearly half a century.
Elana Freeland is a writer, ghostwriter, lecturer, storyteller, and teacher who researches and writes on Deep State issues, including the stories of survivors of MK-ULTRA, ritual abuse, and invasive electromagnetic weapons (Nexus, October 2014). She is the Author of the three book geoengineering trilogy. The 4th book of the trilogy – The Geoengineered Transhuman: The Hidden Technologies of HAARP, Chemtrails, 5G/6G, Nanotechnology, Synthetic Biology, and the Scientific Effort to Transform Humanity comes out next week.
(Global Research News Hour Episode 459)
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Click to download the audio (MP3 format)
Transcript of Larry Johhnson, January 28, 2025)
Global Research: Now, it seems as if these two incidents are connected in that they involved U.S. Army personnel, not foreigners, for one thing. I know you have largely focused on the Las Vegas attack in particular, and I will let you get to that incident in a minute. But first, talk a little about the New Orleans and the driver, Jabbar, who drives into a crowd killing 15 and injuring 30.
They found an ISIS flag in the trunk of his car. What are the key signals for you about what is wrong with this account?
Larry Johnson: Well, let’s start first with what I call the spurious connections. So the spurious connection number one is that both individuals are alleged to have been at Fort Bragg together, now called Fort Liberty.
Well, Fort Bragg is an enormous base, number one. But then you have to look at who were these respective individuals. And Jabbar was a human resources guy.
He was an admin weenie, and somebody would sit in front of a computer. Somebody would process orders. He was not one trained to kill.
He wasn’t trained to build bombs. He wasn’t trained to handle explosives in any way. He wasn’t trained to do surveillance or carry out ambushes.
They had zero training on that. Quite the contrast from Livelsberger, who was, you know, Tesla blew up out in Las Vegas. He was Special Forces Green Beret.
And as such, an 18-year career, he was extensively trained with explosives and a whole variety of things. So just the fact that they had spent time at Fort Bragg doesn’t necessarily mean anything, because it’s not clear that they were there at the same time. And certainly, there’s zero evidence that they were part of, say, the John F. Kennedy School for Special Operations.
GR: Just a second. You mentioned that Jabbar, I guess, he was an IT guy, and he hadn’t gotten that formal training. But, I mean, is it possible he could have gotten it in his spare time, away from, you know, the view of the military itself? I don’t know.
LJ: Not likely. Or if he got it, it would have been, you know, he’d be a danger to himself and others. Clearly, he was a danger to others.
The thing that caught my attention was he built two improvised explosive devices that were contained in coolers that he carried around and left in certain locations, and they were to be detonated remotely. That’s very sophisticated. That’s not something that some guy searching the internet for the terrorist cookbook comes up with.
So that, to me, suggests he had support. He had help. He had assistance.
He was also described as not being financially sound. And so, where did he get the money to move to New Orleans? And he bought, you know, he was renting or buying a fairly, you know, significant piece of real estate. So there’s just a lot of odd things that just, on the surface, don’t appear to add up.
And then, on top of it, the flag was actually attached to the tailgate of his car. So he’s flying this black ISIS flag except it’s upside down. So, you know, he’s suddenly a fanatical member of ISIS but can’t read Arabic and doesn’t know up from down with respect to the Arabic language.
So, we’ve, you know, they’ve buttoned up. They’ve gone, you know, dead silent in terms of who was he in contact with? How did he become radicalized? You know, what was he, you know, who is he communicating with? Hopefully now with President Trump in office, we’ll get some answers. But Jabbar is certainly, it’s a mystery on that front.
With respect to Livelsberger or aka Matt Berg, I don’t think that qualifies as a terrorist attack. It was, you know, the different narratives coming out about it are, he clearly, he died in the explosion that took place. What’s so odd about all of this? And maybe, you know, maybe he was having a mental breakdown.
Because this is a guy who could build a sophisticated explosive device and instead of that, he built a very crude thing that you would, you know, anticipate some 16, 17 year old kid would throw together with using a lot of, you know, gasoline, fuel oils. The problem I have with this story that was told, not so much by the, initially I thought it was the FBI, but then it was actually the Las Vegas Police Department took the lead in the investigation and kept the lead in the investigation. So the FBI never got involved, which is in a way sort of odd as well, because this guy travelled across different state lines.
So, and he claimed he had information, had violated, you know, his secrecy agreement and that he was headed to Mexico. He was trained in counter surveillance. He was trained, there’s an element within the special forces within the Green Beret community, they’re called Jedbirds.
The Jedbird comes out of a World War II entity that was part of the Office of Strategic Services and British Intelligence Special Operations Executive. And it was basically a multinational team for carrying out sabotage. We’d call it terrorist attacks, but, you know, terrorism’s always in the eye of the beholder.
And so he had that kind of training. So he then sent out some curious, you know, it’s not confirmed that they were his emails, but in these email communications that he knew, he said he was being followed. And so if you know you’re being followed and being monitored, the last thing you want to do is be on your cell phone and have your cell phone on so you can be located and to rent a Tesla, which, you know, does everything but talk to God.
In terms of sharing information about where you are, what you’re doing, and where you’re going, including filming things. So, you know, there’s that oddity that what he said in his emails, he didn’t do actually in real life. He said he was going to Mexico, he didn’t go to Mexico, he went to Las Vegas.
I mean, you could argue, he said, oh, Las Vegas sounds Mexican. But, you know.
GR: Yeah, I guess with his knowledge of explosives, he’d know that what he had in his car would not be enough to do much damage to this building at all, right?
LJ: Yeah, no, that wouldn’t do minimal damage at best, just cosmetic damage.
It wouldn’t affect the structural integrity. You know, so clearly his goal was not to blow up the building. Then the other thing is, I guess he had just recently bought a .50 caliber Desert Eagle.
Okay. You know, this is literally a hand cannon. Now, the Las Vegas Police Department claimed that he shot himself before detonating the car.
And you’re going, how does that work? But the video that was provided, you could actually see his head. And you did not see him holding a gun, say, and his right hand pointed up into his mouth with this .50 caliber gun. Because, you know, candidly, it would have taken off most of his head.
So, it just, that didn’t make sense. Why were they giving that explanation? You know, they claimed that they found, when they did an autopsy, they recovered a bullet from his head. Well, that’s impossible too.
If you shoot yourself in the head with a .50 caliber, that thing’s going through your head. So, it’s just, you know, the story doesn’t add up. He clearly, though, in his writings, was a Trump supporter, not a Trump opponent.
And, you know, he had been, he was also, this was the other sort of very strange thing, he was still listed as currently assigned on active duty to a base outside of Stuttgart, it’s called Panzer. I’ve been there two or three times myself over the course of my consulting career with the military. But, it’s not really, it’s not the kind of base that, you know, like where Gomer Pyle had a barracks and was marching around and they had a mess hall.
This is more sort of, it was a small facility. So, he was just assigned there from an admin standpoint. It looks like he was actually carrying out operations in Ukraine.
And likely operations in tandem with the Central Intelligence Agency. So, you know, why he decided to come back and then go into this whole, you know, create this whole backstory and drama, and then kill himself essentially. Well, he didn’t kill anybody else.
It was fortunate that there were people standing outside and maybe he deliberately chose that moment when he could see there was nobody outside.
GR: Wow.
LJ: But I do not believe that these were connected incidents in any way.
GR: Yeah. Well, they’re also, I mean, in spite of this explosive going off, I mean, I don’t think that it was easy to, you know, determine by visually like what his identity was, but he had ID really available that was in perfect condition. I mean, that almost sounds like a similar theme whenever you have any sort of, you know, kind of clandestine type activity, so as you can identify him.
LJ: Yeah, it was singed. His cat, what they call cack, cack card was singed, but it was still legible. Now, you know, for the kind of fire, it’s surprising that that didn’t get consumed.
Or melt more. Because it’s a plastic card.
GR: Yeah.
Yeah, and they were able to track his DNA as well to determine he was who they say they were?
LJ: Well, yeah, I mean, by virtue of being in the army, in particular in special forces, they had records of his DNA. Because in the event that he gets killed in combat, gets blown up with an artillery shell, if they’re picking up pieces off the battlefield, they got to try to figure out whose piece belongs to whom.
GR: Yeah.
LJ: So that’s not unusual, and the developments in DNA technology today are such that you can get results within minutes. Once you have a sample, you can literally have it within minutes.
GR: Yeah.
I mean, I know that you have all these, like, loose ends and red flags and so on, suggesting the FBI is lying. But, I mean, given everything that’s come forward, including an email suggesting that, from Livelsburger, suggesting that there was, the Chinese had, you know, plans of sending you, not UFOs but, well, drones over the White House or something to that effect. Why is the FBI, you know, trying to, you know, either deceive the public or try to conceal something that implicates them? I mean, what aspects do you have about what the broader implications could be?
LJ: The one I find most concerning, and it was, you know, we had other evidence of this, in the reaction particular to the Livelsburger, is, there are some, you know, there’s one in particular, a woman, a former CIA officer, who is out spreading this nonsense that there are all these secret Islamic Al-Qaeda cells, terrorist cells in the country, just waiting for the word to start launching their attacks.
What I think is going on is, there’s, it’s an actual information operation, tied into, you know, people like Welch, using people like Welch, to carry out these incidents, to actually so, create an atmosphere, an environment where people will believe that the threat of terrorism is pervasive, and that, you know, you’ll be open to allowing the government to take more extreme actions and cracking down on anybody that is perceived as, quote, a threat. And, you know, I’m caught by the, sort of the irony that, you know, when this thing happened with Jabbar, in New Orleans, yeah, you know, the nation was sort of transfixed by it, but, you know, I was just reading some newspaper articles out of New York City, you know, the attacks on the subways are horrific, and they’re happening on a daily basis, and it’s like, ah, well, you know, no big deal.
GR: Wow.
LJ: So, that’s why I say this is, when the situation, the attack like what Jabbar did in New Orleans is used to whip up a, let’s call it a political narrative. Now, do I believe that we’ve got a threat from having, you know, being flooded with these illegal migrants? Absolutely. I don’t think we’ve actually got the real story of what what was behind this, but there is a lot of money flowing to it out of the U.S. government making this happen, and it, you know, we’re just we’re not getting a good picture of what’s going on.
Now, I think Trump coming into office is really shaking things up, and this, particularly the raids that are being carried out right now on illegal migrants who’ve been involved with drug activity, gang activity, criminal activity, that they’re being rounded up and tossed. You know, I think that’s going to have an effect. We’ll see.
I’m always skeptical of these narratives, in particular this one woman who’s, you know, she was tying Hamas together with Al Qaeda. And yet, step back and look at what the CIA has actually been doing in the last two months. The CIA was actively involved in providing finance, training, and material support to this guy named Al-Jalani, the head of Al-Tahrir al-Sham, HTS.
They were listed since 2017 in the State Department’s annual report on terrorism. It used to be called Patterns of Global Terrorism, now it’s Country Reports on Terrorism. But they were listed as the top ten most active terrorist groups.
And yet, we get involved with backing them to overthrow Assad. And so there’s clear evidence of our intelligence community being involved with ISIS. Remember, Jake Sullivan sent an email to Hillary back in 2012, you know, 13 years ago, saying, hey, ISIS, we’re all on the same side.
ISIS and us, we’re on the same side. So we’ve worked together with them. So that’s why I’m always suspect when we trot out, you know, I’m not denying that ISIS is a threat.
But what I’m saying is we’re very loose in our handling of that threat because at times we get in bed with these guys.
The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg.
The programme is also broadcast weekly (Monday, 1-2pm ET) by the Progressive Radio Network in the US.
The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca
Notes:
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/2/who-is-shamsud-din-jabbar-the-new-orleans-truck-attack-suspect
- https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tesla-cybertruck-appears-burst-flames-trump-hotel-las-vegas-rcna185932
- https://www.foxnews.com/us/us-army-releases-assignments-shamsud-din-jabbar-matthew-livelsberger-after-new-years-day-attacks
- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kv6k8yd4go
- https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.6611202
- Courtney Greenberg (January 2, 2025), ‘More details emerge about similarities between suspects in New Orleans attack, Las Vegas explosion’, National Post; https://nationalpost.com/news/world/new-orleans-van-attack-las-vegas-tesla-truck-explosion-suspects-used-same-vehicle-rental-app
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