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Texas
Texans monitor Jade Helm military training amid fears of government plot

Chuck Norris thinks its likely more than a US army exercise and Ted Cruz and the governor of Texas
counsel caution. Some citizens plan a counter-operation
A US soldier wears a gas mask
A US soldier wears a gas mask during recent exercises in Korea. Operation Jade Helm 15 is a training
exercise that will take place in states across the south-west. Photograph: Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty
Images

Tom Dart in New Orleans

@Tom_Dart

Monday 13 July 2015 12.30 BST

Last modified on Monday 13 July 2015 12.33 BST

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It is, according to Chuck Norris, likely more than a military exercise.

'Texas Ranger' Chuck Norris warns of government plot to take over state
Read more

For senior Texas politicians, it is enough of a concern that they demanded it be monitored by state
armed forces. And for a great many citizens, it is at best a secretive and dubious show of military might
and at worst, the prelude to martial law, Barack Obama confiscating their guns and locking innocent
Americans in internment camps.

Whatever it truly is, Operation Jade Helm 15 begins on Wednesday in states across the south-west.
Hundreds of people will be waiting for the troops when they roll in, watching closely.

A counter-surveillance operation called Counter Jade Helm has been set up and volunteers are aiming to
locate, track and observe US soldiers as they carry out training drills. The volunteers will gather
intelligence that will be relayed to a headquarters in Arizona and posted on a website.

Why [Jade Helm] exists, were not quite certain, said Eric Johnston, who will run surveillance teams in
central Texas. Counter Jade Helm also plans missions in California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico,
Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.

Theyre not inviting any media to embed with the units, said Johnston, and its important for
Americans to step up and look around and say, OK, what are you doing? Well, its secret. Not if its in
public its no longer secret.

Theyre not inviting media to embed with the units, and its important for Americans to say, OK, what
are you doing?'
Eric Johnston

The two-month exercise has been described by the US military as a routine, though unusually large,
training event for a variety of units that will take place on both private and public land in order to
practice core special warfare tasks, which help protect the nation against foreign enemies.

The pushback has been especially strong in Texas, where some of the armys biggest bases are located.
The Lone Star State has been designated as hostile territory in the exercise. If nothing else, this is a fair
assessment of the states prevailing attitude towards virtually anything linked with the Obama
administration, or anything perceived as an encroachment on Texan independence.

On Saturday in San Antonio, protesters gathered outside the Alamo to decry its new designation as a
Unesco World Heritage site, on the less-than-rational basis that this honour could be the prelude to a
United Nations takeover of Texas most sacred landmark.

Concern has reached into the highest echelons of state politics. In April, Republican governor Greg
Abbott ordered the Texas state guard to monitor Jade Helm, in order to address concerns of Texas
citizens and to ensure that Texas communities remain safe, secure and informed about military
procedures occurring in their vicinity.

In May, Ted Cruz, the US senator and Republican presidential candidate from Texas, told Bloomberg he
had no reason to doubt the Pentagons assurances about the exercise, but added that suspicion was a
natural consequence of the federal governments generally untrustworthy behaviour.

In this hysterical climate and given a lack of detail from the army outlandish claims have proliferated.
Weeks after production of Texas favourite ice cream, Blue Bell, was halted by a listeria outbreak,
internet rumours began circulating that the army was using, or will use, the companys refrigerated
trucks to transport dead bodies.

Conspiracy theorists have also focused on supposed underground tunnel systems leading to Canada and
Mexico and whether the army is turning abandoned Walmart stores into concentration camps.
Bastrop County Republican Party.
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The headquarters of the Bastrop County Republican Party. Photograph: Reuters

Texas state guard monitors military exercise to quell conspiracy theorists

Read more

One of the Jade Helm hubs is expected to be the small town of Bastrop, near Austin, where officials
spent hours at a meeting in April trying to assuage the worries of residents. Such fears ranged from
understandable concern about traffic and disruption to daily life, to whether the military has more
sinister motives for embedding itself in the pine-forested surrounds of what locals like to call the Most
Historic Small Town in Texas.

Johnston, a retired firefighter and police officer in Arizona who now lives in the Texas hill country, spoke
in measured, calm tones and said he and his colleagues were focused on basic transparency, not
outrageous conspiracy.

We are not far-wing, Oh God, arm ourselves, get in camouflage, block the streets, he said. Were
doing more of a neighbourhood watch kind of thing.

We are going to find a central location and set up an area and just cruise the streets, drive up and down
the highway through Bastrop most of us are legal concealed-carry folks, but were not going to be
running up and down the street with automatic rifles.

Most of us are legal concealed-carry folks but were not going to run up and down the street with
automatic rifles
Eric Johnston

When some of the more far-out ideas are posted on his organisations Facebook page, Johnston said,
they get deleted.

Theres a lot of folks out there that are putting on their tinfoil hats and waiting for the end of the world
to come, he said. I dont subscribe to that theory as far as martial law would go, the area you would
pick would be more of a suburban area, downtown Austin, downtown Houston. You wouldnt schedule
an event like that to take place in a tiny area like Bastrop.

Johnston said more 350 people in Texas had offered to help, including 20 to 25 in Bastrop, one of whom
has a pilots license. Two have ham radio licenses. Counter Jade Helm participants will stay in touch
using a communications app on their mobile phones.

If something mysterious is afoot, Johnston, said, he wants to get to the bottom of it.

Two and two doesnt add up, he said.