Posted on 10/27/2017 4:17:11 AM PDT by Travis McGee
My first novel, Enemies Foreign and Domestic, published in 2003, begins with a sniper shooting into a packed football stadium. Ninety bullets are fired from long range into an upper deck, precipitating a stadium-wide panic stampede that results in over a thousand deaths. In the book, a combat veteran holding a semi-automatic rifle is quickly located by a SWAT counter-sniper in a helicopter, after a citizen’s tip is phoned to the police. However, the veteran is just a patsy, and the true perpetrators of the massacre are a pair of mid-level federal law enforcement agents who are seeking to increase their departmental budgets and overall bureaucratic power. The liberal mainstream media accept the false narrative without close examination. Right-leaning military veteran “gun nuts” are universally tarred as potential mass murderers. Within a week, semi-automatic so-called “assault rifles” are banned. (A link to the first chapter is below.)
My goal with the plot of Enemies Foreign and Domestic was to encourage news consumers not to blindly accept convenient official explanations after traumatic national events. Since the release of this novel, we have, in fact, seen federal agents and bureaucrats at a much higher level than my two fictional villains conspire to commit mass murder with the intention of spinning a false news narrative. We know this intentional mass murder plot as “Operation Fast and Furious”, whereby thousands of semi-automatic rifles from Southwestern gun dealers were deliberately sold to criminals with the expectation that they would be transported to violent cartels in Mexico. This resulted in mass carnage which would then be blamed on the Second Amendment and lax American gun laws. Honest gun dealers were coerced by the ATF into making otherwise illegal straw purchases to criminals in bulk quantities. No attempt was made to track the guns once they left ATF observation at the point of sale. The Mexican government was never informed of the murderous gun-running plan. Operation Fast and Furious was not a legitimate law enforcement operation gone wrong. It was a covert murder plan from start to finish, conceived and carried out for political purposes.
Before the evil scheme was exposed after the shooting death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and Secretary of State Clinton were regularly touting as fact the lie that 90% of the guns found at Mexican murder scenes had originated in the USA. Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress after stonewalling their attempts to investigate Operation Fast and Furious, when the half-hearted investigation was leading directly to his office. None of the principals behind this murderous plan have ever been held accountable. I revisit Fast and Furious in case any readers of this article learn the premise of my first novel and declare that federal law enforcement officials would never be involved in a mass murder scheme concocted for political ends. That Rubicon was already crossed with Operation Fast and Furious.
Since then, we have witnessed other scandals which involved selling the American public a false narrative. One example is the lie that the deadly attacks on our nearly undefended diplomatic missions in Benghazi were the result of an angry local response to an obscure video about the life of Mohammed. My point in recounting this history is to encourage Americans to always search beyond the “official narrative,” which, as we have seen, can sometimes be manufactured from whole cloth for public consumption. If the false narrative coincides with the liberal mainstream media’s underlying biases and preconceptions, you can be certain that very little honest journalism will be done to expose the lies and reveal the truth to the public.
This brings me to Las Vegas, with its ever-changing timelines and other dark mysteries, such as the motive of Stephen Paddock, the presumed shooter. Columnist Mark Steyn proposes a theory of the case that, in the absence of any declared motive or connections to international terrorism, “the medium is the message.” (Link is below.) In Las Vegas, then, the message would be that the ready availability of semi-automatic firearms constitutes a menace to American society, and the Second Amendment must be curtailed to prevent future massacres. Limiting the right of Americans to keep and bear arms has been a long-standing goal of the Left. So-called progressives well understand that their dream of imposing a “socialist utopia” cannot be achieved while Americans possess sufficiently effective weapons to mount a furious armed resistance. If Paddock had left a note declaring this end to be his true motive, he would have discredited his own purpose.
Of course, Paddock might have simply been a deranged psychopath, bent, for his own twisted reasons, upon topping the record books as America’s most successful mass shooter. We’ll never know because he’s conveniently dead and, apparently, he left no departing message. The lack of a declared motive, the ever-shifting timeline, and the fact that it took more than an hour after the shooting had ceased for the police to enter Paddock’s suite means that mystery may cloud the Las Vegas Massacre for years or decades to come.
One outcome is certain: millions of Americans are unlikely to accept any “official narrative” released after the investigation has concluded, and with good reason. The FBI and other federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies have squandered their reputations for honesty and integrity in recent years, and we can no longer assume that politics and corruption have not trumped even-handed truth telling.
This brings me to the NFL. In 2017, we are in a season of national discord, with American politics more radically polarized than since the 1960s, or perhaps even the years before the Civil War. The Las Vegas Massacre has shown us that billion-dollar corporations like MGM, as well as the Las Vegas police, were woefully unprepared to deal with a sniper standing in the window of a hotel overlooking an open-air concert.
Should we assume that the NFL is any better prepared to deal with a stadium sniper similar to the one described in the first chapter of my first novel?
Bear in mind that my fictional sniper was not perched high up in a stadium light tower, or hidden in the stands, but was located in a separate building three-quarters of a mile away. His rifle was aimed just over the near side of the stadium, dropping plunging fire into the opposite upper deck. Perimeter security measures taken to prevent firearms from being smuggled into a stadium will do nothing to hinder a distant sniper using this area-fire tactic. In my novel, a SWAT counter-sniper in a helicopter is able to kill the patsy left holding the rifle, but only after the shooting had ceased. But do NFL stadiums have police helicopters with counter-snipers standing by, ready to protect the fans who are packed in like sardines? And not only at the Super Bowl, but at each of the dozen or so weekly NFL games played in uncovered stadiums, or the hundreds of college games?
Greatly increasing the likelihood of a long-range sniper attack on a stadium is the fact that the distant sniper will have a good chance of getting clean away. In my first novel, three rifle magazines, ninety rounds, are enough to precipitate a panic stampede that kills over a thousand fans. If the distant shooter escapes, he can easily leave false clues at the scene, blaming his ideological enemies for the massacre. The Left can blame the Right, or black can blame white, or vice versa. Current events demonstrate that many, if not most, purported “hate crimes,” such as painted swastikas and nooses left at colleges, have been false-flag operations done to discredit the political enemies of the left-wing hoaxers.
Imagine the national outrage after a stadium massacre if overtly racist anti-black hate literature is found among the expended brass shells in the sniper’s lair, calling the mostly-white victims “race-traitors” for attending the NFL game in the wake of ongoing anthem-kneeling protests. The resulting social explosion would make the aftermath of the Las Vegas Massacre seem like a church picnic by comparison. This prospect must certainly be tempting to malefactors bent upon driving the United States toward civil war and anarchy. And, of course, an Islamic terrorist would need no reason beyond spreading terror among the infidels.
At an absolute minimum, large open air concerts and stadium events need a police helicopter with counter-snipers ready to launch on a moment’s notice. Acoustic gunshot detection systems must be installed around these venues to immediately locate a distant sniper’s location. Vectored to the area by the acoustic system, the helicopter’s onboard FLIR can rapidly find the sniper, and the airborne police counter-snipers can finish the job. Stopping a sniper after just a few minutes is a far better outcome than allowing him ten or more minutes of uninterrupted carnage, as in Las Vegas. Bear in mind that Paddock ceased shooting for his own reasons. The police did not stop him.
All the necessary elements (SWAT, counter-snipers, and police choppers) are typically already located in close proximity to these outdoor events. These elements need to be staged together, ready to fly, and able to detect gunshot locations as well as the FLIR signatures of open or broken-out windows in line-of-sight buildings, muzzle flashes, and humans hiding in unoccupied structures. The fatal fiasco of Desert One in 1980 largely resulted from a lack of coordination and practice between the disparate elements of the ad-hoc Iranian hostage rescue mission. In the aftermath, the U.S. military created the Joint Special Operations Command. Similarly, American law enforcement needs to rethink and revamp its approach to providing security for large outdoor events before a predictable tragedy occurs.
In addition, fans attending stadium and other large outdoor public events must be repetitively instructed to avoid blindly attempting to flee in the event of an emergency. Airline pre-flight safety instructions can be used as a model. In Las Vegas, most of the non-fatal injuries resulted from trampling, not from bullets.
A final note: in this article I chose a method of attack (indirect plunging fire from long range) that is simple, but would not be easy to pull off without considerable thought, planning, and practice. There are other tactics that I chose not to describe that would be equally as devastating, but would be much easier for an average maniac to employ. Law enforcement needs to think out of the box, and anticipate novel forms of attack.
They failed in Las Vegas.
Let’s hope they will not fail in the event of a stadium attack.
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Matthew Bracken was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1957, and attended the University of Virginia, where he received a BA in Russian Studies and was commissioned as a naval officer in 1979. Later that year, he graduated from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training and in 1983 he led a Naval Special Warfare detachment to Beirut, Lebanon. Links to his five novels, short stories, and essays may be found at EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com and at Matt’s Amazon page.
I saw an article saying he’d become obsessed with Geary Danley, his GF’s ex as of a couple years ago. He’s an UBER lefty/commie/antifa rat. He might have played Professor Raoul X to Paddock.
“Stephen, don’t you want your life to MEAN something?”
http://westernrifleshooters.blogspot.com/2011/01/bracken-professor-raoul-x.html
“Drones mocking the NFL kneelers and BLM fist pumpers would be an amusing spectacle that would ignite the crowds.
They need to be shamed into oblivion.”
A quad rotor drone dropping little flags all over the kneelers would be quite a spectacle.
A drone could release a harmless mist and cause a panic. A simple servo pushing the button on a can of spray paint could do it.
Yes to all, and a long-range attack means very good odds of the perp escaping. Long range sniper or drone releasing a faux “poison gas” mist, etc.
The real killer is the panic stampede, the trigger is far less important.
This means it will be very tempting to those who want to create a false-flag attack, but are not eager to die for the cause.
They have been preparing for this. Empty seats are the best defense.
Excellent analysis. Big fan!
Unintended Consequences: emptier stadiums are safer!
The Vegas incident prompted me to pull out your first book again and reread for the third time! Our false sense of security is going to get ever increasing numbers of our citizens killed and maimed. As I age big crowd venues are becoming less and less desirable.
Same thing happened at our HS back in the 70s but, on a grander scale...it was a military teargas canister that spread throughout the entire school. Kids/staff were climbing out windows, banging into walls, gagging, tears and saliva flowing from their faces. scared shitless.
If it had been during a basketball game,in the confines of the gym, there would have been more problems/injuries.
The most pathetic and telling part of the Boston bombing was that the FBI might as well have opened a path for the Tsarnaev Bros. The Russians gave explicit warnings, but you know, the Russians are islamophobic, so we can’t take their warnings seriously.
And their mosque which was a hotbed of jihad radicals that had been under surveillance, was taken off surveillance, because of islamophobia, doncha know. Can’t say islamic jihad, only “countering violent extremism,” and no watching the radical mosques!
It was almost as bad as the FBI refusing to look in the 20th hijacker’s laptop after he was arrested. The 9-11 plans were in the uncracked laptop. But islamophobia, doncha know.
Or Lynch scrubbing Mateen’s ISIS loyalty pledges during the Orlando Massacre.
Or the FBI and DHS letting a lady jihadist from Jihad U. come to marry her jihad husband in Cali, after they met on a jihad hookup in Mecca.
Or Major Hassan, with “Soldier of Allah” business cards.
ETC ETC ETC.
This is why I feel compelled to write pieces like the above: the utter pathetic sniveling bureaucratic “play it safe” CYA incompetence of our vaunted federal law enforcement agencies.
I’m thinking of all the newly-hired SJW FLEAs when I am writing this. The boys and girls down in the fusion centers are PC clowns, on a level with the fools that allow our top navy destroyers to be run down and rammed by big slow oil tankers.
God help us, with this bunch looking out for our safety.
Many stadiums are not a closed circle, but have separate upper decks with major gaps. Some stadiums I can name have clear street-level views of upper decks through these breaks. Line of fire, no need for long-range plunging fire. I only wrote this indirect plunging fire scenario because an average knucklehead can’t easily get the math, ballistics and trajectory just right on a first try. But there are MANY other ways an average knucklehead can do it, but I’m not putting them into the body of my main text to be a guide book.
Read this brilliant piece by the great Dan Greenfield to see how the fake Russian Dossier plan was concocted to be conducted in a compartmentalized fashion.
Dozens of operatives, including Clapper, Brennan, Comey, Rosenstein, McCabe etc were ALL in on the plan.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/268230/how-obama-used-hillarys-dossier-spy-trump-daniel-greenfield
What is FLIR?
A fair point for sure, and frankly, if I were intending to cause major panic/mayhem/murder in this way, there’s a much softer AND bigger target I just realized: college football stadiums. 90,000+ every weekend in many accessible venues.
One of my points was that the ATF has been politicized for many years.
Going back to when Dan Rostenkowski controlled the House Ways and Means Committee, Rosty controlled hiring at the IRS (eg when and where Civil Service exams were given and who knew where they were given, eg in his political office space in Chicago).
Rosty used the IRS to shake down corporations and the rich for political donations to both himself, and other politicians he wanted indebted to him. Rosty’s use of the ATF for purely political purposes was no surprise.
Exactly. Send in a fleet of armed drones during the kick off.
Remember the 1977 movie, Black Sunday? 40 years ago and we’re still vulnerable.
See #61 for one possible motive explanation.
I think that the reason the LV massacre is off the national screen is because
1. the victims were white conservative country fans. It’s said that Paddock had also scoped out a concert that turned out to have an urban/minority fan base, and he balked. If he’d shot up a minority concert, the story would have been about the racial hate crime, not the guns.
2. the LV massacre exposes the sheer unmitigate failure of our current security precautions. LV had been warned MANY times on many levels to expect a major ISIS-level attack on the strip, and they did NOTHING to prevent the most obvious scenario, and they had NO response.
LV police and their federal backups could do NOTHING to stop the carnage, despite all the TV shows and movies showing cool guy Tom Cruise types in and out of police uniforms or with FBI credentials stopping the bad guys. Paddock ended the event, not the police. He had lots more ammo ready to go.
Our elites totally failed us in Las Vegas, and they don’t want their utter incompetence highlighted. Hence the lack of media interest in the story: it’s a story of massive failure.
If a more clever sniper set up in a deep hide, he could keep shooting for an hour. Sooner or later, counter-snipers might find him, but it would take a LONG time for an ad-hoc response to be put together while the bullets are flying.
Did you know that the LVMPD had to BORROW armored vehicles from a private security firm?
After Desert One, the military created JSOC to integrate all the joint pieces of a major operation.
Local LE, with training from the FLEAs and .mil, needs to plan for an embedded sniper, and that means acoustic means, and FLIR-equipped helos with counter-snipers ready to launch. All these elements are generally available, but they need to TRAIN for an embedded sniper scenario, and not try to figure it out on the fly during an active shooter event.
Even ground-based counter-snipers could have quickly put fire into the two open windows and driven Paddock back or killed him. The open windows were 8X8 feet, with concrete walls and ceilings to contain the fire. But LVMPD rejected having counter-sniper over watch as too scary and bad for their image. Literally rejected it. The guys who suggested it were treated like paranoid creepy lepers and told to never mention it again.
I believe this is why the LV massacre is not being covered. It’s a story of massive incompetence and failure by the elite bosses. That’s why I wrote the NFL stadium piece, to openly suggest that the NFL, (outside of the super bowl) is probably no better prepared than the LVMPD were.
Thanks.
You and me both.
Given the way the NFL is hemorrhaging fans, they won’t have to be concerned at all in a few weeks.
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