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aristarchus [soylentnews.org] writes:

Daily Beast [thedailybeast.com], which always brings us the very best conspiracy theories!

The typical route to becoming a CIA agent involves a four-year bachelor’s degree, a year-long application process, and specialized training at the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis, an offshoot of the bluntly named CIA University. But for those in search of a shortcut, there’s Kevin Shipp’s Patreon.

At an infomercial-low price, Shipp—a born-again conspiracy theorist who describes himself as “the only CIA officer in history to publicly expose government illegal activity and cover up, stand up against the state secrets privilege at great personal risk, and build a secret code in the manuscript of his book”—claims to offer a window into the agency’s inner workings.

“I call myself a recovering CIA officer,” Shipp wrote to The Daily Beast, with a smiling-face emoji (he did not respond to further requests for an interview). And he did work at the CIA, nearly 20 years ago. The “government illegal activity” he exposed was the presence of toxic mold in his Army-owned house at Camp Stanley in Texas, which he blamed for somehow destroying his marriage. Shipp quit the agency in 2002 after being accused of using a government credit card for personal expenses, according to The New York Times. (Shipp claimed a supervisor had approved the purchases and that he repaid the money). These days, buoyed in part by an appearance in the viral/completely bonkers QAnon conspiracy movie Out of Shadows, Shipp peddles baseless conspiracies about his former workplace—overlooking many legitimate ones, like orchestrating torture by proxy or backing right-wing coups in Latin America—while dining out on its credentials.

  Ordinary beginning, to an ordinary tell-all CIA ex-spy book, no? No.

Shipp calls the lowest tier on his Patreon the “Shadow Government/Deep State Exposed.” For $5 a month, he offers two “intro” courses and a selection of his punditry—webcam videos dressed up with CIA logos, operative jargon, and serious-sounding acronyms: the Politically Incorrect News Analysis (aka “PINA”) and the Shipp Intelligence Report (codenamed “SIR”). Upgrade to $10 a month—the “Prepper-Off-The-Grid” tier—and Shipp will explain how he moved to an “off-the-grid farm in the American southeast,” undetectable even by satellite, and offers techniques on “living free from the ‘system.’” But the real heads, who shell out $25 each month, get “Advanced Courses: From a CIA officer.” These “cutting edge courses designed from Kevin Shipp’s CIA operational and training background” (his words) include “Surveillance Detection,” “How To Spot a Liar,” and “Counter Terrorism.” An extra $5 a month gets you “Advanced Protective Operations for VIP protection details.” “This is the Crown Jewel of the program,” Shipp says. There’s also a Discord.

The courses are incredibly light on actual technique. Though Shipp warns his patrons the intel is “sensitive” and not to be shared, he concedes that everything is unclassified and open source. From his desk lined with illegible accolades and bald eagle figurines, Shipp walks patrons through PowerPoint presentations on various topics, each as advanced as a Wikipedia entry. His insights into protective operations include “situational awareness”; on lie-detection, “facial cues.” In “Surveillance Detection,” he urges his followers to maintain a four-tier level of “alertness”: White, “Calm” or Yellow, Orange, and Red. White, he says, is the level one maintains when watching TV, while “Calm” or Yellow ratchets it up a notch, for when “out in public or overseas.” Orange comes in when the subject thinks they are being surveilled, tracked, or followed—something that Shipp believes happens to him constantly.

Code level: "white", index: "Snow", Security level: Dwarf. All makes sense now. But, there is more.

In Out of Shadows, Shipp played fast and loose with the facts, claiming the CIA “invented” the phrase “conspiracy theory” to discredit skeptics after the JFK assassination, though the term dates back to at least as early as 1870 [google.com]. He asserted that Michael Aquino—a former military intelligence officer whose eccentric embrace of Satanism made him a novelty guest on many late-night talk shows—was accused by 50 children of “running a pedophile ring” and molesting them during Satanic rituals. Per Shipp’s sourceless report, Aquino went to trial, where he faced unimpeachable evidence, but got off “with a good attorney.” In truth, after Aquino was briefly deposed in a single case of suspected abuse during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, the San Francisco District Attorney declined to prosecute [latimes.com] him, citing lack of evidence. A skilled attorney wouldn’t have done him much good, as he was never charged nor went to trial.

The conspiracies that Out of Shadows pushes fit neatly into the QAnon-verse—the otherworldly belief system that puts Donald Trump at the heart of an unsubstantiated plot to unravel a global pedophile network, narrated through top-secret leaks from a whistleblowing agent named “Q.” But Shipp sets his brand of conspiracy apart from Q. In August, he caused a small scandal among Q believers after calling out its followers, writing, “As I have been saying for sometime, Q anon is a PsyOp. It is growing into a cult. Wake up.” This did not go over well with his QAnon-friendly castmates, one of whom is tabloid writer-turned-Q proselytizer Liz Crokin. Later that day, Smith released a statement condemning Shipp’s comments. Then, on Sept. 4, he seemed to walk back his statement a bit in a YouTube video, saying that QAnon had attracted “a lot of good people” and needed to be investigated further.

Trump said it, "People in the Shadows, controlling the Streets", he can't tell crazy doctor Laura right now, but it is udder investigation, like Devin Nunes cow, and the M****ucking Thugs on a Plane. Poor Kevin. Liked him better as a standard CIA Minion.

Original Submission