Recluse S
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Zebra: A Counterinsurgency Saga Part II
🕑 Added 2026-01-16 08:00:03 +0000 UTCDuring the first installment in my exploration of the Zebra murders, we took a look at the actual crimes as well as the police tasked with investigating them. Here, we're going to take a closer look at the suspects before getting truly meta.
The Zebra murders didn't happen in a vacuum. They unfolded concurrent to the activities of the SLA, with both groups being destroyed within weeks of one another. There is far more overlap between Zebra and the SLA besides the location and timeframe. Even more startling are the incredible similarities to the Son of Sam murders --to the point that Sam can almost been seen as a copycat of Zebra, down to the cult rumblings. Oh yeah, there are also those Zodiac and Jim Jones connections....
What is going on here?
Since the 1960s, Ronald Reagan sought to bring the counterinsurgency techniques the US was using Vietnam to bare against the New Left. The enigmatic figure of William Herrmann took the lead and employed techniques that are remarkably similar to what is currently happening in the US. The blueprint for thrusting the country into political polarization with the possibility of total fragmentation was well refined by the time Reagan's governorship came to a close.
Resources
"The Man Who Didn't Shoot Malcolm X"
Zodiac show w/ Thomas Henry Horn
Son of Sam show with Thomas Henry Horn
Music by: Keith Allen Dennis
https://keithallendennis.bandcamp.com/
Comments
Recluse S
Correct, "Rogue Agents" by David Teacher.
Edward Granter
Found it - David Teacher
Edward Granter
Sir, what was the book referenced in the Brabant discussion please? Sounded like 'rogue agents'?
EG
Hey Recluse excellent work man. I was born and raised in SF. My grandma used to actually work for sf mayor George Mascone in the 70/ at housing authority commission and they used to work with the peoples temple to gather votes for his relection campaign.
Recluse S
I'll do you one better: Profumo possibly implicated JFK in a honeypot run by British intelligence at a time when tensions over the Suez Crisis were still high. During this time, Scientology establishes a foothold in the UK. Then the original Process supposedly grows out of it. It's co-founders are a former prostitute who was possibly a part of the Profumo ring and a British army officer who just returned from service in Malaysia. Elsewhere, in his Process book, Timothy Wylie (an early Process member) acknowledges that his mother served in British intelligence during the war. From a certain point of view, the original Process can be seen as an effort to counter US efforts in the UK. It arrived in the US after JFK had been assassinated and Macmillan was removed as British PM. At the time, the US was beginning to face pushback domestically over the war. It's easy to see how the Process could have been a part of US/UK COIN plans, especially when you consider the O9A was supposedly established just a few years later under similar circumstances. But why consider these things from the perspective of COIN when playing six degrees of the Process is so much more lucrative....
Jason Matthews
1. To play The Six Degrees of The Process Church, for a second: the single most evocative detail about PCFJ, for me, is the academic background of its chief popularizer, Dr William Bainbridge. Prior to his participant-observer study of the church, he researched the ‘spiritual aspects of space travel’ for NASA. Afterwards, he applied social network modelling theory to the study of religious extremism, with Rodney Stark. What does this sound like? (Easter egg: his latest book is about Jedi). 2. Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon describes a Satanic Panic of sorts in the 1950s UK. Reports of grave desecrations and witchcraft, etc. This serves as a background to the rise of Gardnerian Wicca as a new religious movement. Wicca in turn furnished much of the imagery and mythology of the ONA. The UK would have been fair game for dirty tricks in the wake of the Suez Crisis…
James Aydelotte
Nice work weaving in Belgium- and the fact that we are seeing the same COIN terror activity now. Anybody remember the zero unit child soldier used as a Sicario by the CIA to maintain their heroin operation in Afghanistan showing up in DC to shoot the one attractive guardsman who had just gone viral online for questioning her deployment in DC? That story evaporated from the headlines…
