Zoom Chron Blog

When I sent my manuscript to TrineDay I had no idea that Kris Millegan’s dad was CIA. Kris had told me his dad was from Montana, but failed to include the detail about his dad being a data analyst for the agency. Instead, it was a recent appearance on the Danny Jones podcast that gave me this relevant data point, which I confirmed by finding this old newspaper blurb:

For more context on what Kris Millegan’s Dad did for the CIA, here’s a description from a PDF copy of an essay about agency exploitation of Anthropologists:

I first learned of Lloyd S. Millegan’s Indonesian research in the 1951 Viking Fund annual report listing him as receiving a predoctoral 1950 fellowship for field- work “to aid anthropological studies in Indonesia since independence, and prospects for future studies” (Viking Fund 1951: 157). His project was the only listed grant without a university affiliation, instead listing his affiliation as “Fair- fax, Virginia.” When I consulted Viking Fund records, I learned that Millegan’s cv listed years of cia employment.

During the war, Millegan worked at oss for Joseph Ralston Hayden, an ad- viser to General Douglas MacArthur (see jrh; Gehrke 1976: 204, 216). Millegan worked on several intelligence and insurgency operations, and during the final months of the war he developed recommendations for the U.S. plan “for the cultural reorganization of the Philippines” (jrh, 42–27).12

The Viking Fund sponsored Millegan’s “Survey of Anthropological Studies in Indonesia since Independence and Prospects for Future Studies,” and Millegan expressed interest in undertaking “similar surveys in Burma, Thailand, Malaya and Indonesia’” (lsm, cv 9/6/50). Millegan’s Viking Fund grant application listed his employment in the cia as a research analyst and chief of the Southeast Asia Branch, from 1946 to 1950.

For even more, here’s Lloyd Millegan in his own words describing the plan he was a part of for the CIA:

Establishing bookstores? Isn’t that kind of like what Lloyd’s son ended up doing? Weird. Regardless, I’m still hopeful TrineDay could be the publisher for MY research. Only time will tell.

One of the most influential voices for conservatives right now is Tucker Carlson, another kid who grew up with a CIA Daddy. Tucker, I believe, will be an integral part in the JD Vance Op we’ll be served up soon. For those who enjoy just sitting back and watching the show, I’m sure Tucker’s rise will be fun grist for the Groypers to gripe about. Who said End Times had to be a drag?

(Gemini refused my request to have the Groyper guppy army wearing clearly marked incel-battery packs, boo! Also, what the hell is the “Grand Fintech Accord, Gemini?)

I’m not going to linger on Tucker, Nick, and guppy Groypers because living in a CIA microcosm, like Missoula, means you get to have your very own CIA-brat act as an informal narrative wrangler ready to shit-talk any outliers who might have the temerity to step out of line, like I did.

This comment has become one of my favorite examples of what I’m up against in Missoula because it shows the degree of slander a brat of the agency gets to wield without any fear of accountability. And the “Abe” he’s chastising for reposting me? I’m willing to bet Pete is talking to Charle “Abe” Abramson, the not-so-simple real estate guy who sits on what feels like ALL the local boards with relevance to the Sean Stevenson case.

For those who haven’t read my spiel on John Talbot, just consult his obituary, it puts plenty of the pieces into place.

Here’s more context describing how this CIA man became a newspaper man:

Sue’s father Don Anderson was publisher of the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison and he persuaded John in 1959 there was great opportunity in the newspaper business and particularly in the Lee Newspaper group of which his paper was a member. Anderson is the man after whom the journalism building at the University of Montana is named because he negotiated the purchase of the Anaconda papers in Montana by Lee and lifted the “Copper Collar” from Montana journalism. John worked for Lee in Madison, Muscatine, Iowa, and Billings, MT, before being promoted to publisher in Missoula in 1970. He said to his friends that taking the Missoulian in the 1970s from the era of hot lead and Linotype machines to photocomposition and offset printing was the hardest thing he ever accomplished because of changed jobs and displaced people. John was publisher of the Missoulian until 1980 but worked with a group of Lee papers until 1986. He then left Lee in order to keep his family in Missoula. He designed a news media management course and taught the course at the University of Montana’s School of Journalism until 2002.

Knowing this, how do Missoulians feel about John’s son, Pete Talbot, getting his picture in Daddy’s newspaper masked up like a pussy and handling local voting ballots?

Well, you can’t have feelings about what you don’t know, and the art of not-knowing has been something Missoulians have been doing with their local leaders for a long time, like the longest-serving Mayor of Missoula, John Engen–a jovial alcoholic who once worked at the Missoulian, then disappeared late in his Mayoral reign to treat his alcoholism.

To better grasp how the literati felt about our disappearing Mayor at the time, this old blog post from the freelance writer I made fun of yesterday, Dan Brooks, is perfectly toned for the preferred not-knowing of this town’s citizenry:

Remember when Mayor John Engen sent an open letter to Missoula telling us all he would run for re-election and had won his battle with alcoholism? The election part was not a surprise. We had not known he was an alcoholic, though. Nor had we known that for the past 28 days, an interim mayor had been running the city while he was at an inpatient alcohol treatment program. When he disappeared, communications Director Ginny Merriam told the Missoulian that he was away for unspecified medical reasons. Asked when he would come back, she said “we don’t know. You never know. But in this case you do know because, I repeat, 28-day inpatient alcohol treatment program. Anyway, the point is that the mayor is back and alcohol no longer interferes with the functioning of his life, as it apparently did for an unspecified time.

I mention this hoary tale from 2016 because this year, on December 20, the City of Missoula informed city councillors that it had corrected the $3 million accounting error it discovered six weeks ago and hadn’t told us about until now. They thought they had $4.2 million in their rainy-day fund, but it turns out to be only $600,000. Coincidentally, they discovered it one day before the 2017 mayoral election. Anyway, the point is that this accounting error has been corrected, so nobody needs to worry about it now.

As my dad used to say, once is a mistake and twice is a pattern. He also used to say terrible, biological things about city governments everywhere, and I’m starting to think he was right. The City of Missoula obviously has a problem: it can’t keep a secret for more than six weeks. You can read all about it in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent, in which I put forth the thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s Town, where everyone is happy because we have no idea what’s happening.

And what happened to the Missoula Independent? Lee Enterprises bought it, killed it 9 months after Dan posted this piece on John Engen, and then they salted the earth by annihilating the Indy’s online archives.

When I wrote yesterday “this is an information war”, Lee Enterprises’ corporate kill-shot of the Missoula Independent is exactly what I’m talking about, and it’s why I took the birthday opportunity three years ago to tell the Indy sellout, Matt Gibson, what I thought about his move to his stupid face.

Just because someone has a CIA Daddy, it doesn’t mean they have to remain in the shadow of the agency for their whole life. Owning the influence, like Kris Millegan has done, is one example of how to successfully evolve beyond the traitorous influence of these corrupt MFers. But what about Pete Talbot?

In 2007, one year before I was hired at the Poverello Center by someone who also might have a CIA Daddy, Pete Talbot gave a political endorsement to Jerry Ballas, a Republican, for Missoula City Council, and he issued this endorsement at 4&20 Blackbirds, the blog I started contributing to in 2010.

So, what’s the connection? The connection is this: Jerry Ballas, I learned from this Pulp article, was the architect who designed the Lee Enterprises building at Higgins and 4th Street, a project overseen by John Talbot and done to specifically rehabilitate Missoula’s downtown core with a newly minted financial tool, called Tax Increment Financing.

Talbot was the Missoulian’s publisher from 1970 to 1980 for Lee Enterprises and continued as a Lee regional vice president until 1986. Carol Van Valkenburg worked with him both at the paper and then at the University of Montana Journalism School. When Talbot died in 2021, Van Valkenburg told me how he had kept Missoula’s historic character alive.

“He was interested in the revitalization of downtown with (former Missoula Mayor) John Toole,” Van Valkenburg recalled. “When Southgate Mall came, that helped the Missoulian tremendously, but John knew that central to the identity of Missoula was the downtown. He was very active making sure it stayed a vital part, while Billings’ and Great Falls’ downtowns were disappearing and being boarded up.”

Jerry Ballas was the Missoulian building architect. He was the son of founding partner Oscar Ballas of Fox, Ballas and Barrow Architects, which also designed the Missoula City Hall, the public library building on Main Street and the University Center on the UM campus. They are all in the “federal modernist” style popular in the mid-20th century, known for a “disdain for ornamentation and fondness for massive forms [that] have sometimes been seen as an expression of efficiency and power — and at other times, as sterile and inhuman,” according to the U.S. General Services Administration. Whatever one thinks about the trend, Ballas did appreciate the river. He stripped the length of the building with windows looking north to the water and downtown.

Amazing.

One more thing to note: Before publishing today’s post I gave Kris Millegan another call and we chatted briefly about his CIA Dad and the things I was uncovering in Montana. Since the overlap between drug trafficking and the CIA has been a specific topic of interest for Millegan, I asked him about it and he said a sparsely populated state with a big, wild border with Canada, makes Montana a natural place of interest for three letter agency attention. Of course.

While active CIA agents aren’t legally allowed to get involved in domestic politics, “former” agents, like Steven A. Cash, have become VERY involved in domestic politics through a “non-profit” called the “Steady State”.

The country is facing the gravest threat to its constitutional democracy since the Civil War. That was the assessment of the current political situation from former national security official Steven Cash ’84 in a lecture and conversation with members of the Vassar community at Rockefeller Hall on September 16.

Cash’s career included stints with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Department of Homeland Security, and the staffs of several congressional committees that oversee and assess national security issues. He is currently Executive Director of The Steady State, a non-profit advocacy organization whose members are former senior national security officials drawn from across the intelligence, diplomatic, homeland security, and defense communities.

Cash opened his talk by observing that his campus visits are usually happy occasions, such as class reunions. “This one isn’t fun,” he said, characterizing his talk as a warning and “call to action” for students and others who attended.

If you don’t understand the kind of “call to action” Steven Cash is pushing, here’s some of an X post I came across this morning while writing this post:

I hope the dots I’ve been connecting recently have been helpful for readers who want to know how we got here, who helped fuck things up, and why no one is coming to save us. After being served two more restraining orders yesterday by two people who don’t like what I’ve been writing about, it’s pretty obvious how effectively over the target I have been.

Thanks for reading!

I’ve been thinking about traveling lately, but not because I have the money to travel. Instead, I’ve been thinking about WHY people travel, like Todd Frank’s recent visit to Cuba, where Nick Shirley recently did his citizen journalist LARP claiming he was almost kidnapped by “Cuban spies” or some shit. LOL.

The Cuba/Missoula connection wasn’t something even remotely on my radar at the start of the week, but after including the Cuba detail in Tuesday’s post about dark money, TIF money, and Todd Frank media quotes, I had two separate conversations that gave me two separate leads to try and understand the relationship between a land-locked mountain town and a politically contentious island nation, starting with an adventure travel company.

Lewis and Clark Trail Adventures, a Missoula company owned by Wayne and Gia Fairchild, offers an annual trip to Cuba if you have the money, and it isn’t cheap. Also, it isn’t the trip Todd Frank is on, since this annual trip happens during winter. For an idea of the cost, and what you get, here’s a screenshot:

When I called Lewis and Clark Trail Adventures a woman I assume was Gia answered the phone. She was confused about why I was calling and, frankly, so was I. Obama had thawed relations with Cuba in 2016, professional adventurers like Wayne and Gia saw opportunity, and now I was calling about it. Why?

When I saw the Time magazine article featuring Wayne Fairchild, and who wrote it, I got more curious about this adventurer and his interest in traveling to Cuba once a year. Here’s how the Time article, titled “Why the Lolo is Legend“, written by Terry McCarthy, begins:

Gray clouds move as low as smoke over the treetops at Lolo Pass. The ground is white. The day is June 10. It has been snowing for the past four days in the Bitterroot Mountains. Wayne Fairchild is getting worried about our trek over the Lolo Trail–95 miles from Lolo, Mont., to Weippe in Idaho, across some of the most rugged country in the West. Lewis and Clark were nearly defeated 200 years ago by snowstorms on the Lolo–the name apparently comes from Lawrence, a French-Canadian trapper killed by a grizzly in the area in the 1850s. Today Fairchild is nervously checking the weather reports. He has agreed to take me across the toughest, middle section of the trail–“but with this weather?”

When Lewis surmounted Lemhi Pass, 140 miles south of Missoula, on Aug. 12, he was flabbergasted by what was in front of him: “immence ranges of high mountains still to the West of us with their tops partially covered with snow.” Nobody in what was then the U.S. knew the Rocky Mountains existed, with peaks twice as high as anything in the Appalachians back East. Lewis and Clark weren’t merely off the map; they were traveling outside the American imagination.

To better understand what’s going on here you have to know the history of the Time-Life empire, established by Henry Luce, and his very close relationship with John Foster Dulles.

With Allen ensconced in Bern, John Foster started his own comeback toward the end of World War II. He had become close friends with the Time magazine publisher Henry Luce, who was busy championing the idea of an American Century. Both were pro-business, internationalist Republicans shaped by Calvinist principles—Luce, born in China, was himself the son of a Presbyterian missionary. Despite Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s initial misgivings, he ended up appointing John Foster to the American delegation to the negotiations in San Francisco in 1945, where fifty countries met, including the Soviet Union, to establish the United Nations. John Foster, who had begun to espouse a militantly anticommunist line, clashed with Andrei Vishinsky, the Soviet deputy foreign minister and former chief prosecutor at Stalin’s purge trials.

It also helps to understand the type of people who worked for Henry Luce at Time-Life, like C.D. Jackson. Here’s a page from The Cultural Cold War, by Frances Saunders:

With this context in mind, let’s consult the Wikipedia entry for Terry McCarthy to see if anything jumps out.

During his tenure at TIME (1998-2005), McCarthy served as the Los Angeles Bureau Chief and East Asia Correspondent in Shanghai. He wrote about China’s internet and car industries, the fall of Indonesian dictator Suharto and the death of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. From LA he did in-depth stories about the Green River serial killer in Seattle, the fight over new oil drilling in Alaska and the science of sharks. Immediately after 9/11 McCarthy went to Afghanistan to cover the ousting of the Taliban from Kabul, and in 2003 he covered the US invasion of Iraq. He set up TIME’s bureaus in Kabul and Baghdad. In both 2004 and 2005, McCarthy received an Emmy award for a joint ABC-Times News Series on Iraq.

McCarthy was foreign correspondent for ABC News in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America from 2006 to 2009. He was the Principal Baghdad Correspondent during the US surge in Iraq and covered the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein. He traveled down the Yangtze River in China, focusing on the economic, political and environmental impact of the man-made waterway. He covered life in Mexico City during the swine flu epidemic of 2009, and filmed inside the eye of a category 4 hurricane off Florida in a C 130 hurricane hunter. In 2008, he won an Emmy for the series Iraq: Where Things Stand for ABC World News with Charlie Gibson.

If you didn’t think floating rivers could be political, or tied to intelligence work, this context might make you think twice about the politics of travel and the value of reporting back what you see.

What did Big Sky High School kids hope to see when their teacher, Jay Bostrom, helped set up a Cuban adventure for Missoula teens? Did they hope to see things that would “challenge perceptions“?

We at Reality Tours love sending high school aged groups to countries all over the world- it’s an incredible opportunity for young people to learn more about our global neighbors, themselves, and the issues shaping global society today. Recently, a high school group from Missoula, MT traveled to Cuba under a People-to-People license with Global Exchange as a Travel Service Provider. Below, a student and chaperone share their insights as they challenged their perceptions about the island nation and gained new ones.

To see how Cuba made an impression on one young, malleable mind, here’s one of the quotes from one of the students:

Later in the trip we had the opportunity to visit the Che Guevara Mausoleum. Che’s face was everywhere we went, plastered on buildings, clothing, books, and other souvenirs. Che valued education and his ideas were reflected by the Cuban people. All of the young people in Cuba were very aware of their history and had pride in their roots. I think that’s something that’s lacking in the United States. History, government, and current issues are not a priority in education.

That’s right, youngster, public education in America (using Robert Maxwell’s text books) isn’t designed to teach you truth, it’s designed to indoctrinate you as a peasant.

If the idea for local educators is to use the privilege of movement to spend money in a Communist country in order to weaponize kids to then righteously push collectivist propaganda at home, then these Cuban youth trips appear to VERY successful, and if you don’t think this is the case, then FUCC you!

What the hell is this? It’s the fruits of indoctrinating kids, as documented by Sociologist, John Foran, under the title, “Five Days that Shook My World, Part One: The Making of a Critical Thinking Community“. Here’s some context:

I spent five days in June at a most unusual gathering. Unusual, because unlike the many academic conferences, the workshops, the handful of “symposia” I’ve attended, this one seemed right on the mark, existentially and politically, for our moment.

Dubbed B.Y.O.B., for “Bring Your Own Brain,” and put on by a collective of students from Big Sky High School in Missoula, Montana who go by the hashtag #freeusfromclimatechaos (FUCC, in case you don’t get the biting but playful humor at the heart of their critique), this had been nine months in the making, assisted by their Spanish teacher, Jay Bostrom and a crew of adult allies from their school and mentors from the local activist community affinity group the ZooTown Zaps.

It was, in fact, a pretty credible incarnation of a North American, youth-led experiment with Zapatismo; recall that to the thousands of queries the Zapatistas have received from activists over the past twenty-three years about what they should be doing, the consistent answer has been: “Go and do what we do, but in your own way, in your own place of origin, your own home, your own community.”

Let me interpret what I think the Zapatistas are really trying to say here: STOP your privileged poverty porn visits like we’re zoo animals you can pet for a few Pesos and go fix your own shit, which, I will add, includes understanding that, in 2026, quoting Chomsky is quoting a member of the child-fucking class.

In 2017, Brianna Canning, like the rest of us, had no clue that Noam Chomsky was connected to a psychopath who would rape her in a second, then let his pals, like the daughter of that text book guy, Robert, cover it all up. But it’s not 2017, and now we need to know how close and casual that relationship was.

With all this talk about Cuba, including what might happen to Americans at any moment with their money, what’s up with Alberta? We’re almost there.

Just like the attention drawn south by blowing up “Narco boats”, I’ve been thinking about America’s northern border, and Trump’s declaration of Fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction“, since December, when the Executive Order was declared. With known Fentanyl super labs getting busted in Vancouver, I’m pretty sure there’s a long-run I-15 ratline between Montana and Alberta, with the added benefit of having an Air Force Base in the neighborhood, knowing what’s now known thanks to Seth Harp and his book, The Fort Bragg Cartel.

It should also be noted (before I finish this virtual travelogue) that Alberta is in the midst of a political resurgence of a historic urge toward independence. For an overly-simplified explanation from Wikipedia, this is worth considering:

In the lead up to the 2025 federal election, politicians and activists in Alberta voiced that a win for the Liberal Party, which by then had been in power for almost 10 years, would considerably increase support for Alberta independence. The rise in support for the Liberal Party was in part a response to the call by United States President Donald Trump for all of Canada to be annexed into the United States. While still opposed by the majority of Canadians, support for annexation is greater in Alberta, as some residents see greater cultural and economic connections with the United States than they do with Eastern Canada.

The final data-point is just a picture of a map of Montana, but there are place-names I now find interesting, like Dutton, Dunkirk, and Santa Rita, the Patroness of Impossible Causes.

And thus ends our educational trip, boys and girls! Thanks for allowing me to be your cynical guide, and don’t forget to tip.

I see a bright future for Todd Frank and his outdoor business, the Trail Head. What started in 2019 with a six-figure, interest-free infusion of public money from the Missoula Redevelopment Agency could bloom into anything this money-quote maker can dream of, and I’m sure he’s dreaming BIG while visiting Cuba, a funny detail I got from speaking with one of his employees yesterday.

To better understand how Todd Frank acquired public TIF money, and what his building actually looks like, here’s a screenshot from the Missoula Redevelopment Agency’s own records (PDF):

And here’s the image I used to prompt Gemini with:

Since relocating and expanding his business with the help of public money, Todd Frank has gotten a bit worried from time to time. First, there was Putin attacking Ukraine and the disruption to his ski sales.

Next came the dirty little secret of the “pro-deal” third-party discount threat to his bottomline:

“Fifteen years ago, pro-dealing was a marketing tool. A handful of store employees got pro deals, and that was it. Now anyone can get a pro deal and it’s become a full-on sales channel,” says Immersion Research president John Weld. “It’s one of the key reasons why the retailer-manufacturer relationship is falling apart.”

The typical pro-deal discount ranges from about 30 to 60 percent, which pencils out to a sales price that is comparable—and in many cases higher—than wholesale. As the number of people with access to pro deals has continued to grow, retailers and some manufacturers say the programs have become a way for brands to sell direct-to-consumer at a discount, without violating MAP [minimum advertised price] policies.

The reason I’m writing this post, though, is possibly the most galling reason yet for Todd Frank to get quoted, and that’s because, for some weird reason, The Nation quoted our humble little Missoula business owner about “dark money” in Montana politics.

Huh?

What is the “Montana Transparent Election Initiative“? It appears to be just another Helena-based, Democrat astro-turfed effort at shoveling bullshit to get political dollars, and it’s being amplified by a reporter connected to the Montana Free Press, the media platform in Montana most obsessed with defining what “dark money” is, and who should be shamed for getting it.

When you see that McLaughlin is based in Butte, and you see that the “Montana Transparent Election Initiative” will soon have its most recent Democrat champion, Pete Buttigieg, visiting Butte later this month, it all starts making more sense.

Transparent Election Initiative announced this week that former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has endorsed the “Montana Plan” which seeks to keep corporate money out of politics through a ballot measure.

Buttigieg will come to Butte for a town hall on May 17, the release from the Transparent Election Initiative said. The event will start at 1 p.m. and the location will be announced later, the release said.

Initiative I-194 needs 30,000 signatures by June 19 to be on the November ballot. It started as a state Constitutional initiative, but now is a statutory initiative, which would change Montana state law – not the Constitution.

Meanwhile, in Missoula, the money Todd Frank will NEVER criticize–Tax Increment Financing–is having the predictable effect on the general fund, leading to the same, predictable people panhandling the public for MORE money.

While an out-going non-profit influencer holds her panhandling sign for a school levy, a new critical voice is emerging to sound the alarm about what using TIF money from newly formed Missoula County TEDDs (Targeted Economic Development District) could mean (spoiler: litigation!)

A top official for DeSmet School west of Missoula told the Board of County Commissioners last week the school district plans to take legal action if the county continues its plans related to Tax Increment Financing in the Wye area.

The comment came during a public hearing where the commissioners voted to expand the life of a Targeted Economic Development District, or TEDD, near the Wye through a long-term loan to finance a new water system to allow for more housing development in the area as Missoula grows.

Matthew Driessen, the superintendent of DeSmet Public School, told the commissioners the expansion of the TEDD would fund new infrastructure at the expense of pulling tax revenue away from his school district.

Is Matthew Driessen for real? Does he know what he’s up against and how they will come after him in any way they can? And, has he seen the documentary, Engen’s Missoula? (Have YOU?)

For those who HAVE been a part of the TIF conversation, a school superintendent is quite an ally to have, especially one who seems to have real lawyers and the means to pay them at his disposal:

“You are going to freeze the revenues that the school district, the fire department and transportation are going to get, based on the funding that you do with this bond, for the next 25 years,” Driessen said. “That is going to have a detrimental effect on these jurisdictions.”

He said he was giving “notice” that there would be legal action from the school district, and asked the commissioners to table the plans and have an in-depth conversation with the school and other stakeholders about TEDDs.

“The school board has approved that we will go to legal action to make sure our district is taxed the same way as other school districts within the county in reference to TIF funds,” Driessen told the county commissioners.

Hell yeah, Matt! Go get ’em!

If sanity doesn’t return to local budgets, schools could be harmed, but isn’t harming schools kind of what liberal users of public money enjoy doing?

I was reminded of 2020 recently (and the kind of pressure I felt to jab my kids from my own family) when I read this hollow lament from Dan Brooks on X. For those who don’t know this free-lance writer based in Missoula, just wait.

If you think this is tone-deaf, it’s important to understand that it’s coming from this guy:

The insistence, among the Republican leadership in the spring of 2020, that Covid-19 was a glorified version of the flu guaranteed that responses to the pandemic would shake out along political and, therefore, cultural lines. In places such as Alabama, not getting the vaccine has more to do with socio-economic identity than with scientific literacy. This is a fatal flaw in the reasoning of unvaccinated people, who are absolutely wrong in a way that endangers not only themselves but also others.

But given the haughty reaction of many liberals, can you blame them? Even as the cost of their obstinacy has become grimly clear, the cost of admitting they were wrong has risen; to get the vaccine now would be to kowtow to a class that holds them in contempt.

The notion that a vocal minority of our fellow citizens threaten to undo us with their ignorance has become something of a master narrative in anglophone democracies over the past five years. Trump did it for a lot of American Democrats in 2016, and Brexit – which, unlike Trump, won popular support at the polls but, like Trump, was overwhelmingly opposed by the urban and higher-educated – had a similar effect in the UK. The current Republican mania for making voting more difficult seems to be a product of Trump’s loss in November. Last week, a Pew Research Center poll found that 42% of respondents agreed with the statement: “Voting is a privilege that comes with responsibilities and can be limited.” This attitude is fundamentally incompatible with democracy.

In summary, this is an information war, so try to understand what’s NOT being said by conventional media outlets (and their preferred parrots), why it’s not being said, then act accordingly (donate some money to me!)

Thanks for reading!

I can easily foresee a near-future where encampments like the exaggerated scene above exist, festering in toxic sludge as “campers” administer chemical lobotomies to themselves. If what’s being depicted in this scene is not desirable, then maybe it’s worth determining WHY the marginally less disgusting encampment near the Buckhouse bridge has been allowed to exist since last October.

I know contact with campers at this site first began in October because a nice woman at the Missoula County Health Department read me out the notes over the phone after finding the complaint filed under “solid waste”. Two private landowners–Buckhouse Shoptown LLC and the University of Montana–were identified and notified, then, at some point, law enforcement made contact.

What happened next?

Nothing. Fall became winter, winter became spring, and now, seasonal snowmelt will be swelling the rivers soon. While legal responsibility to clean up this mess and foot the bill lands on the landowners, the legal question of WHO was essentially trespassing, and WHY they weren’t evicted sooner, remains.

Since the County notes didn’t specific who was living at the encampment, I biked out to the bridge again (before my bike was stolen Friday night) to see what else I could find. What I found was pretty interesting.

Before the felony burglary charge in Cascade County, Justin Julian was hanging out with a shitty mom who got arrested for driving around a youth gang to steal shit. Justin Julian was just 18 year old at the time.

A 37-year-old Great Falls woman is accused of driving her son and his friends around the city as the teens stole items from cars.

Police learned about the case Saturday morning when the woman’s husband called authorities to report he found a pile of stuff in his back yard that he suspected had been stolen. Court records say over $3,000 in items were stolen, including a set of golf clubs and power tools.

Lisa Dilley is charged with accountability to theft and accountability to criminal trespass to a vehicle, along with endangering the welfare of children.

Two 18-year-olds, Justin Julian and Julie Surratt, also face the accountability charges. Five juveniles were arrested in the case, including Dilley’s 16-year-old son.

This interaction with law enforcement occurred in 2009 and involved several minors. Knowing this background helps put pictures like this into perspective:

When I learned that law enforcement has known about this illegal encampment since last fall, and when I learned the name of one of the campers, Justin Julian, combined with what I wrote last week regarding drug dealing being allegedly done BY law enforcement, the arrest of Justin Julian outside the Poverello Center in March of this year for alleged meth possession is something I find VERY interesting, especially the part about “previous professional contacts”:

On March 17, 2026, a Missoula Police Department Officer was driving behind the Poverello Center and observed 35-year-old Justin Julian, whom the officer was familiar with through previous professional contacts. The officer was further aware that Julian had an active felony arrest warrant.

The officer approached Julian and asked him to identify himself. Julian was placed under arrest and then stated he wanted his bicycle, backpack, and coat to remain in the care of his friend. The officer informed Julian that they would address his property after the arrest process.

Julian was then escorted to the officer’s patrol car. The officer asked Julian if he had anything on his person, such as weapons, needles, or drugs. Julian stated that he had two empty syringes in the right front pocket of his jeans and denied possessing any drugs.

I also find it interesting, though probably just coincidental, that my bike got stolen the same day Justin Julian got out of jail. Since Missoula County no longer allows mugshots to be posted along with criminal charges, I’ll include an image from Facebook instead.

To bolster my assertion that Justin Julian is one of Missoula’s many transient bike thieves who enjoys slamming meth and trashing the river under the noses of the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, here are some more images from his urban campsite:

Last Friday I got to see some encouraging before/after pictures of the Reserve Street homeless encampments from the major 2022 cleanup. I took screenshots during the presentation but, without permission from the photographer, I won’t be sharing them. I will share one of the many images I found at the blog, Big Sky Words, and suggest clicking this link for an insightful look at the Reserve Street camps in 2018, when high water caught many campers off guard.

I’ll also share the word of caution I gave the Facebook group rightfully proud of their 2022 achievement at Reserve Street, and that word of caution was, and is, this: think twice before going gung-ho on making educational material, like a book, describing what it took to remove 80 tons of trash from this long-problematic spot along the Clark Fork river because part of that story includes the political opposition that existed at the time, and that opposition hasn’t just disappeared because a non-profit leader is retiring.

One interesting quote I caught from the Big Sky Words post came from that retiring non-profit leader’s favorite Sheriff, T.J. McDermott. I especially like his use of the word “hide”:

Bloggers like Greg Strandberg, who ran Big Sky Words for little-to-no compensation like I’ve been doing for over a decade, have done the kind of work that local narrative controllers DO NOT WANT us to do, and that’s because it preserves evidence of their failure, especially as it relates to controversial topics, like homelessness. This 2018 post is a great example because it preserves a Sheriff McDermott quote I can no longer find by clicking the KPAX link.

One of the posts I’ll be writing this week will be about a pattern of hiding information I’ve seen emerge from local and state authorities recently, particularly as it relates to Confidential Criminal Justice Information (CCJI). In light of this pattern, I’m wondering if scaling back the publishing of mugshots might not be a part of something more ominous forming on the horizon, something like pairing victimhood with the idea of online digital harassment in order to push for mandatory digital IDs.

If you appreciate what you read for free at Zoom Chron, please consider donating to my GoFundMe. With legal attacks mounting, and my tendency to bite the paternal hand feeding me (resulting in new threats of punishment where it hurts me most) now would be a GREAT time to give a REAL citizen journalist some digital dollars.

Thanks for reading!

Last fall, while researching my book The Great JuBu Karma Con, I came across a curious person by the name of Charles “Abe” Abramson. Who is this guy? Is he just a real estate guy? A library board guy? A Burning Man guy? Or, perhaps, Charles “Abe” Abramson is a CIA guy? Now, why would I think that?

Charles “Abe” Abramson came to Missoula – “just for the summer” – after graduating from The University of Florida, in 1963. Three years ago, he hosted a party to celebrate his fifty year running bar tab just around the corner here, at The Stockman Bar, a tab which he opened the day he got here – and he still has never paid completely it off.

Abe has been in the real estate business here in Western Montana since returning from East Asia in 1975, where he served part of his thirty-seven years as an Air Force Officer in various Active and Reserve assignments, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel on his 60th birthday in 2003.He is a founding and continuing Trustee of The Missoula Public Library Foundation, a Mentor in Missoula’s Veterans’ Court, and has been on staff at The Burning Man Festival for thirteen years.

His chief guiding principle is: “First things first – but not necessarily, in that order!”

At the end of 2016, Abe Abramson took the stage at the Wilma for a night of storytelling put on by Tell Us Something. I listened to his “story” about being a young Air Force Officer and nearly creating an “international incident” in Taiwan. Here’s what I transcribed from Abe’s little story:

“So, uh, I’m a young Air Force Officer in the Middle East, and, uh, I’m a Reservist on active duty, which is—there is a lot of detail that’s not important—but at a certain point the Air Force decided they didn’t need a Reserve Officer on “active” duty in the Orient, and I became, in Taiwan, a Reserve Officer in the active reserves, not on active duty, ok, enough of that…so anyway, but the things is, when you’re on military orders in a foreign country, there’s a thing called the SOFA, the Status of Forces Agreement, and it controls more than you know in the beginning…”

“So I’m in the Reserves, I’m studying Cong Dynasty poetry two hours a day five days a week and I’m studying a Korean martial art [unintelligible] two hours a day, six days a week, and recovering from—I had Hep A, which, uh, for reasons I don’t understand I had pretty much totally licked—and one day it comes to my attention that some people were looking for me because how would I know that if you’re no longer on active duty, and the country doesn’t know you’re there, and they hear you’re there, they want to know why you’re there…so…so, uh, it’s a little bit more complicated, but, basically it could have been an international incident…

Abe then describes having to talk to someone from Taiwan’s secret police and, like a three-letter agency miracle, it turns out Abe knows one of the Taiwanese guys from “school” in Missoula and, because of this relationship, Abe bonds with the Taiwanese secret police over their shared knowledge of the restaurant, Four B’s. What a small world!

If you’d like to hear Abe tell the story himself, I clipped the last four minutes, which you can listen to here. I think Abe’s chuckle-cagey sounding audio context is helpful in determining, for yourself, who this guy might actually be.

Now, on to the next clue!

Like Tom Robbins’ fictional CIA character, Switters, Abe loves James Joyce and the impenetrable tome, Finnegan’s Wake. Somehow, despite being a VERY BUSY guy, Abe even found time to teach James Joyce on campus!

To better appreciate just how widespread Abe’s influence is, and why someone like me–who has wondered for six years how a black homeless man could be taken off life support at St. Patrick’s hospital before his family was notified–came to be VERY curious about this curious man, examine these screenshots from a “deleted” Wikibin file:

If you’re a foodie family serving up food to Montana with “Mediterranean” themed cuisine, like Ray Risho and sons have done for many years, Abe Abramson sounds like a good guy to know.

So do they? Of course they do.

This pairing of “Abe” and “Ray” makes more sense when you go to the same story-telling platform, Tell Us Something, where Abe told his funny Taiwanese secret police story at and you see this like I did this morning:

Ray Risho shares his story ” You Have Ten Minutes”. In 1964, Ray Risho has his last 2 weeks in the US army after having been drafted. He was stationed in Korea and assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division in the DMZ. When it comes time for him to re-up, he changes his mind.

Founder of the celebrated Perugia Restaurant in Missoula, Montana, chef and independent scholar Ray Risho has spent a lifetime of travel studying global cuisine. Besides European travel, Ray has traveled extensively to South Korea & Japan, and the Middle East: Egypt, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian West Bank & Gaza Strip, Syria and the country of Yemen. He has presented more than one hundred popular teaching-dinners featuring classic menus from around the world, and frequently gives workshops and cooking demonstrations on global cuisine. He regularly teaches courses on cuisine at the University of Montana Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on the UM campus. In 2008, the Missoula Cultural Council awarded Ray and his wife Susie the Cultural Achievement Award for supporting the arts and enhancing the quality of life in Missoula. In 2011, the University of Montana presented Ray with the Outstanding Volunteer of the Year Award.

This is going to get a lot more interesting, since the subjects I’m interested in–homelessness, smokejumpers, smoker jumpers who are interested in homelessness (Sam Forstag), drug/human/gun trafficking, narrative-control, conspiracy theories, and local roles in how stories get shaped, like newspapers–also pop up on the relatively minimal timeline of @MontanaAbe’s X account. Here’s a curated list of what stood out to me:

I’m glad to see that I’m helping to bring Charles @be Abramson EXACTLY what he ordered-KARMA! It even comes with additional packets of karma for narrative controllers, like Gwen Florio, who saw the writing on the wall before fellow narrative controllers, like Tobin Miller Shearer, decided to pack up and leave, but not before cooking up his own pending restraining order against me (not yet served) so I can have a matching pair for my terrible blog writing and lyrical terrorism, accompanied by my puppet pal and accomplice in terrorism, Pirate Booty.

Before getting to the middle book authored by the absolute scummiest of CIA operatives, Allen Dulles (the one Switters spits on the floor every time he hears the name mentioned in the Robbins story), I just want to re-emphasize how broadly influential Charles “Abe” Abramson has been in Missoula since 1975 using screenshots from his own Facebook page, especially when you have the kind of questions the Stevenson family has about their son’s death at St. Patrick’s hospital, and the subsequent coverup about what REALLY happened inside the Poverello Center on January 3rd, 2020:

Moving on to one of the last data points for today’s post, the paperback copy of Dulles’ The Craft of Intelligence, which I found for a buck and a half the same day I posted the last part of last week’s AMERICA UPSIDE DOWN series, got my attention because of a reference to Montana’s Mike Mansfield, a pretty key figure in American politics, post WWII.

Michael Joseph Mansfield (March 16, 1903 – October 5, 2001) was an American Democratic Party politician and diplomat who represented Montana in the United States House of Representatives from 1943 to 1953 and United States Senate from 1953 to 1977. As the leader of the Senate Democratic Caucus from 1961 to 1977, Mansfield shepherded Great Society programs through the Senate; his tenure of exactly sixteen years was the longest of any party leader in Senate history, until the record was broken by Mitch McConnell in 2023.

The context of the following excerpt from Dulles’ book is the now-historical question of the young CIA and oversight, and it shows how closely Montana, through Mike Mansfield, was tied to those early efforts at watching the watchers of “foreign” intelligence:

When you know you’re history, and you know where money goes–like the money plus hilarious AOC endorsement to Smokejumper, Sam Forstag–it makes posts like this much more entertaining:

I’d mention someone else I know who is a Smokejumper, but I’m not the brightest bulb when it comes to my first amendment right taking a back seat to local lawfare, so instead I’ll just accept that I’m destined to become a part of someone else’s legal argument to prevent the public from seeing embarrassing DUI footage, and my woes over the legally actionable shit I’ve experienced will just have to be documented for posterity, like this AI-rendered dramatization of the temporary wallpaper that my co-workers at Silk Road got to enjoy for a whole weekend:

If you don’t understand the forced-humor of how I interpret my big feelings over nasty bullshit from exposing what I know about the inverted nature of this little town swinging big in the information war, well, maybe it’s your first time here.

Thankfully, it’s not mine.

Welcome to the show!