THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVE NOT YET READ ‘TROJAN SMERSH,’ PLEASE READ THAT FIRST BEFORE READING THIS ARTICLE.
INTRODUCTION
It feels wrong to be citing a list of references for a work of fiction. Even for a work of historical fiction. Or, in this case, alternate history. The causes of the January 6th insurrection are among the most well-documented events in recent history. Donald Trump lost the 2020 US Presidential election, refused to accept that he lost, and, as a last-ditch to stay in power, incited a violent mob to attack the Capitol and stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. He also pressured government officials to overturn the results and conspired with his lawyers to submit fake slates of electoral votes. Even with minimal research, these are established facts and should be common knowledge. Most of us know what happened on January 6th, 2021, and can separate fact from fiction.
However, we now live in a Post-Truth world where disinformation has run rampant and anything unfavourable to the agenda can be dismissed as ‘Fake News’ or ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome.’ The internet is alive with preposterous conspiracy theories alleging there was no insurrection. That the rioters were actually ‘peaceful.’ Or that those who were violent were either Antifa or FBI agents orchestrating a false flag attack to make MAGA look bad.
It has only become further exacerbated as of the 2024 US Presidential Election, in which such guardrails as the Fourteenth Amendment intended to defend American democracy from insurrectionists have failed. Consequently, Donald Trump has been re-elected. He ran for one reason and one reason alone: to stay out of jail. And his first line of action upon retaking the White House was to pardon all the January 6 insurrectionists (whom he falsely calls ‘hostages’) and replace all government officials with loyalists who will no doubt try to whitewash the events of that day.
That said, I feel simply advising reader digression is not enough. Many scenes in this book were either directly based on or inspired by real events, with a hefty use of creative imagination thrown in to establish the alternate history setting for Sid Tanner to interact in. We have all seen the videos of rioters smashing their way into the Capitol, violently clashing with police officers, and threatening the lives of elected officials. Such events are depicted in this book the same way they did in real-life. On the other hand, the inclusion of a purported manned Skylab mission to Mars and Venus having occurred decades prior to the January 6th insurrection should be enough of an indicator to the reader that this book is a work of fiction!
Thus, I feel compelled to explain my ideas and inspirations for this novel. As well as provide a breakdown explaining which scenes were purely fictional, and which ones were based in reality.
So, here goes.
WILL BE WILD.
If there was ever one key lightbulb moment that set the gears in my head into motion, it would have to be a statement that Senator Lyndsey Graham said the day after the insurrection. A statement which found its way into Chapter 40:
“Yesterday they could have blown the building up. They could have killed us all. They could have destroyed the government. People coming through the windows had backpacks as big as my desk on the Senate. […] Those backpacks could have had bombs, chemical agents, weapons. We dodged a major bullet yesterday.” [1]
I was already aware that unexploded pipe bombs had been found outside the DNC and RNC headquarters building.[2] Later it was reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had telephoned Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mike Milley “…to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.” [3] All these concerns and worst case ‘what if’ scenarios, continued to fester in my mind and ultimately became the basis for Trojan SMERSH.
But what nuclear bomb could destroy the US Capitol and only the US Capitol? And what about the subsequent nuclear fallout? I originally considered miniaturised versions of the more exotic proposals for future generations of nuclear weapons still under study. Helium-3 nukes[4] and antimatter weapons,[5] for examples, both of which are theorised to produce no radioactive fallout. But these I rejected very quickly. They just weren’t feasible with existing technology. And efforts to try and make them work delved too far into the realm of science fiction for my tastes.
I then saw Kyle Hill’s YouTube video, ‘Fallout’s Mini Nukes Really Exist’. As the title suggests, this video, released in 2018, evaluates the plausibility of the Mini Nukes depicted in the video game series Fallout.[6] I never played those games, but watching Hill’s video I first learned of the W54 Davy Crockett – which was specifically designed to be small enough to fit in a bag and be carried into battle by foot soldiers and paratroopers. The W54 Davy Crockett was intended as a nuclear projectile launched by a coiless smoothbore gun mounted on a tripod. But the Army also developed a remotely detonated variant of the Davy Crockett known as the Special Atomic Demolition Munitions (SADM). Playing around with Alex Wellerstein’s NUKEMAP website (featured in Chapter 17), I learned the Davy Crockett could destroy the US Capitol and irradiate everybody in the immediate area, whilst leaving the White House intact.[7]
And so, I started writing Trojan SMERSH in April of 2022 and by September 1st, 2022, I had completed a first draft. In writing it, I employed the same due diligence as I would have if it were a non-fictional history book I was writing. Suffice to say, I combed through countless news reports and articles covering events leading up to, during, and after the January 6 insurrection. Naturally, I had a plethora of stock video footage to reference. For scenes based on video documented events: it was a simple matter of watching the stock footage and describing it to the best of my abilities; or copying and pasting direct quotes from a transcript and writing my narrative around them.
To assist in the timing of events, many contemporary news outlets documented what happened minute by minute.[8],[9],[10] In particular, the Washington Post published an 18-minute video chronicling the attack with computer graphic models of the building synced to many of the videos recorded that day.[11] These proved useful resources in structuring my story.
The January 6 Committee’s investigation was well underway during the writing of my book. Though their Final Report[12] would not be published until December 22nd, 2022, long after I had completed the first draft, I regularly tuned in to the congressional hearings for research purposes. During the refining of later drafts, and especially during the editing phase, I frequently turned to this report for cross examination.
If there were any completed works that became my go-to source for information during the writing process, those would have to be Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s Peril: Trump, Biden and a Nation on the Brink;[13] and Jonathon Karl’s Betrayal: The Final Act of The Trump Show.[14] Other books I cited included Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker’s I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year;[15] and former Vice President Mike Pence’s autobiography ‘So Help Me God.’[16] All these books, together with the congressional hearings, provided a most valued insight into January 6th.
I must also acknowledge The Mueller Report. It provided a wealth of knowledge concerning Russia’s interference with the 2016 US Presidential Election; as well as a ‘whose who’ of all the Trump campaign or administration officials with suspicious ties to Russian operatives; who one way or another assisted in their election interference; and then pleaded guilty to giving false information to the FBI regarding said ties and involvement.[17]
Using Mueller’s report as a reference, I ensured to portray only Trump’s co-conspirators with confirmed Russian ties as fully complicit with my fictional Operation Trojan Horse (i.e. General Michael Flynn, acting as middleman between the president and the fictional Russian antagonists); and portrayed those without such ties as being given only partial information and left in the dark, not knowing that the plan was actually to detonate a nuclear bomb smuggled into the Capitol (i.e. Senator Tuberville who would have unsuspectingly been right in the middle of the blast).
Again, I must stress and emphasise that I made a conscious effort to ensure only the co-conspirators complicit in this fictional attack were those who in real-life pleaded guilty to perjury regarding their ties with Russia during their interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
And then there is the excellent report ‘Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election.’ As the title suggests, this report was written by eight of the few Republicans left who are not spineless sycophants to Donald Trump and provides a complete and thorough debunking of all the false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 US Presidential election.[18]
The following paragraphs can only be a brief summary of chapters containing fictionalised retellings of real-life events. These include the December 16th 2020 luncheon at Trump International Hotel, where the president’s unissued speech announcing Executive Order 13848 to seize dominion voting machines was in fact drafted (Chapter 4);[19],[20] and the ‘unhinged’ meeting at the White House on December 18th which turned into a shouting match between Team Normal and Team Crazy (Chapters 2-4). The quotations therein were derived chiefly from the testimonies of those who were present at that meeting;[21],[22],[23],[24],[25],[26],[27] news reports published in the days and months that followed;[28],[29],[30],[31] and history books documenting what had happened.[32],[33]Other lines attributed to Team Crazy were paraphrased from interviews, quotations, and other public statements by Sidney Powell and Patrick Byrne.[34],[35],[36] These I turned to for research purposes regarding their crazy conspiracy theories pushed at the meeting.
Other fictionalised scenes based on real events included: Trump’s telephone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger threatening him to “find 11,780 votes” that did not exist[37] (Chapter 13); the FBI receiving a potential threat to fly a private plane into the Capitol[38],[39] (Chapter 19); the meetings at the Trump International Hotel ‘War Room’ and Willard Hotel ‘Command Centre’ on January 5th, 2021, where the conspirators’ plans to overthrow the election were discussed[40],[41] (Chapter 30); the planting of pipe bombs outside the RNC and DNC buildings that same night[42] (Chapters 29-30) and their discovery[43] (Chapter 33), which the FBI and Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund believed were planted as “diversionary tactics to pull resources away from the Hill in advance of that attack.”[44],[45],[46]; and the actions of President Trump, Vice President Pence, and House Speaker Pelosi on January 6th, 2021, (Chapters 1, 31-37, 40).
Specifically: Trump’s threatening phone call to Pence[47],[48],[49],[50]; the speeches that Trump and his allies made inciting the riot[51],[52],[53]; Trump’s attempts to grab the Beast’s steering wheel when told he could not be driven to the Capitol[54]; his staff’s begging him to publish a message condemning the violence while he sat and watched it unfold on television for hours[55],[56]; and the events as witnessed by Pence[57],[58] and Pelosi.[59],[60]
Aside from some artistic liberties that were added for either drama or tweaked to fit the alternate history setting, much of the lines spoken by Trump, Pence, Pelosi and others in this novel are based on real quotes attributed to them. Pence included an entire chapter[61] in his autobiography reiterating what happened from his point of view; while Pelosi’s daughter video documented everything her mother did that day.[62]
In addition, Miles Taylor’s ‘Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from Trump’s Revenge’ provided disturbing insider accounts of Trump’s incestuous infatuation with his own daughter, which found their way into Chapter 37 of my novel. To avoid accusations of defamation on my part, I’ll just reprint what was written:
“Aides said [Donald Trump] talked about Ivanka Trump’s breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her, remarks that prompted [White House Chief of Staff John] Kelly to remind the president that Ivanka was his daughter.”[63]
Yikes!
Donald Trump himself has repeatedly made similar remarks about his daughter on national television, radio, and in print that sound like something straight out of a porno or sex comedy. These public statements were briefly referred to in Chapter 11. Again, to avoid accusations of defamation on my part, I offer this video and audio evidence:
The gun massacre involving the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers’ Quick Reaction Force, and the Third Percenters’ B Squad, from which Sid Tanner emerges victorious – though obviously a work of fiction – was based on actual seditious plots orchestrated by these extremist groups to bring firearms into the Capitol and take the building by force (Chapter 38, 40).[64],[65],[66],[67],[68] The names of the surviving gunmen arrested in this novel are the names of actual insurrectionists who were either part of these terror plots or were otherwise convicted of bringing guns to the armed insurrection.
Such armed felons include Third Percenters member Guy Reffitt, who indeed stated after the insurrection that he, quote, “had every constitutional right to carry a weapon and take over the Congress“; B-Squad member Tyler Quintin Bensch, who posted video of himself on social media holding an AR-15 assault rifle outside the Capitol; Leroy Coffmann who literally delivered an entire truckload of weapons, ammunition and even homemade napalm to Washington DC; and John Banuelos who was live-streamed firing a revolver on Capitol grounds.
As if to illustrate his extremist group’s lack of repentance and disappointment over their Quick Reaction Force never being mobilised, Oath Keepers founder Stuart Rhodes stated just four days after the insurrection, quote, “My only regret is they should have brought rifles…We should have brought rifles. We could have fixed it right then and there. I’d hang fucking Pelosi from the lamppost.” Peaceful protestors being held hostage, huh?
Speaking of which, it also felt prudent on my part to debunk the widespread myth that Ashley Babbit was murdered. She wasn’t an unarmed patriot. She was not an innocent victim. She was a domestic terrorist breaking into a government building and armed with a switchblade.[69] That is not a personal attack, that is not defamation, it is an established absolute fact. The police acted in accordance and did what needed to be done to protect the Capitol and the elected officials whose lives she threatened.
THE BACKSTORY TO END ALL BACKSTORIES
Although it has nothing to do with January 6th, references to Sid Tanner’s backstory are prevalent throughout and reiterated in his testimony to Detective Brock McCormick after the insurrection (Chapters 41-46). When I first wrote my stories twenty-five years ago, they were set in the late 1990s to early 2000s with Tanner’s backstory set during the Gulf War. Because a significant passage of time had elapsed when I revisited them circa 2018, it felt wise to accordingly update the character and his adventures for a more contemporary setting. So, I moved his backstory from the Gulf War to the War on Terror. Such a rarity that I could move the character’s in-universe history up by a decade and not have to change the location!
I began work on a prequel novel under the working title of No Heroes in Espionage to flesh out Tanner’s backstory. Essentially an epic origin story. But that prequel was put on hold when January 6th happened and my ideas for Trojan SMERSH flourished. I had hoped to get both stories completed together, alas it was not to be. So, it felt necessary to dedicate a few chapters to Tanner’s past. Consider those chapters the short version of No Heroes in Espionage! Many elements of Tanner’s past have kernels of truth behind them, while others are purely from my own imagination. And so, I feel my inspirations for Tanner’s backstory warrants its own section.
Tanner’s disillusionment and disgust by the senseless killings of Afghan and Iraqi civilians are essentially mine. In the early 2000s, I had seen many news reports and documentaries regarding the of War on Terror,[70],[71],[72] and of course the horrific pictures showing the physical and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib.[73] The war gang-rape that Tanner witnesses and retaliates against in Afghanistan was based on the real-life Mahmudiyah rape and killings, in which five US Army solders gang-raped a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and murdered her and her family on March 12th, 2003.[74]
Similarly, going further back into Tanner’s past, his preschool teacher who molested him as a child (Chapter 9) is, for all intends and purposes, a fictional female version of the notorious real-life child molester Anthony Deren, also known as Mr. Bubbles, who sexually assaulted as many as seventeen young children who attended his wife’s kindergarten centre in Sydney.[75]
The attack on the Abu Ghraib prison orchestrated by Al-Qaeda, in which five hundred inmates escaped, did in fact happen on July 21st, 2013.[76],[77] I used this historical attack as an opportunity to free Tanner from his tormentors. His return via migrant ship was inspired by many real-world accounts of innocent asylum seekers who tried to escape their war-torn countries only to be turned around at gunpoint by Australia’s border patrol and wrongly demonised in the media.[78],[79]
MK-Ultra was a real human experimentation program undertaken by the CIA, in which its agents conducted mind control experiments on unsuspecting patrons of nightclubs and brothels. Their methods included slipping the test subjects LSD and monitoring them behind one-way glass.[80] In real-life, the program only lasted between 1953 and 1973. For the purposes of this alternate history setting, I embellished it to create the fictional premise of it still being in operation well into 2020s. I even threw in the POLYBIUS urban myth for good measure![81]
Obviously, the US Air Force Space Command (now the US Space Force) never had its own manned space program. But in the 1960s, for the longest time, it looked as though the USAF would be a competitor to NASA: flying military space missions as opposed to NASA’s scientific ones. The Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar was an actual spaceplane proposal intended for space-to-surface bombings against targets in China and the USSR,[82] and the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) was a space station application of the Gemini program that would have seen USAF astronauts spy on enemy nations from polar orbit and inspect or even disable enemy satellites.[83],[84] Dyna-Soar never flew, while MOL was cancelled after one test flight in favour of cheaper and more efficient unmanned reconnaissance satellites.
Tanner’s reassignment to the USAF Space Command is built on the premise that these USAF spaceflight proposals were never cancelled but continued to operate in secret. The USAF/USSF’s Spaceport Omega was based on early proposals to launch the gargantuan Nova rockets, not from Cape Canaveral, but from silos carved into the Hawaiian cliffs.[85] The USSF’s means of operating in absolute secrecy is also based in reality: military satellites do indeed communicate between each other using 60GHz radio signals, which are attenuated by the atmosphere, to prevent ground-based eavesdropping by enemy nations.[86] Space historians will be sure to notice the cheeky reference in the alias that Tanner uses to check into the Bellagio. Max Peck, of course, was the alias that the second (The Next Nine)[87] and third (The Fourteen)[88] groups of NASA astronauts used to check into the Rice Hotel in 1962 and 1963 respectively. In their case, they did it to avoid alerting the press in the days leading up to their being announced as the next generation of astronauts. I repurposed it as one of many public aliases used by USSF astronauts between their top-secret missions.
The twist that the USAF Lunex Moon missions and the SkyLab 7 Venus-Mars-Moon triple flyby were faked was, of course, based on the Apollo Moon landing hoax theory. To avoid alienating potential readers who do not doubt the Apollo moon missions, I added fictional manned lunar and interplanetary missions to my alternate history timeline for Tanner to learn were hoaxes. In my worldbuilding, I took heavy inspirations from the respective works of Bill Kaysing[89] and Ralph René[90] (hence their special thanks in the acknowledgements page of this book), along with my own research built on theirs. The fictional USAF space program hoaxes of Sid Tanner’s world are based on real-life pipe dreams proposed by the USAF, US Army, and even NASA back in the 1950s and 1960s.
Project Horizon was a US Army feasibility study from 1959 evaluating their plans to build a military base on the Moon.[91],[92] Project Lunex was a similar plan by the USAF, which envisioned constructing an underground military lunar base by 1968.[93] Neither program got off the drawing board in real-life. Blue Gemini, of course, was the name for USAF-managed Gemini flights intended to give astronauts some spaceflight experience in preparation for their Manned Orbiting Laboratory.[94] No Blue Gemini missions ever flew, and the program was cancelled in January 1963. My fictitious Blue Gemini L missions were based on proposals by Jim Chamberlin to use Gemini to get to the moon sooner than Apollo.[95] NASA rejected such proposals, but Encyclopedia Astronautica editor Mark Wade believes such Gemini moon missions could have been accomplished as ‘a purely Titan-based, USAF-managed project.’[96] The Skylab program ended in real-life with Skylab 4. The fictional Skylab 7 mission to flyby Venus, Mars and the Moon was directly based an actual wet workshop proposal by NASA’s contractor Bellcomm inc. in 1968 – right down to the launch, flyby, and return dates.[97] Though I added a flyby of the moon to the end, hence, ‘To the Moon via the Scenic Route!’
As for the Soviets, they never had their own equivalent to NASA, just different design bureaus competing for space contracts. Sergei Korolev’s OKB-1 bureau was just the most famous. Vladimir Chelomei’s OKB-52 bureau proposed the UR-700 rocket and the LK-700 lander for direct ascent missions to the Moon.[98],[99],[100] But like Projects Horizon and Lunex, they never got off the drawing board. Chelomei’s proposal was rejected in favour of Korolev’s ill-fated N1 rocket. Vostok 7 was cancelled before it got off the ground. For all intends and purposes, it would have been a Soviet equivalent of Gemini 11 and Polaris Dawn – a highly elliptical orbit with a 1,000km apogee taking it within reach of the soft innermost edge of the inner Van Allen belt.[101],[102] For the purposes of my dead cosmonauts coverup subplot, I changed this to a Molniya orbit: a twelve-hour elliptical orbit with a 40,000km apogee, which by design would have exposed the cosmonaut to the much more intense and dangerous portions of both Van Allen belts four times per day.
Similarly, the wording of the fictional Blue Gemini L-4 crew’s fate is very specific. As Sid Tanner says, “Blue Gemini L-4’s outbound trajectory flew the capsule right into the heart of the inner Van Allen radiation belt and killed them.” The heart of the inner belt is generally regarded as a ‘forbidden’ or ‘uninhabitable’ region for manned spacecraft, with a carbon shield rated at 100g/cm2 being necessary to bring the proton doses down to ~1rem/hr.[103],[104],[105] Similarly heavy shields of water have been proposed to shield against a sudden major solar flare,[106] and galactic cosmic rays on missions to Mars.[107] As for the subsequent fictional spaceflights taking the ‘Cones of Escape’ route to the moon, all the solar flares Tanner mentions were taken directly from the historic records.[108] I think we can all agree that, even with today’s technology, we are far from able to keep astronauts safe from space radiation during the construction of a Moonbase or on a flight to Mars and Venus!
McCormick’s mention of one of Skylab 7’s Mars rock samples turning out to be an ‘Earth meteorite’ is based on a recent analysis of Apollo 14 Sample 14321, also known as ‘Big Bertha.’[109] Both the Ampex HS-200 disc recorder[110] and the Video Logic Instar,[111] that Tanner describes were used to fake the Lunex moonwalks, existed in real-life. They are actual slow motion video technologies of the 1960s and 1970s.[112] And the USAF’s method of faking these missions such that radio operators would be fooled was based on the Soviets’ confirmed telecommunications hoax of Zond 5 in September 1968, which was initially and mistakenly thought by Western listeners to be manned.[113] As cosmonaut Pavel Popovich recalls:
“When we realized we would never make it to the moon, we decided to engage in a little bit of hooliganism. We asked our engineers to link the on-the-probe receiver to the transmitter with a jumper wire. Moon flight missions were then controlled from a command centre in Yevpatoria, in the Crimea. When [Zond 5] was on its path round the Moon, I was at the centre. So I took the mic and said: ‘The flight is proceeding according to normal; we’re approaching the surface…’ Seconds later my report – as if from outer space – was received on Earth, including the Americans. The U.S. space advisor Frank Borman got a phone call from President Nixon [actually Johnson], who asked: ‘Why is Popovich reporting from the moon?’ My joke caused real turmoil. In [July 1969,] Frank came to the USSR, and I was instructed to meet him at the airport. Hardly had he walked out of his plane when he shook his fist at me and said: ‘Hey, you, space hooligan!’” [114]
And finally, Project A119 was an actual proposal by the USAF to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon such that the blast would be seen from the Earth.[115] You just can’t make this stuff up! I was aware of occasions when meteoritic impacts on the Moon had been observed from Earth through telescopes and even the naked eye.[116] The impacts appear as a tiny bright pinprick on the lunar disc for about a second. So, I created the premise of the USAF landing the Project A119 nuke on the moon to fake a meteoritic impact capable of destroying their non-existent Moonbase Horizon, such that the blast would have been visible from Earth.
FICTION BECOMES REALITY
I hope you enjoyed reading Trojan SMERSH as much as I enjoyed writing it. As stated above, work on this story started in April 2022 and the original draft was completed on September 1st, 2022. Keep these dates in mind for later. Despite all the historical information and inspirations that I incorporated into the narrative, it is important to note that the basic premise of the Trump administration conspiring with Russian spies to assassinate opponents and smuggle a nuclear bomb into the Capitol was purely from my own imagination. But in an unusual twist of events, it seems this creative premise was ahead of its time.
Firstly, as you may recall from Chapter 46, following the failure of Operation Trojan Horse, my fictional portrayal of Donald Trump orders that stacks and stacks of classified materials be taken to Mar-a-Lago. This was a last-minute addition to the original draft. On August 8th, 2022, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago and discovered eleven sets of classified documents stolen from the White House.[117] Later it was revealed as many as 184 classified documents were recovered.[118] As a creative artistic license, I invented the motive that the President wanted to coverup his involvement with Operation Trojan Horse, hence his orders that any documents mentioning this black ops project are to be “shredded and burned.”
While it is factual that Trump had a habit of shredding and burning documents during his four years in Washington,[119] the idea that he would destroy the documents he stole was pure embellishment on my part. Imagine my surprise when, the very next day after I completed the first draft, it was revealed that forty-eight of the document folders were empty and their stolen contents feared destroyed or sold.[120] A year later, on June 8th, 2023, the FBI published an indictment against Trump,[121] which stated:
“The grand jury issued a subpoena requiring TRUMP to turn over all documents with classification markings. TRUMP endeavored to obstruct the FBI and grand jury investigations and conceal his continued retention of classified documents by, among other things: […] c. suggesting that his attorney hide or destroy documents called for by the grand jury subpoena” [Emphasis added]
Secondly, perhaps the most obvious, when I first created my Sid Tanner character way back in 2000 to entertain my step-grandfather, the idea of SMERSH still existing in the twenty-first century was just that, an idea. SMERSH was a portmanteau of a phrase first coined by Stalin himself, “Smertʹ shpionam!” meaning “Death to spies!” and was used as an umbrella of three separate agencies:
- GUKR-SMERSH, the State Directive of Counterintelligence.
- UKR-SMERSH, Directorate of Counterintelligence of the Navy Commissariat 3rd Directorate, or Red Fleet.
- OKR-SMERSH, the Department of Counterintelligence of the NKVD, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs.[122]
SMERSH was operational only between 1943 and 1946 and its mission was to eliminate all Nazi spies infiltrating the Soviet Union, along with anyone defecting to Germany. They were the ones who found Adolf Hitler’s body. When the organisation shutdown, its duties were transferred to the MGB. It has since reappeared in many works of fiction, often with heavy embellishment.
Ian Fleming was the first to popularize this Soviet intelligence agency by making them the antagonists of his early James Bond novels beginning with Casino Royale. The agency has since appeared in various other works of spy fiction, including books, television shows, and video games. Some of these productions are period accurate, portraying SMERSH as an umbrella of three counterintelligence agencies of the Red Army and Navy during World War II. While others do what Ian Fleming did and portray SMERSH more resembling the KGB. I plead guilty to doing the latter!
Aurora House accepted my Trojan SMERSH manuscript for publication on November 4th, 2023. Just a month later, news spread that the agency had been reactivated as part of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.[123] Then in January 2024, Pravada published a photograph of Russian soldiers interrogating a Ukrainian POW. Their uniforms bared the word СМЕРШ, visually confirming the agency’s reactivation.[124] I didn’t know whether to be ecstatic by how relevant my book suddenly became, or terrified for the safety of the Ukrainians now on the receiving end of SMERSH’s wrath.
Thirdly, I knew that certain election workers, journalists, and politicians all received death threats from President Trump’s supporters in the wake of Joe Biden’s victory.[125],[126] It was those death threats that inspired the assassination subplot. But, as history recorded, my highly embellished portrayal of Trump’s co-conspirators turned out to be more fact than fiction. On January 8th, 2024, Mediaite released a secret audio recording of Roger Stone and his associate Sal Greco, a bent NYPD officer, conspiring to assassinate Democratic congressmen Jerry Nadler and Eric Swalwell.[127]
Stone can clearly be heard saying:
“Let’s go find Swalwell. It’s time to do it. Then we’ll see how brave the rest of them are. It’s time to do it. It’s either Swalwell or Nadler has to die before the [2020] election. They need to get the message. Let’s go find Swalwell and get this over with. I’m just not putting up with this shit anymore.” [128]
Stone claimed the audio was AI generated. However, on two separate occasions since, Donald Trump’s legal team effectively argued in court that, unless impeached and convicted, a President could have a political enemy assassinated as an ‘official act.’
First before the US Court of Appeals on January 9th, 2024.[129]
JUDGE PAN: Could a president order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival? That’s an official act, an order to SEAL Team Six.
MR. SAUCER: He would have to be and would speedily be impeached and convicted before the criminal prosecution.
JUDGE PAN: But if weren’t, there would be no criminal prosecution, no criminal liability for that?
MR. SAUCER: Chief Justice’s opinion in Marbury against Madison, and our Constitutional convention, and the plain language of the impeachment judgment clause all clearly presuppose that what the founders were concerned about was not-
JUDGE PAN: I asked you a yes or no question, could a president who ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?
MR. SAUCER: If he were impeached and convicted first.
JUDGE PAN: So, your answer is no.
And second before the US Supreme Court on April 25th, 2024.[130]
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?
MR. SAUER: It would depend on the hypothetical. We can see that could well be an official act.
They also argued before the Supreme Court that that a President could sell nuclear secrets to a hostile nation as an official act!
JUSTICE KAGAN: If a president sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary, is that immune?
MR. SAUER: That sounds like similar to the bribery example, likely not immune. Now, if it’s structured as an official act, he would have to be impeached and convicted first.
And to top it all off, Trump’s legal team has gone so far as to argue that a President could initiate a political coup as part of an official act.
JUSTICE KAGAN: Let’s say this president who ordered the military to stage a coup, he’s no longer president, he wasn’t impeached, he couldn’t be impeached. But he ordered the military to stage a coup. And you’re saying that’s an official act?
MR. SAUER: I think it would depend on-
JUSTICE KAGAN: That’s immune?
MR. SAUER: I think it would depend on the circumstances whether it was an official act. If it were an official act, again, he would have to be impeached and convicted.
JUSTICE KAGAN: Well, what does that mean, depend on the circumstances? He was the president. He is the commander in chief. He talks to his generals all the time. And he told the generals: ‘I don’t feel like leaving office, I want to stage a coup.’ Is that immune?
MR. SAUER: If – if it’s an official act, there needs to be impeachment and conviction beforehand because the Framers viewed the risk – that – that kind of very low risk.
JUSTICE KAGAN: If it’s an official act, is it an official act?
MR. SAUER: If it’s an official act, Iy’s impeaching-
JUSTICE KAGAN: Is it an official act?
MR. SAUER: On the way you described that hypothetical, it could well be.
Under normal circumstances, my reaction would be something to the extent of, ‘you just can’t make this stuff up.’ Except I did make it up long before it was proven to be factual. Is it all just an astonishing coincidence or am I the new Nostradamus? After listening to all these court hearings and leaked audio files, not to mention the reports of documents potentially destroyed at Mar-a-lago and the reactivation of SMERSH, I am left wondering: how much more of Trojan SMERSH is still fictional?
[1] Reuters (2021) “LIVE: Republican Senator Lindsey Graham speaks a day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol”, 30min7sec, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVQKQ4C3qFo
[2] FBI (2021) “FBI Washington Field Office Releases Video and Additional Information Regarding the Pipe Bomb Investigation”, Office of Public Affairs, https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/washingtondc/news/press-releases/fbi-washington-field-office-releases-video-and-additional-information-regarding-the-pipe-bomb-investigation-090821
[3] CNN (2021) “Read: Pelosi’s letter on speaking with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs about Trump and the nuclear codes”, https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/08/politics/pelosi-letter-on-nuclear-codes/index.html
[4] Jan Mortier (2015) “China Leads Race to the Moon: States are quietly preparing to secure fuel for the fourth generation of nuclear weapons, and China is winning.” The Diplomat, https://thediplomat.com/2015/01/china-leads-race-to-the-moon/
[5] Keay Davidson (2004) “Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons / Program was touted publicly, then came official gag order”, SFGATE, https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/Air-Force-pursuing-antimatter-weapons-Program-2689674.php
[6] Kyle Hill | Because Science (2018) “Fallout’s Mini Nukes Really Exist”, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBUcPToDFP4
[7] Alex Wellerstein (2012) “NUKEMAP”, https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
[8] Kat Lonsdorf , Courtney Dorning, Amy Isackson, Mary Louise Kelly, Ailsa Chang (2021) “A timeline of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack — including when and how Trump responded”, NPR, https://www.npr.org/2022/01/05/1069977469/a-timeline-of-how-the-jan-6-attack-unfolded-including-who-said-what-and-when
[9] BBC News (2021) “Capitol riots timeline: What happened on 6 January 2021?”, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56004916
[10] Marshall Cohan (2021) “The January 6 insurrection: Minute-by-minute”, CNN, https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/10/politics/jan-6-us-capitol-riot-timeline/index.html
[11] Dalton Bennett, Emma Brown, Atthar Mirza, Sarah Cahlan, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Meg Kelly, Elyse Samuels, Jon Swaine (January 16, 2021) “41 minutes of fear: A video timeline from inside the Capitol siege”, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2021/01/16/video-timeline-capitol-siege/
Alt YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsQTY9083r8
[12] January 6th Committee (December 22, 2022) “Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol”, House Report 117-663, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-J6-REPORT/
[13] Bob Woodward, Robert Costa (2021) “Peril: Trump, Biden and a Nation on the Brink”, Simon & Schuster,
[14] Jonathon Karl (2021) “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show”, Dutton
[15] Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker (2021) “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year”, Penguin Press
[16] Mike Pence (2022) “So Help Me God”, Simon & Schuster
[17] Robert S. Mueller Jr. (2019) “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election”, United States Government Publishing Office, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-SCREPORT-MUELLER/summary
[18] John Danforth, Benjamin Ginsberg, Thomas B. Griffith, David Hoppe, J. Michael Luttig, Michael W. McConnell, Theodore B. Olson, Gordon H. Smith (2022) “Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election”, http://lostnotstolen.org
[19] Betsy Woodruff Swan (2022) “Read the never-issued Trump order that would have seized voting machines”, Politico, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/21/read-the-never-issued-trump-order-that-would-have-seized-voting-machines-527572
[20] January 6th Committee (July 12, 2022) “CTRL0000931164 – Hearing on the January 6th Investigation, 117th Cong., 2d sess., (July 12, 2022)”, January 6th Committee Final Report and Supporting Materials Collection, 44min13sec, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-J6-HEARING-VIDEO-CTRL0000931164/
Alt YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W0djGgo0uk
[21] January 6th Committee (December 22, 2022) “EXH VC11 – Inside the “Unhinged” December 18th Meeting”, Ibid, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-J6-VIDEO-EXH-VC11/
Alt PBS News Hour link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGSVTDemWHo
[22] January 6th Committee (April 2, 2022) “CTRL0000062567 – Transcribed Interview of Eric Herschmann”, Ibid, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000062567/
[23] January 6th Committee (July 8, 2022) “CTRL0000928885 – Transcribed Interview of Pasquale Anthony “Pat” Cipollone”, Ibid, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000928885/
[24] January 6th Committee (March 17, 2022) “CTRL0000055541 – Transcribed Interview of Derek Lyons”, Ibid, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000055541/
[25] January 6th Committee (May 7, 2022) “CTRL0000082296 – Deposition of Sidney Powell”, Ibid, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000082296/
[26] January 6th Committee (May 20, 2022) “CTRL0000083774 – Deposition of Rudy Giuliani”, Ibid, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000083774/
[27] January 6th Committee (July 15, 2022) “CTRL0000915977 – Transcribed Interview of Patrick Byrne”, Ibid, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-J6-TRANSCRIPT-CTRL0000915977/
[28] Maggie Haberman, Zolan Kanno-Youngs (December 19, 2020) “Trump Weighed Naming Election Conspiracy Theorist as Special Counsel”, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/us/politics/trump-sidney-powell-voter-fraud.html
[29] Kevin Liptak, Pamela Brown (December 20, 2020) “Heated Oval Office meeting included talk of special counsel, martial law as Trump advisers clash”, CNN, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/19/politics/trump-oval-office-meeting-special-counsel-martial-law/index.html
[30] Jonathan Swan, Zachary Basu (February 2, 2021) “Bonus episode: Inside the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency”, Axios, https://www.axios.com/2021/02/02/trump-oval-office-meeting-sidney-powell
[31] Zachary Cohen, Paula Reid, Sara Murray (December 2, 2021) “New details shed light on ways Mark Meadows pushed federal agencies to pursue dubious election claims”, CNN, https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/02/politics/mark-meadows-election-fraud-liaison/index.html
[32] Bob Woodward, Robert Costa (2021) “Peril: Trump, Biden and a Nation on the Brink”, Simon & Schuster, pp193-196
[33] Jonathon Karl (2021) “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show”, Dutton, pp225-229
[34] Rudy Giuliani, Jeana Ellis, Sidney Powell (November 19, 2020) “Trump Campaign News Conference on Legal Challenges”, C-Span, https://www.c-span.org/video/?478246-1/trump-campaign-news-conference-legal-challenges
[35] Will Sommer (November 19, 2020) “Here’s How Hugo Chavez, Dead Since 2013, Became Responsible for Trump’s Election Loss”, The Daily Beast, https://www.thedailybeast.com/heres-how-hugo-chavez-dead-since-2013-became-responsible-for-trumps-election-loss
[36] Timothy Noah (July 18, 2022) “What Comic Genius Gave Us the Nest Thermostat Election Conspiracy?”, The New Republic, https://newrepublic.com/article/167062/nest-thermostat-election-conspiracy-georgia-dominion
[37] CNN (2021) “Read the full transcript and listen to Trump’s audio call with Georgia secretary of state”, https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/03/politics/trump-brad-raffensperger-phone-call-transcript/index.html
[38] Bob Woodward, Robert Costa (2021) “Peril: Trump, Biden and a Nation on the Brink”, Simon & Schuster, pp235-236
[39] CBS News Miami (2021) “Audio Captures Threat To Fly Plane Into US Capitol”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaNTBMHRb-4
[40] Seth Abramson (January 26, 2021) “January 5 Meeting at Trump International Hotel Could Hold the Key to the January 6 Insurrection”, PROOF, https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/january-5-meeting-at-trump-international
[41] Jacob Crosse (October 25, 2021) “Who was who in Trump’s Willard Hotel “war room”?”, World Socialist Web Site, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/10/26/will-o26.html
[42] Luke Barr (January 4, 2024) “3 years later, Jan. 6 pipe bomber mystery still unsolved”, ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/3-years-jan-6-pipe-bomber-mystery-unsolved/story?id=106131959
[43] Ricardo Torres (2021) “The pipe bomb found near the RNC on Jan. 6 was spotted by a Madison native while she was doing laundry”, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2021/01/16/pipe-bomb-near-rnc-found-madison-native-karlin-younger/4189043001/
[44] Claudia Grisales (January 15, 2021) “’Planned, Coordinated Attack’: Former Capitol Police Chief On The Insurrection”, NPR, https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/957371206/planned-coordinated-attack-former-capitol-police-chief-on-the-insurrection
[45] NBC News (March 10, 2021) “FBI Releases Video Of Person Suspected Of Placing Pipe Bombs Night Before Capitol Riot”, MSNBC | YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3rk1KzQwgY
[46] CNN (March 10, 2021) “New video shows suspect in Capitol pipe bomb investigation”, CNN | YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kchv74Xz6ro
[47] January 6th Committee (December 22, 2022) “Final Report of the Select Committee to investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol”, House Report No. 117-663, pp35-36, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-J6-REPORT/
[48] Mike Pence (2022) “So Help Me God”, Simon & Schuster, pp459-460
[49] Bob Woodward, Robert Costa (2021) “Peril: Trump, Biden and a Nation on the Brink”, Simon & Schuster, pp238-239
[50] Jonathon Karl (2021) “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show”, Dutton, pp260-274
[51] Brian Naylor (2021) “Read Trump’s Jan. 6 Speech, A Key Part Of Impeachment Trial”, NPR, https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial
[52] C-Span (2021) “President Trump’s January 6 Rally Speech”, https://www.c-span.org/program/campaign-2020/president-trumps-january-6-rally-speech/587224
[53] Tom Joscelyn, Norman L. Eisen and Fred Wertheimer (2024) “Dissecting Trump’s “Peacefully and Patriotically” Defense of the January 6th Attack”, Just Security, https://www.justsecurity.org/91904/dissecting-trumps-peacefully-and-patriotically-defense-of-the-january-6th-attack/
[54] C-Span (June 28, 2022) “January 6th Committee Sixth Public Hearing”, C-Span | YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSNBe-Wt6Q4 (1:05:20-1:08:54)
[55] January 6th Committee (December 22, 2022) “Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol”, House Report 117-663, pp578-580, https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-J6-REPORT/
[56] Bob Woodward, Robert Costa (2021) “Peril: Trump, Biden and a Nation on the Brink”, Simon & Schuster, pp244-250
[57] Jonathon Karl (2021) “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show”, Dutton, pp283-287
[58] Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker (2021) “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year”, Penguin Press, pp466-467
[59] PBS Frontline (2022) “How Nancy Pelosi Responded as Jan. 6 & Its Aftermath Unfolded | Pelosi’s Power | FRONTLINE”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiozwIVgem8
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[61] Mike Pence (2022) “So Help Me God”, Simon & Schuster, pp456-466
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[65] Mark Follman (2023) “Yes, January 6 Was a Heavily Armed Insurrection”, Mother Jones, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/01/january-6-armed-insurrection-congress-guns-trump-lie/
[66] Lindsey Whitehurst (2023) “2 Oath Keepers who helped amass guns before Jan. 6 attack sentenced to prison”, Associated Press | PBS News, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/2-oath-keepers-who-helped-amass-guns-before-jan-6-attack-sentenced-to-prison
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[68] Ryan J. Reilly (2022) “Feds arrest five members of ‘B Squad’ militia allegedly run by former GOP House candidate in Jan. 6 case” NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/feds-charge-members-b-squad-militia-allegedly-run-former-gop-house-can-rcna44621
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