Just when you think you can kick back and enjoy your weekend, along comes a “Duty to Warn” notification from the US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC).
On Thursday, USASOC issued an alert to “retired senior officials” now residing in the Sunshine State of Florida.
Basically, the memo warns of “a potential terrorist threat” to those with prior Department of Defense roles in the Syria/Iraq theater.
What made this memo particularly unique was the very specific wording that the “geographic focus of this threat is Florida.”
Damn, last time I checked, I live in Florida, and there’s already enough to worry about with venomous snakes, bears, sharks, tweakers, and Alligator Ally.
If you want to check out the actual verbiage of the memo, our good friend and former CIA targeting officer Sarah Adams put it up on her X feed. Be sure to follow Sarah, by the way, she puts out tons of good stuff on X every day. And check out her work for SOFREP.
Sarah seems to think that Hamza bin Laden had something to do with this. Yes, I know our government says he’s dead…she begs to differ. It’s too much to get into here.
Moving on…
So…how do we know this isn’t just one big internet hoax? A lot of folks out there are saying this is BS and is meant to take attention away from all the problems in Washington. Well, a lot of “people on the internet” say a lot of things, and most of it is garbage.
For the record, I have a message in to USASOC to verify this announcement as legitimate. As of this writing, I have not yet heard back from them (they have since gotten back to me, as noted below). However, the folks at The New York Times and ABC News have.
To quote the latter:
ABC News reports Col. Allie Scott, a spokeswoman, confirmed the alert was authentic, saying it was sent after the command learned of credible information.
She reportedly went on to say, “It’s not unusual for us to send those notifications. We do that when we have credible threats.”
That’s good enough for me. It’s been confirmed by the Times as well.
The memo states that one should “share this information with any retired military personnel you know who are currently residing in Florida.” There, I’ve done my due diligence and then some.
So, my fellow Floridian brothers and sisters, keep your head on a swivel, remain vigilant, and report any suspicious activity to local law enforcement.
Stay safe out there.
-Guy
**Postscript: A spokesperson from USASOC did get back to me. Her reply is as follows: “The military gets reports of threats all the time. In this case, Army Special Operations wanted to ensure the right personnel were tracking. We can’t name specific people or terrorist organizations, and we always encourage our service members and retirees to be vigilant.”