North Carolina
Southern state of Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune, of Jesse Helms's political machine and its Pioneer Fund directors, and of the JAARS air base of the Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune
In February 1962 a team from the US Army Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, under its commander, William P. Yarborough, visited Colombia and recommended in a secret supplement that civilian and military personnel be selected for clandestine training to "execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents," and that American assistance "be sterile and covert in nature."1 Yarborough died at Southern Pines in 2005.2
Marines at Camp Lejeune figure in the prosecutions of the Atomwaffen Division milieu. The Lance Corporal Vasillios George Pistolis, identified by ProPublica in May 2018 as a member of the group after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, was court-martialed and separated.3 The former Lejeune Marine Liam Collins, a leader on the Iron March forum, was sentenced in the Eastern District of North Carolina on July 25, 2024, to ten years for a plot with Paul James Kryscuk, Jordan Duncan and others to attack power facilities.4 After a shooting damaged an EnergyUnited substation in Randolph County on January 17, 2023, Dallas Humber of the Terrorgram Collective posted that the "avenue of attack" had "really caught on."5
The Helms Organization
Jesse Helms, a Raleigh broadcaster whose "Viewpoint" editorials ran on WRAL from 1960, sat in the United States Senate from 1973 to 2003.6 The Raleigh lawyer Thomas F. Ellis, organizer of Helms's political operation, and Marion Parrott were directors of the Pioneer Fund in the 1970s; the fund's president, Harry Weyher, was also a North Carolinian. The fund gave Ellis's Coalition for Freedom 195,000 dollars between 1983 and 1989, and Weyher represented Ellis's Fairness in Media in its 1985 attempt to take over CBS.7 Representative Charlie Rose of the state's 7th district, in the House from 1973 to 1997, was a congressional supporter of the Army's remote-viewing program.8
Other Ties
JAARS, the aviation and radio arm of William Cameron Townsend's Summer Institute of Linguistics, moved its headquarters to Waxhaw in 1961.9 Edward Snowden was born in Elizabeth City on June 21, 1983.10 In 2023 Felix Bauckholt of the Zizians rented half a duplex in Chapel Hill, and Teresa Youngblut took a place nearby before the two drove to Vermont, where a Border Patrol agent was killed in January 2025.11 Prasan Nepal of High Point, charged with Leonidas Varagiannis with running 764 Inferno as a child exploitation enterprise, was arrested in North Carolina on April 22, 2025.12
Sources
- Headquarters, U.S. Army Special Warfare School, "Visit to Colombia, South America, by a Team from Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, North Carolina," February 26, 1962, secret supplement, quoted in Human Rights Watch, Colombia's Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary Partnership and the United States, 1996. https://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/killer2.htm ↩
- Arlington National Cemetery, "William Pelham Yarborough, Lieutenant General, United States Army." https://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/wpyarborough.htm ↩
- "U.S. Marine to Be Imprisoned Over Involvement With Hate Groups." ProPublica, 2018. https://www.propublica.org/article/vasilios-pistolis-imprisoned-marine-hate-groups ↩
- U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of North Carolina. "Defendants with Ties to White Supremacy Sentenced in Connection with Plot to Destroy Energy Facilities." July 25, 2024. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ednc/pr/defendants-ties-white-supremacy-sentenced-connection-plot-destroy-energy-facilities ↩
- "'Terrorgram' leaders Dallas Humber, Matthew Allison referenced North Carolina EnergyUnited substation shooting, court documents show." WGHP Fox 8, September 2024. https://myfox8.com/news/storylines/power-grid-attack/indicted-terrorgram-neo-nazi-cited-randolph-county-substation-attack-court-documents-show-this-avenue-of-attack-has-really-caught-on/ ↩
- Hall, Bob. "Jesse Helms: The Meaning of His Money." Southern Exposure, vol. 13, no. 1, 1985, republished by Facing South, Institute for Southern Studies. ↩
- Lynn, Richard. The Science of Human Diversity: A History of the Pioneer Fund. University Press of America, 2001; Mehler, Barry, comp. "Pioneer Fund Grants, 1971-1996," Institute for the Study of Academic Racism, compiled from Internal Revenue Service Forms 990; Edsall, Thomas B., and David A. Vise. "CBS Fight a Litmus Test for Conservatives." The Washington Post, March 31, 1985, p. 1. ↩
- Schnabel, Jim. Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies. Dell, 1997. ↩
- JAARS, "Our History." jaars.org/about/history ↩
- Snowden, Edward. Permanent Record. Metropolitan Books, 2019. ↩
- "A timeline of activities of a cultlike group tied to the killing of a Border Patrol agent." Associated Press via PBS NewsHour, 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-timeline-of-cultlike-zizian-group-tied-to-killing-of-a-border-patrol-agent-in-vermont ↩
- U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Columbia. "Leaders of 764 Arrested and Charged for Operating Global Child Exploitation Enterprise." April 2025. https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/leaders-764-arrested-and-charged-operating-global-child-exploitation-enterprise ↩
Local network
Search or select an entry to see how it connects to North Carolina.
An interactive diagram of North Carolina's connections, drawn on a canvas and explored with a pointer. The same connections are listed as links in the Connected and Mentioned-in sections below.
How to read the graph
- People
- Organizations
- Programs
- Events
- Concepts
- Places
Larger = more mentions across the vault.
A link from one entry to another.
A name mentioned in an entry without a direct link. Toggle these with “Inferred”.
Gold rings mark entries mentioned across several clusters.
Orange rings mark your selection.
Mentioned in 30
- Event2015 Charleston Church Shooting
- Organization764 Inferno
- Organization764 Network
- PersonCharles Tart
- PersonCharlie Rose
- PersonClaudius Vermilye
- ConceptCrack Cocaine
- OrganizationCrips
- PersonDallas Humber
- PersonEdward Snowden
- OrganizationFather Bud's Boys Farm
- PersonFelix Bauckholt
- PersonFred L. Lander III
- PersonGeneral William P. Yarborough
- PersonGerald Richards
- PersonHarry Weyher
- PersonJesse Helms
- PersonLeonidas Varagiannis
- PersonLiam Collins (AWD)
- PersonPrasan Nepal
- EventProject Compass
- PersonR.C. Horsch
- PersonRoger Pearson
- OrganizationScattered Spider
- PersonTeresa Youngblut
- OrganizationThe Com
- PersonThomas F. Ellis
- PersonVasillios George Pistolis
- PersonWickliffe Draper
- PersonWilliam Cameron Townsend