[TexasPublicRadio] When officers from the Texas National Guard showed up to their 7 a.m. meeting with federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations in El Paso, they didn’t arrive empty-handed.Good gouge fellas, but we need names. Oh, ok. Next week it is then.
Six military intelligence officials turned over a list of names at the February 2022 meeting. The Texans were part of an intelligence directorate supporting Operation Lone Star,Gov. Greg Abbott's state-run border mission. The officers, which included the group’s top two leaders, told federal agents they’d secretly infiltrated invite-only WhatsApp group chats filled with migrants and smugglers and wanted their help investigating the targets they’d identified, according to a sworn statement attached to a whistleblower complaint filed later that month.
The Homeland Security officials in the meeting rebuffed the Texans on the spot — with one official saying that they were an investigative body and “not an intelligence agency,” the whistleblower recalled.
An investigation by Military Times and The Texas Tribune has found that Texas National Guard leaders disbanded Operation Lone Star’s intelligence wing after whistleblowers reported the WhatsApp surveillance, which targeted migrant groups to track them through Mexico, because they believed it violated long-standing rules against state-run spy operations. During the same period, another team from the intelligence directorate allegedly sent classified FBI intelligence to their Texas Guard colleagues in an apparent violation of federal secrecy laws, according to an internal incident report.
WhatsApp is an instant messaging and voice-over-IP service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content.
WhatsApp is owned by Meta, yes the Zuckerberg Meta.
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At least four intelligence officers have faced interim administrative discipline in the debacle’s wake:
- Lt. Col. David “Eric” Tyler led the border intelligence section from December 2021 to fall 2022.
- Maj. Dezi J. Rios, the intelligence wing’s deputy director, allegedly oversaw the WhatsApp collection operation.
- Chief Warrant Officer 2 Eric E. Hack led the El Paso team that allegedly shared classified FBI intelligence.
- Then-1st Lt. Emmanuel L. Pierre, a military intelligence officer from a subordinate unit, allegedly began the WhatsApp intelligence operation about a month before Rios arrived at the border.
The Texas Military Department’s inspector general, with assistance from the National Guard Bureau, investigated “potential questionable intelligence activities,” the agency confirmed in response to questions for this story. The agency said in a statement that the watchdog concluded its investigation in September 2022 but has not yet shared its final report, adding that it will “finalize” discipline once leaders receive it. Leaders initially reorganized and eventually disbanded the intelligence directorate in fall 2022, folding the remaining personnel into the mission’s operations section, a source familiar with the mission’s organization said.
We reorganized and did the recommended name changes, but the stuff still went down sideways.
According to an official document that Rios provided to Military Times and the Tribune summarizing part of the investigation, the inspector general’s office found that the WhatsApp scheme was an unauthorized foreign intelligence operation and faulted Rios for overseeing Pierre’s work — a finding Rios disputes. It’s unclear if the inspector general concluded that any other officers broke the rules.
Rules? He meant Federal Law.
Two of the implicated officers, Tyler and Rios, told Military Times and the Tribune that senior leaders set them up to take the fall for the operation. Both claimed they shared concerns about the legality of Pierre’s WhatsApp work to the mission’s top brass at the time, Brig. Gen. Monie Ulis and Col. Kevin Boates, but were unable to convince them to end it.
We told'em collection conducted on US Persons was a no-go. They wouldn't listen.
According to a sworn statement Rios made June 25, he and state intelligence officials “were unable to convince [Col.] Boates or [Brig. Gen.] Ulis” to stop the WhatsApp operation. In a Dec. 27, 2021 email — obtained through an open records request — Rios claimed to have “expressed my reservations with [Col.] Boates and [Brig. Gen.] Ulis” about the WhatsApp operation to no avail.
In his sworn statement — included in his own June complaint with the inspector general alleging the state failed to set clear guidelines for intelligence activity at the border — Rios said Boates “ordered me to oversee” Pierre’s WhatsApp operation while simultaneously blocking Rios from stopping it. He filed the complaint because the investigation blocked his promotion to lieutenant colonel, he said.
Tyler, who has served in the Texas Guard for 33 years, said through his attorney that he was “disappointed that … I’m being sanctioned based [on] an investigation report that I’m not allowed to see.” The lieutenant colonel added, “I assume the reason that they won’t tell me anything or provide me any evidence is that if I somehow failed to supervise a junior officer that reported directly to [Brig. Gen.] Ulis, then Ulis should be accountable.”
Blaming junior officers? Poor form indeed.
Ulis was appointed as the deputy commanding general of U.S. Army South in June, a role held simultaneously with his appointment as the state’s assistant adjutant general.
Comes with a dedicated C-12. I love fly!
Hack, Boates and Ulis did not respond to interview requests made via phone and email. Pierre declined to comment.
We ain't talk'n to nobody.
For this story, Military Times and the Tribune obtained more than 750 pages of internal Texas Guard records, spoke with intelligence oversight experts, and interviewed three verified Texas National Guard service members who had direct knowledge of the events. They requested anonymity because they feared retaliation from state officials and have not been accused of wrongdoing.
