Exclusive: General Mark Milley, Pentagon approved directed-energy weapons for use on June 2020 DC rioters, source says

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden told colleagues that he and the Department of Defense authorized use of directed-energy weapons against June 2020 rioters at Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., a highly placed source told Blaze News.

– First in a series on directed-energy weapons –

Retired Gen. Mark A. Milley — who served as the 20th chairman of the Joint Chiefs from October 2019 through September 2023 — made the disclosure at a private gathering in October 2024, the source said.

“Milley told a small group in October of 2024, ‘We had directed-energy weapons at Lafayette Park in June 2020’ to be used against rioters,'” the source said.

According to Blaze News' source, who was present at the meeting, “In the full context of the discussion, I took that to mean that both Milley and then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper had signed off on the use of those weapons.”

Esper, the 27th secretary of defense, was sworn in on July 23, 2019, and was fired by President Trump on Nov. 9, 2020. Blaze Media reached out to Esper for comment but did not get a reply by press time.

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense referred any questions on the subject to now-retired Gen. Milley and the United States Northern Command. Capt. May Morales, media operations officer at U.S. Northern Command Public Affairs, told Blaze News: “USNORTHCOM does not have any information to offer on this matter.”

Directed-energy weapons are emerging from the shadows as more becomes known about them, how they are used by military and law enforcement, and the damage they can do to the human body. The spread in use of these weapons in domestic law enforcement raises civil rights and training issues.

Investigative journalist Catherine Herridge reported on the case of a former CIA officer who was disabled after being targeted with a DEW while on duty in Africa. Blaze News national correspondent Julio Rosas recently shared his story of the ear pain and hearing loss he suffered from a powerful, long-range sound weapon used by law enforcement during 2020 riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Lafayette Park riots in 2020

Black Lives Matter protesters gathered in Lafayette Park beginning on May 29, 2020, enraged by the death of a black man, George Floyd, in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department.

'It can stop the heart, make you s**t your pants, and disrupt any number of bodily functions.'

Lafayette Park is a federally owned, seven-acre property managed by the National Park Service. It is located just north of the White House’s North Lawn.

Rioting in Lafayette Park on May 30 and 31, 2020, resulted in the injury of at least 49 U.S. Park Police officers and extensive vandalism to federal and private property, according to a report by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General.

The Lafayette Park restroom building and the basement of St. John’s Church were set ablaze by rioters on May 31. A statue of Poland-born Revolutionary War General Tadeusz Kościuszko was defaced with painted profane messages on June 1.

Black Lives Matter protesters in front of Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., on June 1, 2020.Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images

“Officers were assaulted with projectiles, such as bottles and bricks; and a brick struck a USPP officer in the head, resulting in the officer’s hospitalization,” the OIG report said. “Some protesters threw projectiles, such as bricks, rocks, caustic liquids, frozen water bottles, glass bottles, lit flares, rental scooters, and fireworks, at law enforcement officials.”

The Park Police and U.S. Secret Service determined the rioters had to be removed from Lafayette Park on June 1 to make it safe for a contractor to install anti-scale fencing to protect the White House.

Seven law enforcement agencies and the District of Columbia National Guard took part in an operation to dislodge the rioters that began at 6:23 p.m. June 1 and finished at 7:01 p.m., the OIG report said.

A story quickly spread by the media claimed the action against Black Lives Matter protesters was undertaken to allow President Trump to walk from the White House to St. John’s Church, where the president was famously photographed holding up a Bible.

An investigation by the Department of the Interior OIG found that the actions taken to remove protesters were not due to President Trump but rather solely to protect the contractors while they erected the safety fencing to protect the White House.

'How they’re designed is to make the target feel like they’re crazy, like they’re imagining things.'

The Park Police “used a sound-amplifying long-range acoustic device (LRAD) to issue three dispersal warnings to the crowd on June 1,” the OIG report said. Not everyone heard the dispersal warnings, the OIG said.

The U.S. Park Police borrowed the LRAD unit from the Metropolitan Police Department on May 30, 2020, the OIG report said.

“The USPP incident commander told us the USPP borrowed a backpack-style LRAD from the MPD. He told us that the LRAD was set to speaker mode and that he did not know if the LRAD had capabilities beyond sound amplification,” the OIG report said.

“The USPP deputy operations commander told us, and video evidence confirmed, that after the USPP incident commander gave the three warnings, he walked with the USPP incident commander west on H Street carrying the LRAD.

“USPP and open-source video evidence we reviewed showed that as the USPP and ACPD [Arlington County Police Department] civil disturbance units entered H Street, protesters appeared surprised and confused; most protesters ran from the area as the officers advanced.”

Graphic from the U.S. Department of the Interior Office of Inspector General report on an acoustic device used against crowds. Yellow circle at right overlaid to show detail of the backpack.U.S. Department of the Interior/Graphic overlay by Blaze News

The LRAD operated by Park Police on June 1, 2020, was not part of the directed-energy weapons authorized by the Pentagon, the Blaze News source said. It is unknown whether the military directed-energy weapons were actually used on rioters during the Lafayette Park unrest.

The OIG report includes a photograph of the U.S. Park Police deputy operations commander carrying the backpack-sized LRAD on H Street at 6:42 p.m. on June 1. Sources told Blaze News the backpack unit appears similar to directed-energy weapons that are “prolifically used” by U.S. military special forces.

“USPP and open-source video evidence we reviewed showed protesters punching and throwing objects at officers and grabbing officers’ shields as well as officers rushing the crowd, pushing protesters with their shields, and deploying less-lethal munitions, including pepper balls, flash grenades, stinger ball grenades, and white smoke,” the OIG report said.

Use of DEWs on the rise

The disclosures come amidst renewed public and media interest in the existence and use of vehicle-mounted and more compact directed-energy weapons.

Blaze News national correspondent Julio Rosas said an LRAD mounted on an armored police vehicle was used at super audio levels during the Kenosha riots on August 25, 2020. Rosas said the effects were painful.

A long-range acoustic device is used against rioters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Aug. 25, 2020.

“Longer exposure created a sharp pain directly in my eardrum and contributed to my hearing damage that accumulated from the flash-bangs used at so many riots that year,” Rosas told Blaze News.

A retired senior military commander at the United States Special Operations Command told Blaze News that the backpack-size “agitation weapon” employed by U.S. forces uses infra-sound technology.

“It can stop the heart, make you s**t your pants,” and “disrupt any number of bodily functions,” the source said. The backpack weapon is “highly directional, with an easily disguised wearable antenna.”

In 2024, media reports and congressional testimony exposed how directed-energy weapons have been used against American diplomats and intelligence officers by foreign powers.

Investigative reporter Herridge published an interview December 29 with a CIA whistleblower who said she was injured by a DEW while serving in Africa. “Alice” told Herridge the CIA refuses to acknowledge the “anomalous health incidents” she and other agents have suffered.

Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev told a U.S. House committee on May 8, 2024, that he saw a backpack model of a directed-energy weapon as far back as 1991.Julien de Rosa/AFP via Getty Images

The Lafayette Park unrest might be the first publicly disclosed case of such a weapon authorized for use by the U.S. military against American citizens. In this case, violent Black Lives Matter crowds that gathered at Lafayette Park on and after June 1, 2020.

Sources said directed-energy weapons have been used as crowd-control devices around the world. The weapons can affect virtually any part of the body and make the target feel disoriented, ill, or even violent. The weapons can also be used to trigger cardiac arrest, the sources told Blaze News.

Special forces have been tasked with inciting mobs in foreign operations using these directed-energy weapons, said one source who helped develop the technology for the U.S. military. Actual use of them against citizens on American soil could be viewed as an unprecedented escalation of government weaponization against political dissidents.

The United States adapted technology from the former Soviet Union after the fall of the Iron Curtain and collapse of the Soviet empire.

A U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on May 8, 2024, detailed the use of DEWs against American officials abroad and within the United States.

“Dating back to 2014, a number of US diplomatic military and intelligence officials and their families have reported major medical symptoms that have affected their auditory and sensory motor skills,” said U.S. Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), chairman of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence.

Retired Lt. Col. Gregory Edgreen, who led the Pentagon’s investigation into anomalous health incidents, said exposure of American personnel predates the 2016 Havana incidents and traces back to the former Soviet Union.

“Soviet intelligence bathed the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with microwave transmissions. The health effects were similar to what we see today,” Edgreen said. “There are many examples of syndromes and ailments from Americans injured in the line of duty that the government did not recognize for many years, which were eventually proven.”

The goal of such attacks, Edgreen said, is to take top American national security officials out of operation using directed-energy weapons.

“Don’t take my word for it,” Edgreen said. “Nikolai Petrushev, the secretary of Russia’s security council, wrote in September 2023, and I quote, ‘In recent years, hundreds of employees of foreign intelligence services involved in organizing intelligence and subversive activities against our country have been neutralized.’”

Attorney Mark Zaid, who represents victims of directed-energy weapons, said attacks on Americans have included family members.

“The victims are not just selfless public servants but their spouses, children, including infants, and even pets,” Zaid said. “These criminal attacks have primarily taken place overseas on multiple continents but have also occurred on our homeland in Washington, D.C.; Northern Virginia; Florida; and elsewhere.”

Zaid said he first obtained information on AHI injuries in 2014.

“As part of my first case, I was provided an unclassified memorandum by NSA [National Security Agency] in October 2014, two years before Havana, that revealed the existence of intelligence information concerning a foreign adversary, quote, ‘with a high-powered microwave system weapon that may have the ability to weaken, intimidate, or kill an enemy over time and without leaving evidence,’” Zaid testified.

President Donald J. Trump walks through Lafayette Park on the way to St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., on June 1, 2020.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

“The 2012 intelligence information indicated that this weapon is designed to bathe targets' living quarters in microwaves, causing numerous physical effects, including a damaged nervous system,” Zaid said.

“A recent investigation by '60 Minutes,' Der Spiegel, and the Insider identified potential credible links between AHIs and alleged Russian operatives from military unit 29155,” Zaid said. “This included activities within the United States.

“What was the government's response? CIA doubled down that there was nothing to see and that it knew of and had already ruled out the same evidence,” Zaid said. “That is a blatant falsehood that has infuriated many serving members of the intelligence community because so much of the evidence to the contrary is available to them in reports, briefings, and cable traffic.”

A Blaze News source working as a special operator in the field of directed-energy weapons agreed.

“Our best and brightest are targeted over leaders in an obvious attempt to subvert our operational capabilities,” the source said. “Family members of American victims of DEW have been affected seemingly without cause for concern from our national leadership.”

‘I’ll convince all of you’

Edgreen said he could quickly convince everyone of the danger if the briefing were held in a secure environment.

“Give me 20 minutes in a SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility], and I’ll convince all of you,” Edgreen said. “I know where the bodies are buried. I know the cabinets to look in, the questions to ask, and the people to subpoena.

“I will say that this is a global campaign, and it’s focused on attacking our people, the best of our people,” Edgreen said. “It’s not the middle-range people that are being attacked. It’s those that are succeeding, succeeding and providing work, work that winds up on the president’s desk every morning. So it’s a massive issue.”

Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev said while these weapons have some limit on how small they can be made, they have been miniaturized over the decades.

“I have seen a 1991 version of the weapon and it looks like a satellite dish with a unit this size attached to it. Of course, over the years, miniaturization has been possible,” Grozev said.

“Obviously there is a limitation to how miniaturized it can be because of the antenna size, which is always related to the wave, but still it is something that can be well contained in the trunk of a car or even a large backpack,” he said.

Edgreen said the after-effects of directed-energy weapons can be difficult to detect.

“There’s no entry or exit wound,” he said. “How they’re designed is to make the target feel like they’re crazy, like they’re imagining things, especially on the low duration, the low-intensity, long-duration hits.”

Zaid said an ongoing issue with these weapons is a lack of candor by the government.

“What I have learned to date is the executive branch, particularly at the behest of and manipulation by officials within the CIA, is not truthfully reporting to the American people what it knows about AHIs.”

COMING NEXT:Were directed-energy weapons used on Jan. 6?

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