UnitedHealth Brian Thompson Assassination: A Covert Training Exercise?

I might be wrong, but urban hit squads run by intelligence agencies are not a new thing.

In 2010, a hit squad working for the Israeli Mossad flew to Dubai to assassinate Hamas leader Mahmoud al Mabhouth. The team involved 29 individuals working covertly who collectively surveilled him over the course of a day until he was eventually drugged, strangulated, and electrocuted in his hotel room. The team flew in on different flights from different destinations, stayed in different hotels, and used many team members of different nationalities and races including Britain, France, Ireland, and Australia.

What made this assassination special was Dubai police was able to piece together the entire operation using video surveillance footage. This created a minor diplomatic incident, but all the assassins got away and are living freely in Israel.

The point of recalling this in the context of the recent high-profile assassination of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan is to recognize that intelligence agencies maintain sophisticated assassination squads able to plan complex covert operations in dense urban areas. Methods have likely adapted since 2010 to account for modern widespread video surveillance. The relentless focus on a single hooded gunman ignores the possibility he could be working with a team.

This would involve all sorts of tradecraft such as the use of body doubles and safehouses along the getaway route, covert voice communications between lookouts. The mysterious witness to the shooting has not been identified. Was he really a witness…or a lookout? Did he actually have a second pistol to ensure the operation’s success if the main gunman missed or was he responsible for dropping misleading clues. Along the way, there could be accomplices preparing the getaway e-bike and taking the murder weapon.

One thing is abundantly clear: this assassination involved intelligence. The hitman had to know when and where the target would be unescorted by security, something experts say is unusual. Also unusual was his choice to stay at a hotel that was not the investor conference host hotel - the type of thing someone does if, say, he planned to rent a call girl while on a trip. A disgruntled UnitedHealthcare member is unlikely to come by that information. It would have to come from an insider or through a wiretap.

Furthermore, assassination hit teams maintained by nation-states have to train. It could be the assassination of Brian Thompson was merely a training exercise.

I note from 2019-2021 Thompson was the head of UnitedHealth’s government policy unit. CIA agents need health insurance too. Thompson was not a likeable guy: he was the subject of a DOJ insider trading investigation. He also lived in a house separate from his wife.

One significant clue is the likely choice of murder weapon - a rare WW2 spy gun invented by British Intelligence. One thing I’ve noticed about covert actions is intelligence agencies like to sign their work - putting “magic numbers” into the operation, etc. I don’t think this is merely a conceit, but a way of communicating to other agencies counterintelligence analysts. Counterespionage, after all, is professional conspiracy theorizing.

For an American team to murder Brian Thompson would be a civil rights violation, but if a British team took out an American-identified target as a favor, it would be part of friendly espionage and counterespionage live exercises. There have been enough mysterious high-profile deaths in London over the years, it might be the Brits who are returning us a favor. Edward Snowden revealed that when the CIA wanted to spy on Americans or drop a spy satellite image over the USA, it asked the Brits to do it for us.

In fact, this assassination most closely resembles the 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme, allegedly by a lone gunman on a prominent Stockholm street. In fact, that assassination has evidence of a CIA hit squad all over it. As I said, in order to pull off that type of urban operation, agents have to train.

Another consideration is facial recognition software. The DHS has rolled out new machines in every airport that uses such software to “match” a face to an ID; however, Congress has not allowed the software to connect to DHS databases. The DHS has long wanted to expand mandatory biometric screening, and if the “suspect” gets away, it can point to this incident as part of the reason why we “need” screening at airports and even train or bus stations.

There has already been much written about this incident, and I’m only adding my two cents because nobody seems to be considering this angle.