The video obtained from a McCain staffer by Cyber Berkut appears to match the ISIS-produced James Foley execution video. Senator McCain has well-known ties to such Islamic fundamentalist groups.

News reports of the July 16 shootings in Chattanooga Tennessee already provide some curious features that warrant close scrutiny. Perhaps unsurprisingly, complete oversight of the shooting investigation has been turned over to the FBI. Also, the Israeli-linked SITE Intelligence Group is involved in providing the news frame for alleged shooter Muhammed Youssef Abdulazeez.

For over a decade now the FBI has been busy creating phony terror events throughout the US to provide the semblance of a discernible enemy in the “war on terror,” as investigative reporter Trevor Aaronson has documented. This has proven immensely lucrative for the Western military-intelligence-media complex.

MHB provided a detailed analysis of SITE in 2014, suggesting that journalists should be wary of information distributed by the organization. The SITE Intelligence Group, headed up by Rita Katz, an ardent Zionist whose father was executed in Iraq in 1969 after being convicted of working for Israeli intelligence, is well-known as the first to furnish major news media with the Islamic State “beheading videos” of US citizens purportedly held captive and executed by ISIS.

SITE Intelligence Group, September 2, 2014

“The Islamic State (IS) released a video showing its beheading of an American citizen, James Wright Foley, and its threatening to execute another, Steven Joel Sotloff, if U.S.-authorized military operations against the group continue,” SITE announced on its “Jihadist News” section in September 2014.

Following news of the apparent execution of Sotloff that emerged on September 2, 2014, Katz nervously explained to CNN how SITE was actually capable of releasing the beheading video before even ISIS could.

The location from where the video was obtained from is the location where ISIS usually uploads their original videos to [sic]. The video shows a clear message from ISIS that follows the same message that it had before. And in fact within a short time after our release, ISIS’ account on social media indicated that within a short time [sic] they would be releasing the video, only we actually had that video beforehand and were able to beat them with the release (emphasis added).

A new video has recently come to light from the Russian-based group Cyber Berkut that further calls SITE’s “intel” into serious question. Illicitly obtained from a staffer of US Senator John McCain, the clip suggests how the ISIS beheading videos were rather predictably shot in an indoor studio under controlled conditions. This is significant in terms of Katz’s SITE because the entity has regularly been the self-declared exclusive conduit of the stories incorporating this imagery.

Along these lines, on July 16 SITE was the first to report “Details of Chattanooga Shooter Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez,” and major news media have once again unquestioningly passed along the information.  “Just days before Thursday’s attacks,” the New York Times reports, “Abdulazeez began a blog where he posted about Islam, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks international terrorist groups. He compared life to a prison, calling it ‘short and bitter.'”

Much like Charleston Church shooter Dylann Roof, Abdulazeez may have been “radicalized” through use of the internet. Yet as with the “God is Great” hijackers of September 11, 2001, Abdulazeez’s religious-inspired fanaticism didn’t get in the way of his debauchery. On April 20, 2015 the would be Islamic extremist was arrested in Chattanooga, charged with driving while intoxicated, and released on a $2,000 bond.