February 21 will mark three years since Philip Haney, 66, was “found deceased” in Amador County, California, killed by a gunshot to the chest. The victim was not the typical Sierra foothills resident.
Philip Haney was the author of See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad, first published in 2016. The DHS whistleblower also authored Frontpage articles, “Deobond Attacks in San Bernardino, Sri Lanka,” “The Terrorist Ties that Bind,” and “The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America’s Ominous Post-Election Statement.” The expert on Islamic jihad had been punished for doing his job at a high level. This is the man found deceased in Amador County.
In Haney’s RV, the sheriff found numerous thumb drives, a laptop computer, and other materials. Sheriff Martin Ryan turned these over to the FBI, which did not reveal what the devices contained, and the bureau remained silent on the case through 2021. Last year, the Amador County sheriff’s office told Frontpage there was “no new news” about Haney and that the case was closed. A month later, in March, 2022, more than two years after Haney was found deceased, the case was proclaimed a suicide.
Claims that Haney killed himself had appeared from the start, but were steadfastly denied by Haney’s friends, family and members of Congress. In March of 2020, Rep. Steve King said, “I don’t believe that Phil Haney committed suicide.” Rep. Louis Gohmert told reporters “I’d been concerned about his safety, with all the information he knew and people who could’ve gotten in trouble.” If the case had been pursued as a homicide, potential suspects would have been easy to find.
Philip Haney worked as a field agricultural entomologist in the Middle East, where he began studying Arabic and the Quran. With that background, the UC Riverside alum seemed a good fit for the Department of Homeland Security, but it didn’t turn out that way.
In “DHS ordered me to scrub records of Muslims with terror ties,” published in The Hill on May 5, 2016, Haney said DHS had ordered him “to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS).”
According to Kerry Picket in the Washington Examiner, the author was recently in contact with top officials about returning to work for the DHS. In June, 2016, Haney testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that several terrorist attacks against people in the United States could have been prevented if certain files had not been scrubbed. Those included the December 2015 attack in San Bernardino, California, when Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik murdered 14 people and wounded more than 20 others.
“The mosque that Syed Farook attended was part of that Tablighi Jamaat network,” Haney told Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy in a May 31, 2016 interview. “The administration deleted sixty-seven records out of the system that I had worked on as a component of the Tablighi case.” Had those records not been deleted, Haney said, it was plausible that Farook would not have been able to travel to Saudi Arabia, Tashfeen Malik would never been given a visa, “and then we would have stopped the attack.”
After Haney’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2016, Sen. Ted Cruz asked Jeh Johnson, DHS Secretary from 2013-17, if Haney’s testimony was accurate. “I have no idea. I don’t know who Mr. Haney is,” Johnson replied. “I wouldn’t know him if he walked into the room.” To say the least, that is highly unlikely.
Haney said DHS investigated him nine times and revoked his security clearance. The Department of Justice charged that Haney “misused a government computer,” but Haney was exonerated. He retired from the DHS, and in See Something Say Nothing told the world what was going on.
On the night of February 21, 2020 Amador County deputies and detectives responded to the report of a male subject on the ground with a gunshot wound. Early news reports suggested it was already proclaimed it a suicide but the sheriff denied it. The case quickly caught the attention of establishment media.
“Haney’s controversial accusations that the Obama administration could have prevented terrorist attacks were polarizing among Americans,” Laura Hoy of CNN reported on February 23. As Hoy explained, “Haney’s death is likely to become political ammo for Republicans heading into the 2020 presidential elections.”
On July 22, the Amador sheriff announced “hopes to complete our review of the reports and compare the FBI’s analysis with what we have already collected and analyzed within a few weeks after receipt.” A week after the November election, the FBI “analysis” had not come to light, so Haney’s death did not become “political ammo for the Republicans.”
The July 22, 2020 press release disappeared from the Amador website and in February of 2021, the sheriff’s office told Frontpage there was no new press release and would say nothing about the case. In April of 2021, Martin Ryan retired, replaced by former undersheriff Gary Redman, “a graduate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Academy,” in Quantico, Virginia. As Redman told the local Ledger Dispatch, “We are waiting for a few remaining pieces to be analyzed out of Virginia,” but there was “no estimated time of arrival.”
As the second anniversary approached, Amador authorities told Frontpage there was no news on Haney and that the case was closed. The next month, more than two years after Haney was found deceased, Redman proclaimed Haney’s death a suicide and declared the case officially closed. As he had to know, it wasn’t.
“Haney’s death was controversial enough for the Amador County Sheriff’s Office to bring in FBI crime scene investigators and other analysts to assist,” wrote Don Thompson of the Associated Press. Investigators claimed they found a suicide note in Haney’s handwriting, that the gun was traced to him and that he left behind “neatly arranged financial documents with instructions on how he wanted his assets distributed.”
An unidentified “neighbor” told investigators that Haney “appeared depressed lately” and had given the neighbor his potted plants the day before his death. Thompson did not track down the neighbor and his report does not cite Haney’s friends and relatives already on record that he was not suicidal.
The AP report fails to explore reasons the official suicide declaration was delayed for more than two years, and what could have happened in the meantime. On the other hand, Readers are told that Haney’s death, “spurred conspiracy speeches by Republican Iowa U.S. Rep. Steve King and another GOP congressman on the House floor.” (emphasis added)
Readers are told that the federal Customs and Border Protection (CPB) had determined that Haney’s devices contained “contraband” and possible violations of “CBP policy and numerous United States Codes.” Thompson shows no curiosity about this wild post-mortem accusation. CBP “strategic media engagement branch chief” Jaime Ruiz would not comment because “it’s an open investigation.”
FBI spokeswoman Gina Swankie said the bureau “assisted the Sheriff’s Office with analysis, but it was not an FBI investigation,” and “declined to comment” any further. Despite the contradictions and escape hatches, the FBI left crucial clues.
A true investigative agency would first explore who had a motive to kill Philip Haney. For all but the willfully blind, that would be the Islamic jihadists he exposed, and quite possibly the DHS and DOJ bosses who shut down his work. Legitimate investigators always consider cui bono, those who stand to benefit from the victim’s death. Trouble is, the FBI is no longer a legitimate investigative agency.
The FBI is now the American KGB, a squad of deep-state partisans operating above the law. Show the FBI the man and they create the crime through stagecraft and entrapment, as with Gen. Michael Flynn. In the case of Philip Haney, they target a dead man for further investigation by the federal CPB. The expert on jihadism got the same treatment in death he did in life – false accusation by a federal agency, and quite possibly a lot more.
As Pavel and Anatoli Sudoplatov explain in Special Tasks, the Soviet KGB also conducted “wet” operations, code for assassination and murder. A favorite method was to fake a suicide. As the great Sidney Hook noted in Out of Step, Soviet defector Gen. Walter Krivitsky was “suicided” in a Washington hotel room by Stalin’s NKVD, forerunner to the KGB.
Danish diplomat Povl Bang-Jensen refused to reveal names of Hungarian patriots who testified to the UN about Soviet atrocities during the 1956 invasion. In 1959, after going missing for two days, Bang-Jensen was found dead in a New York park, shot through the right temple. The scene looked staged but the case was officially declared a suicide. See Betrayal at the UN, by DeWitt Copp and Marshal Peck.
DHS whistleblower Philip Haney is “found deceased” in Amador County, shot through the chest. Haney had many enemies but for more than two years the Federal Bureau of Investigation never considered the possibility that he was murdered. The FBI has all the evidence, but now claims it wasn’t their investigation.
The FBI is preparing to occupy new headquarters twice the size of the Pentagon and bigger than the Kremlin. Embattled Americans should expect more stagecraft, more entrapment, and more operations like the one involving Philip Haney.
The DHS man used his skills to expose radical Islamic terrorists, the people who hijack airliners and crash them into buildings, the terrorists who gun down workers at a holiday party, the terrorists who murder innocents while yelling “Allahu akbar.” These are the worst people in the world, with the possible exception of their enablers in the U.S. government.
Philip Haney bravely exposed them and paid the price. He’s gone but will not be forgotten. The struggle against terrorism is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
Thank you for the update. I had purchased Mr. Haney’s book and had wondered what happened with his case. I’m saddened that his reputation has been sullied by the very institution he served.
No doubt in my mind that he was murdered and nothing will ever come of it. Whistleblowers are being killed and nothing ever comes of it. The FBI IS NOW THE KGB of our once great country. When will people wake up.
All,
Phil was close to releasing a second tell-all book before his death.
Two weeks prior to his murder, Phil called me and said in his own unique way, “Stay tuned—something big is about to come out.” I’ll never forget that phone call and will always cherish the sweet memories of Phil.
All,
Phil was one of the founders of Homeland Security.
All,
Also, the order to “scrub” the records came directly from Obama’s White House.
Just as news of his murder hit the news I thought “I’d better get a copy of his book before it disappears.” I prefer to get hard cover editions of important book and only could find one source in Hungary, I bought it, they notified me they were checking with their supplier then it was shipped, all over a couple of months. I fretted it would not be in English. It finally arrived and in English but why should there be such hassle? This whole affair stinks. I’ll admit the Kindle Version is readily available then.
What’s left out in this article is that Phil was traveling around in his RV with his wife, hawking his book. He expressed a desire to work for Donald Trump’s administration.
His wife passed-on and he had a fiance and a pending book to be published. What’s on those Sounds like he was positive of both thought and deed. Wouldn’t he want to see his book published? It’s rare someone shoots themselves in the chest. You can’t ever get good latent prints off a handgun. Ask any CSI type. Where are all those stick drives and what’s on them? Probably his manuscripts. Maybe an outline for an even future book. What does the FBI know? BTW where’s Anthony Weiner’s laptop?
Thank you for this article I have questioned Phil Haney”s death ever since I read about him and I read one of his books We all know that Obama was not happy about what he wrote and about his second book he was writing and we all know the reach that the Islam Terror cells have even here in the US I believed Phil when he said he would never kill his self .These corrupt agencies here in the US will have to answer to God when Jesus returns . .Home land security i would never trust now after watching them bus in illegals into the US .They are corrupt along with Biden and his menions
Dr. Angelo Codevilla died about a year ago in the same county in a mysterious car crash reported with very conflicting details in the local press. There is no information available about the so-called single car accident which killed him. Dr. Codevilla had become perhaps the most dangerous man to the left because of his deep knowledge of the CIA and the rest of the DC Deep State involvement in arranging coups and doing all it could to establish a one world government. Codevilla’s articles were so on target and his knowledge so unimpeachable that he was a serious threat to the cabal now running things. Codevilla lived virtually next door to Phillip Haney and the left and the CIA has been known to use car crashes to kill those it perceives as threats. Dr. Codevilla’s death should be investigated rigorously to determine if there was foul play. He and Phillip Haney were both true American heroes.
I had written down his name; Dr. Angelo Codevilla severall months ago as a reference (highly recommended), by this article that I must have took interest in. I will follow-up on him.
Any suggested title? I can’t recall the article I read.
The Ruling Class
In
American Spectator
Single car accidents are the number three cause of death of honest investigative reporters and whistleblowers, ask Karen Silkwood. Number two is overdose (ask Dorothy Kilgallen). Number one is staged suicide (r.i.p. Phil, Danny Casolaro, Gary Webb, the Saudi sisters and many others).
Thank you for keeping the case before us.
Regarding the murder of Povl Bang-Jensen if the Hungarian patriots testified to the U.N., weren’t their names known then?
Not everybody knows that RV means “recreational vehicle,” Mr. Billingsley.8o
What are you a NKVD apologIst? WTAF! If you don’t know what RV is you maybe illiterate FYI.
I said, very clearly, NOT EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT RV MEANS RECREATIONAL VEHICLE.” That means I know
Thanks Lloyd! A blatant hit and coverup.
Of course the left would bill this “suicide” as a conspiracy theory. They don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but they do believe in manufacturing them, as in the Russia Hoax.
Leftist enablers always rush to assure us “this was not terror related”, declare clear as day jihadist terror as “workplace violence*, and shrug off 911 as “some people did something”.
We were told the unsuccessful Times Square bomber was likely a right-winger against Obamacare by shithead Bloomberg.
Turned out to be a Faisal Shahzad from Pakistan.
Bloomberg then trafficked in excuses about Faisal’s mortgage frustrations being the motive (never jihad, of course) and warned against retaliation against Pakistanis.
Leftists will cut bait as with Jeff Epstein. The left sorely misses his prior services and huge donations to the DNC, but couldn’t afford his reflecting on his prior services to Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, etc.
At least Haney’s staged “suicide” wasn’t as clumsy & obnoxiously brazen as Epstein’s.
Well maybe it is time to engage the enemy with our own staged suicides! I often wondered why no one did that back in the old Soviet Union and the fact that while it is gone Putin and the KGB still exists, kind of tells you the true nature of the Evil we face!
While it makes our struggle more problematic, we must not stoop to the level of the enemy and be unmistakably the morally superior side. We just have to be smarter and pray for the Lord’s help.
Thanks for this update. I think we need a biography of Haney, who was a hero in a time when very few are heroic.
I wonder if he has been “forgotten” partly due to timing of Covid and resulting hyper focus on issues related to it.
Haney should not be forgotten.
He will be forgotten and disgraced so no further investigations will go on.
Like the CCP, the Deep State also should be suspect of “disappearing” people.
And who does Hillary use for her paid services?
Damnit! I’m a little disappointed that I had forgotten about Mr. Haney, Thank you for this update. I think you’re spot on that the FBI (at least at the high levels) is the KGB of the United States. Very disturbing.
When you listen to the amazing lectures by Prof Walter Veith, you will discover that Freemasonry holds the koran as higher than the Holy Bible – that should tell you something. Only known to the high levels (secret luciferians) and that even more secretly, that the masonic system is run by the vatican.. Many layers of smokescreens.
Vatican = divining serpent.
Very interesting. For me the proof that the Islamic ideology was satanic was when I learned about its fear and hatred of the Cross.
Jihadi attacks are breaking out all over the place in Israel. They are by no means over.
If we torture the right person we most likely can find out….. Probably start with Sacramento / San Fran. FBI offices. my bet is the hit man was ordered from one of those offices.
Mr, Haney was a real patriot. I did not know he passed away. Such a pity.
I first heard Mr. Haney speak on Frank Gaffney’s podcasts. It was clear to me that he was one of those very mild-mannered, thorough, intelligent men who have an iron will. So glad to see him remembered by this second article from you, Mr. Billingsley. It is another occasion when upon hearing of someone’s death one instantly feels deprived of a strengthening agent, like a glue, for the bits and pieces of my country that survive the assault of our government against us.
It also reminds me of something supremely important for the future: The fight that takes on the forces destroying America must protect itself, muster its host of fellow actors and move with undistracted purpose, over and over, indefinitely, until the malefactors are not merely halted but are rather uprooted from all influence upon America.
I am familiar w/suicide. I have not heard of anyone shooting themselves in the chest as a method, that doesn’t mean that someone hasn’t done it, but it does require an odd angle unless a shot gun were used and it doesn’t say in the articles I have read about Mr. Haney. Usually it is in the temple or mouth if a gun is used. Someone of Mr. Haney’s caliber had to know a chest shot would be risky. Just saying.
Women tend to commit suicide that way, but men rarely (if ever) do.
Leftist darling Jeff Epstein was murdered in prison because he had dirt & lots of it. (Bill Clinton visited Orgy Island over 20 times.)
Haney’s “suicide” was staged due to his insistence on exposing the leftist fetish with excusing/ignoring islamic continual attacks on this great nation.
An example:
Remember that shithead Bloomberg 1st insisted that the failed Times Square bombing, in 2010, was carried out by a conservative upset with Obamacare.
Everyone else knew different . . . including that smug idiot Bloomberg.
I know Haney from a Trevor Loudon documentary.
As a close friend and colleague of Mr. Haney I appreciate the defense of this American hero and Patriot. That said, I worked closely with the Amador County Sheriff’s Office and they ran a thorough and professional investigation of Phil’s death. While Phil’s information was damning to some and implicated U.S. leaders on both sides of the political aisle, to date, no available evidence points to a suicide. Means and motive matters, but there is no evidence whatsoever Phil was murdered. If some surfaces, that changes the game. The U.S. government is corrupt and working against the American people in so many ways that are concrete and identifiable. I believe it is important to separate that from hypothesis.
Any memory devises should not have been turned over to the FBI without copies made. If Hunter Biden’s laptop was turned over to the FBI, and no copies made by the repair shop owner, we would have never heard another word about it. Any information they would have revealed is now lost.
Hear, hear! 🍻
The common sense of your point should resonate to ALL local law enforcement & patriot.
If “no available evidence points to a suicide” and yet ” there is no evidence whatsoever Phil was murdered,” what are you suggesting?
>>”U.S. leaders on both sides of the political aisle,”<< ??? Not to be cynical, but that could mean "Liz Cheney vs. Nancy Pelosi."
Excellent point. Hear, hear! 🍻
How ridiculous a statement you make. His dead body with gun shot wounds is evidence that he was murdered.
Mr. Billingsley, if this should reach your eyes, reading this I had to refresh my memory off who Sydney Hook was. In reading his Wikipedia I recalled but something else stuck out, John Dewey. Through Alex Newman’s work I found that Dewey was integral in setting up our National Education system and an avowed Utopian, now I’m getting Hook’s book, “Out of Step” to see how deep his ties to Lenin’s world were. That said in your book “Hollywood Party” you tell of an FBI informant witnessing Stalin’s representative giving Harry Bridges the money for is first big strike, then in Ron Radosh’s “Amerasia Spy Case” we see how Hoover’s FBI stumbled across Top Secret Files where they should never have been but had no Legal Standing to have found them in the first place so the stood back but kept an eye on where they had found them, my layman feeling is what else should he have done, forgotten about it? I see people run Hoover down constantly but on the other hand I know of nobody who did not get Due Process from him so could you point to or please write the definitive book on this please?
My wife is a Christian from the Middle East with real life experiences of life among those that must obey Sharia ( Muslims ).
Both of us gravitated to Phillip Haney and his work knowing he was getting closer to understanding Islam is made up of political/legal/military referred to as a Deen rather than religion.
Now we both listen to another counter terrorism expert on Sharia we know Phillip would have gravitated too as well if alive today:
Sharia is the heart of Islam and the weakness of Islam which is why it’s kept secret. Many counter terror experts know of Sharia from the Reliance of the Traveller:
Phillip would deeply appreciate Lloyd De Jongh and his work on the secrets of Sharia found on u-tube.
Short video’s with Al Fadi made easy in my opinion drives the legacy of Phillip Haney revealing the weakness of Islam. When we listen to Lloyd we imagine Phillip collaborating together for the greater good.
This makes the Twitter files collusion seem like a warm up for these FBI traitors.
Also mention they knew about the first trade center attack being planned and did either nothing or helped.
There is a chapter on Phil Haney in “Dying for the Truth: Reporters and Whistleblowers Who Died for your Right to Know and the Stories They Wanted You To Know.” It is quite evident from his story that our Islamist enemies have successfully infiltrated some of the highest levels of government.
Phil’s questionable “suicide” is hardly unique amongst investigative reporters and whistleblowers. Danny Casolaro, called what some now call the “deep stare,” the Octopus. Danny was so unnerved by an upcoming undercover meeting with a purported insider source that he phoned his brother to tell him that if anything happened to him not to believe it. He was found in a hotel bathtub having bled to death from cuts on his wrist deep enough to cut the tendons. The West Virginia coroner ruled it a suicide.
The most obvious of the many seemingly staged suicides and/or overdoses has to be the fate of Gary Webb. Webb’s expose of the Contra Crack Cocaine story ought to have won a Pulitzer. Instead he also was ruled to have committed suicide, shooting himself in the head, twice.
Such brave and noble seekers of the truth as Phil, Danny, Gary, and many others must who have paid the ultimate price must never be forgotten.
Wasn’t Phil Haney planning to be married? And didn’t he make copies of his thumb drives that he stored in one or more safety deposit boxes? What was known of the the gun that was used? Still more questions than answers, but it’s more than likely he was a target.
Thanks for keeping the story alive, Mr. Billingsley.
Yes we know in the end they will get their just rewards if they do not repent before Jesus returns or at their death
I’m inclined to think he was murdered because he was too much of an expert on Muslim Terrorism, (ie, he discovered “Muslim terrorism” itself is an invention of the cartel that controls all government agencies) and so he had to be eliminated because he already had a history of being a Whistleblower, and he finally found some proof that Muslim Terrorism is fake.
Phil was a true American hero. We had worked together with CBP in Atlanta for several years. He was my “Amigo”. On this, the 4th anniversary of his “murder”, I just want to remind the world that this man cared deeply for our Lord, his fellow man, and this once great nation. He had a great love for life. He was engaged to be married. He played guitar and sang. He visited the Holy Land. Let us keep up the fight to win our country back. God Bless America!