Cybertruck Explosion: Did Afghanistan War Crimes Contribute to Soldier’s Detonation in Las Vegas?
Before he drove an explosives-packed car to the Trump hotel, Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger said he had taken part in a bombing campaign that killed innocent people.
We may never know exactly why an active-duty Green Beret master sergeant rented a Tesla Cybertruck, packed it full of fireworks and fuel canisters, and shot himself inside of it before it detonated outside the Las Vegas Trump International Hotel. But a disturbing clue might come from an email Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger sent shortly before the horrifying New Year's incident claiming he was involved in what he called a war crime while deployed to Afghanistan in 2019.
If so, it will be the latest reminder that the moral hazards that an entire generation of US policymakers have tasked soldiers like Livelsberger with committing do not always stay overseas.
Livelsberger turned the Cybertruck into what he called "a massive VBIED" in an email to Sam Shoemate, a former military intelligence analyst who runs a military-focused Instagram account. That's military terminology for a car bomb, an insurgent weapon of choice during the so-called ‘war on terror.’ But the special agent in charge of the FBI's Las Vegas field office, Spencer Evans, waved reporters away from "any connection between [Livelsberger] and any other terrorist organization." Evans' explanation for the explosion, which thankfully resulted in no major injuries to others, was that Livelsberger was "struggling with PTSD and other issues."
The FBI agent didn't elaborate on the cause of that PTSD. But in an email Livelsberger apparently sent to Shoemate and other social media accounts and podcasters he favored shortly before his final act, one that authorities believe is genuine, the elite soldier unburdened himself of "war crimes that were covered up during airstrikes in Nimruz province in Afghanistan." Livelsberger called himself "part of that cover-up with USFORA," referring to US Forces-Afghanistan, the now-shuttered US military command in America's longest overseas war.
Shoemate on Friday shared Livelsberger's email with the podcaster Shawn Ryan, someone Shoemate said Livelsberger was trying to contact. It begins with a weird series of claims about "gravitic propulsion" drones allegedly operated by China that represent "the most dangerous threat to national security that has ever existed." It sounds like the suicidal Livelsberger, who feared federal agents were following him, was experiencing a psychotic break.
But then Livelsberger described playing a role in "war crimes that were covered up during airstrikes in Nimruz province Afghanistan in 2019 by the admin,” Department of Defense, Drug Enforcement Agency, and CIA.