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National Guard shooter a former CIA asset: why Rahmanullah Lakanwal case is typical

Trump points finger to Biden, but the deeper scandal is about America’s “terror fabric”

By Uriel Araujo | December 3, 2025

Last week, Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal allegedly shot two National Guard officers near the White House, killing one and injuring the other. Authorities swiftly detained him, treating it as an isolated security breach, but the incident predictably fueled national debates on immigration and Islamic extremism.

President Donald Trump and CIA Director John Ratcliffe have pointed fingers at former President Joe Biden, claiming his policies enabled the attack. Interestingly, Ratcliffe himself acknowledged that Lakanwal was resettled in the US due to his prior collaboration with the CIA as part of a partner force in Kandahar, which ended amid the chaotic 2021 evacuation.

That detail alone — linking a suspect in an attack near the nation’s capital to its own intelligence apparatus — barely registered in the news cycle. In most countries, it would spark parliamentary inquiries, mass resignations, and nonstop media scrutiny, especially given the fact that clandestine operations and political assassinations are some of the CIA specialties.

The shooting itself followed a now-familiar script: a sudden act of violence, an almost immediate tightening of security, and official assurances that there was “no broader threat” or plot. Yet the most significant fact remains unexplored. Who exactly is this shooter? Under what circumstances did he work with US intelligence? When did he cease to do so? And more importantly, how does an American intelligence asset end up opening fire in the heart of the capital? Not to mention (in the context of Trump’s new War on Drugs): is this intelligence asset connected to the Afghan dope trade?

In any case, we are not looking at an isolated anomaly. Each time a political assassination attempt, mass shooting, or terrorist threat incident captures national attention in the US, investigators often concede that the suspect had some form of prior contact or connection with federal agencies. Sometimes it is the CIA. At other times the FBI. Thus far, the pattern has been acknowledged only in fragments, but rarely examined as a systemic problem, conspiracy theories aside.

American intelligence agencies (like those of other countries) do not recruit from convents. They often operate in war zones, criminal markets, and militant networks. The question is: are American agencies simply gathering intelligence, or are they also shaping (to some degree) the very threats they claim to prevent?

Back in 2021, I wrote that any  American withdrawal from Afghanistan was likely to stay incomplete, with special forces and covert presence expected to remain, partly due to Afghanistan’s strategic importance and the resurgence of massive opium/heroin production under the US-backed government after 2001.

One may recall that Afghanistan has been a hub for CIA activity for over 40 years, and, as I recently noted, warlords, traffickers, militias, and fixers there were not accidental byproducts of intervention but often operational tools. With American “withdrawal”, these networks did not vanish, but rather scattered. This troubling legacy remains underreported, especially its most profitable pillar: narcotics.

Washington did not just fail to stop the Afghan drug trade. It is fair to say it maintained it. Opium financing sustained armed groups, secured loyalty, and lubricated covert operations long after public rhetoric focused on reconstruction. US intelligence has become structurally entangled with drug revenues during the occupation and the very collapse of this system triggered economic and security chaos inside Afghanistan itself. Considering all of this, I’ve recently written that the Taliban’s sudden shutdown of most the world’s largest illicit heroin supply this year was likely to provoke serious blowback

Thus, when Afghan-linked personnel surface in a national security scandal, American indignation is conveniently selective.

The same logic applies domestically. The FBI has an extensive record of infiltrating extremist groups on US soil, and, in multiple documented cases, actively encouraging or facilitating crimes that otherwise might never have occurred. FBI agents and informants have funded operations, provided materials, and pushed vulnerable individuals toward violence just in time for dramatic arrests (and sometimes not in time for that). Evidence can be thin enough in any single case, but overwhelming in accumulation.

The 2009 Newburgh case is emblematic, when a paid FBI informant induced impoverished Black Muslims from New York to plot a terrorist plan, even providing them cash, and orchestrating the entire plot to bomb Bronx synagogues.

The same can be said of the Fort Dix Five (2007) episode; of the Liberty City Seven case (2006); of the Rezwan Ferdaus affair (2011); of the Cleveland Bridge Plot (2012), and many others, with a clear pattern emerging: studies (like those of award-winning journalist Trevor Aaronson) even estimate federal informants drove nearly half of post 911 terror convictions, in what has been described as a “terror fabric”. This means domestic terrorism in America is largely a product of its own security apparatus.

No wonder public confidence in federal institutions has collapsed. Americans are asked to accept an absurd contradiction: that the intelligence community can monitor global communications in real time but cannot detect local radicals already on its payroll.

Thus, the fact that the Utah Valley University (where the Charlie Kirk assassination took place) is a key intelligence hub triggered a lot of conspiratory speculation. One may also recall, in the context of Trump’s so-called war against the “deep state”, that there were links between federal agencies and two Trump assassination attempt suspects (Thomas Crook and Ryan Routh).

So much for the notion that political violence in America is always the work of random loner shooters. Of course sociological, cultural and psychological factors play a role and much has been written from that angle. But sometimes “deep state” intrigues are also a factor that should not be overlooked.

Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.

December 3, 2025 - Posted by aletho | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | Afghanistan, CIA, United States