Texas State Guard’s Role in Monitoring ‘Jade Helm ’15?’ Not What You Might have Expected

When Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas State Guard (TSG) to “monitor” and “report” on “Jade Helm 15” operations in the Lone Star state, we all probably had different ideas on how that would work out.

Some probably saw a Humvee with TSG troops trailing along with special operations units as they moved across the Texas countryside. Others may have seen an officer at a tactical operations center or a command post, with a red phone linking him directly to the Governor’s desk. Or, as most veterans would expect, a daily power-point briefing for the Governor with maps and charts and graphs.

None of those will be the correct image.

The Governor’s Office announced on Tuesday that his intelligence reports, the briefings from the Texas State Guard will be a recap of the previous 24 hours of operations and a forecast of the next 72 hours of troop movements across the state.

While all the specifics are not set in stone, the TSG staff will be coordinating with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) through its liaison officer at their headquarters in Austin. It doesn’t appear now that any members of the State Guard will be in the field.

During conversations in late May with a non-commissioned officer of the Texas State Guard, this reporter was advised that their role in monitoring Jade Helm was “very hush-hush.” He said they expected to be deployed in the field, in civilian clothes, shadowing the Army Special Forces, Navy SEALS, and/or Air Force special operations flights around Texas.

Abbott’s office says about a half dozen TSG officers and NCO’s at the Texas military headquarters in Camp Mabry in Austin will be involved in the gathering of information and putting it on the Governor’s desk. They are now saying that monitoring is to be accomplished through “existing resources”.

This article has been updated.

Milford is a news contributor for Breitbart Texas, and spent two tours as an embedded reporter in Iraq with the U.S. Marines and Army. You can follow him on Facebook.