Class offers to help ‘flush out’ people ‘hostile to liberty’ in Portage County

The Portage County Republican Party is promoting an all-day “Into Action” class on June 21, which is being marketed to people who wish to “identify individuals and organizations hostile to liberty.”

Offered by an organization identified as the Allied Special Intelligence Group, the ad appears on the Portage County Republican Party’s website and on various social media sites. The ad promises to train communities to “creatively and lawfully flush [enemies of liberty] out, and re-establish a Constitutional Republic form of government at the local, county and state level.”

Attendees will learn how to conduct “information operations, communications and security training, as well as strategic considerations to delay, disrupt and dismantle these threats at the grassroots level,” the ad states.

Portage County Republican Party Chairperson Amanda Suffecool told The Portager she prefers the term “problem-solving” to “disrupt.” She said Allied Special Intelligence Group asked her to promote the event and she agreed. The party is not hosting the event, and it will not be held at the party headquarters, she said.

“There are people who have gone to [the class] in other places, and then have said, ‘It was perfect. Bring it here,’ and they are part of the party. If they’ve found something they believe has value, bring it, and then people can hear it for themselves and decide whether it does indeed have value to them,” she said.

While stating she is not distancing herself from the event, Suffecool directed all questions to Allied Special Intelligence Group. Its website does not include contact information, only a form for visitors to request training.

Instructors, the ad says, will be military combat veterans with special ops experience, former law enforcement personnel, elected officials and intelligence professionals with special skills.

Allied Special Intelligence Group’s website promises instructors versed in “how to legally and lawfully delay, disrupt, dismantle and remove Communists/Marxists and terrorists from our communities in order to restore and protect our Constitutional Republic.”

Their website requests donations to “support the mission,” but clicking on this link leads to the website of yet another organization called Americans For America based in Aurora, Colorado. Their mission statement notes, “We believe Western civilization and its Judeo-Christian heritage are worth defending against all enemies, both internal and external.”

According to the ad for the training, participants will learn how “hostile individuals and organizations have insinuated themselves into local, state and federal governments and private entities,” and will be taught how to research and identify such key people and organizations.

Additional topics include “learning and discovering the primary adversaries America faces in the war and the founding principles for which we are fighting.”

The ad states that students will be “organized with a clear operation plan to effectively accomplish specific missions in their communities to reduce the adversaries’ ability to operate while beginning the process of re-establishing a Constitutional Republic form of government.”

The ad promises lunch for the $99 course, but neither it nor the registration link specify a location more specific than “Portage County.” A May 31 deadline is noted, as well as email addresses to two people identified as being able to field additional questions.

The registration page directs visitors to a Stripe account associated with Ohio Valley Business Advisors, a business that provides services to business owners wishing to buy or sell a business. The event is “only for Liberty-loving, God-fearing, like-minded people” who will all undergo a background check, the registration page notes.

Ohio Valley Business Advisors’ “team” appears to consist only of Gary Burden, one of the two contact people on the Allied Special Intelligence Group registration form, and lists a Hiram post office box.

His profile on the Northern Ohio Business Brokers Association (NOBBA) website states that he is a military veteran who realized that America’s future “hinges more on information than it does on military power.”

Burden declined to comment, telling The Portager, “I already saw your drivel so don’t call me again.”

The other contact person, who is identified only as “Tim,” did not reply to an email request for an interview.