Aaron Bushnell claimed he had secret knowledge of US troops fighting in Hamas tunnels under Gaza just hours before setting himself on fire in an “extreme act of protest” against Israel, a close friend has revealed.
The 25-year-old US airman who served in the Air Force’s 70th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) Wing, ranted he had “top-secret clearance’’ for military intelligence data in the call to his friend Saturday night, he said.
“He told me on Saturday that we have troops in those tunnels, that it’s US soldiers participating in the killings,’’ the friend, whose ties to Bushnell have been verified by The NY Post, claimed.
“His actual job involves the processing of intelligence data. Some of what he was processing had to do with the Israeli Gaza conflict.
“One of the things he told me is that coming across his desk … was the US military was involved in the genocides going on in Palestine,’’ the friend said, referring to Israel’s war against the Palestinian terror group Hamas in Gaza.
“He told me that we had troops on the ground, you know, that were there and were killing large numbers of Palestinians.
“There’s just too many things I don’t know, but I can tell you that the tone of his voice just had something in it that told me he was scared,’’ the buddy said. “I’ve never heard that tone come out of him.”
The White House has repeatedly said it will not put US troops on the ground in Gaza and President Biden has said he hopes to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas this week.
But US Special Operations forces have been deployed in Israel since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack, according to the New York Times, to “identify hostages, including American hostages,” after over 200 were taken by the group during their raid.
Special Forces have also been on hand to assist with strategy for Israeli troops in Gaza, who are flushing out Hamas members from the network of underground tunnels under the territory, but US says troops are “not assigned any combatant roles,” the publication added
The friend — who noted he does not “support Hamas in any way, shape or form” — said he was surprised as Bushnell never previously violated his military clearance.
“He’s had a security clearance for four years now, and it is the only time that he has ever, as far as I know, broke protocol and gave out information that he shouldn’t have,’’ the pal said of their conversation.
“He was frightened,’’ the friend said of Bushnell, who grew up in a controversial religious compound in a tiny seaside town in Massachusetts, but ended up fatally lighting himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, around 1 p.m. Sunday while screaming, “Free Palestine!”
In the minutes before setting himself alight, Bushnell had a live-streamed a short video address where he said he would “no longer be complicit in genocide.”
In his final Facebook post Bushnell also wrote: “Many of us like to ask ourselves … What would I do if my country was committing genocide? The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
