Exclusive: Operation Excalibur in Los Angeles Was Show of Force
Leaks from military's LA deployment reveal Coca Cola vs. Pepsi rivalry, sweaty guardsmen, and abject failure
- The mission of the 1st Squadron, 18th Cavalry is described as protecting DHS [Department of Homeland Security] “security points and blocking positions” while they undertook their assault.
- The Squadron was ordered not to “restrict pedestrian movement” and not to “conduct law enforcement activities.”)
Per the briefing:
"On order, 1-18th Cavalry Squadron provides static inter-agency site protection, mounted mobile security, and Joint Force Land Component Command (JFLCC) Reserve support to Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and supporting federal agencies, whose intent at MacArthur Park is to demonstrate, through a show of presence, the capacity and freedom of maneuver of federal law enforcement within the Los Angeles Joint Operations Area (JOA)."
The operation was meticulously planned, the threat listed as “HIGH.”
“Criminal elements, likely including FTO [foreign terrorist organization] MS-13 consider the park their home ‘turf’ and could escalate to lethal violence,” a threat assessment warned.
Then all that planning went bust.
- “We were on the objective for 24 minutes,” a National Guard member told me.
- “Many of the phase lines were not reported because they didn’t happen. So we parked and then left.
- Soldiers didn’t get out of trucks.
- They] stayed in the back of the 5-tons [military trucks] sweating in the heat.”
- Part of the reason for the confusion is the sheer number of government agencies involved. In this operation, according to the documents, nine different federal agencies (including the IRS) were given radio code names based on soda brands (Pepsi, Coke, 7-UP, etc.) —that is, except for ICE, which was codenamed “Inca,” which may or may not be the Peruvian cola of the same name.
One Army source told me that it all felt like some joint military operation overseas, where soldiers need to identify themselves as “friendlies” on congested battlefields.
Treating Los Angeles as a foreign country with insurgents to be defeated, military and homeland security intelligence views MacArthur Park as a viper’s nest of illegality. An intelligence briefing produced by Army North, the task command overseeing military operation, says of the “symbolic significance” of the park:
“The founding location of MS-13, MacArthur park represents an area of historic lawlessness where criminal organizations openly defy local and federal law, including immigration law.”
The Park, the same briefing says, is also “the largest open-air market” of fake IDs facilitating human trafficking in the entire Southwest. Per the briefing:
“MacArthur park functions as the largest open-air market of fake identification to enable illegal immigration and human trafficking in the Southwest United States. Entire sections of the 35 square acre park host open buying and selling of fake identification and other illegal goods in broad daylight. Federal agents confirmed that these activities continued at MacArthur park within the last week.”
No word yet on the role of the junior varsity sodas — the Los Angeles Police Department or Pepsi and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department or R/C (Royal Crown) — in this chaotic operation, but members of the Los Angeles City Council have previously contacted me asking if I could explain to them what the federal government is up to in the park.
Many of the soldiers involved, I’m told, view their mission as unnecessary and even ridiculous, with the Trump administration ordering the spectacle and the Pentagon leadership and chain of command smartly saluting.
Leadership, soldiers say, have been talking about establishing some kind of command facility akin to a “forward operating base” in the Park, an idea so provocative that the proposal keeps getting kicked far down the road. Below is one of several Army briefings on MacArthur going back to June.
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Four Fears about ICE, Trump's New Masked Monster
We're about to pour $200 billion into immigration enforcement—but understanding specifically why this is a bad idea is important.
Garrett Graff
July 07, 2025 • Reading Time: 17 minutes
Welcome to Doomsday Scenario, my regular column on national security, geopolitics, history, and—unfortunately—the fight for democracy in the Trump era. I hope if you’re coming to this online, you’ll consider subscribing right here. It’s easy—and free:
There are many reasons Trump’s new giant domestic agenda, the so-called one big beautiful bill, will be a tragedy for our country — a mean-spirited, life-wrecking, community-destroying stain on our history — from the fact that it will gut our health care safety net, force the closure of rural hospitals, and cut food supports to fund tax breaks for the wealthiest. I mean: How cruel do you have to be to raise taxes on those making less than $15,000 a year? How do you look at those making less than $15,000 a year and say, “You have it too easy and the billionaires need more of your money?”
But as someone who has covered federal law enforcement for the last two decades and has spent recent years writing both about the state of democracy today and authoring history books about the fall of fascism in Europe in the 1930s, it’s hard not to look at the new legislation and fear, most of all, how we’re turbo-charging an increasingly lawless regime of immigration enforcement and adding superpowers to America’s newly masked secret police.
President Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at the “Alligator Alcatraz” concentration camp in Florida.
As the New Republic summarized, “The bill is effectively a blank check, funding pretty much every aspect of the administration’s ramp-up of enforcement, detention, and surveillance: hiring nearly 20,000 additional immigration agents across Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, constructing more border walls, building detention facilities for tens of thousands of additional people, and so on.”
It’s easy intellectually to realize that pouring $200 billion dollars into immigration deportation and expulsion efforts is a bad idea, but I haven’t seen a lot of reporting and analysis that breaks down the why. So I wanted to write today about why specifically we should fear this increase in ICE funding — many of these reasons are related and intersect, but to me there are four unique and specific reasons that we should be deeply fearful about what pouring $200 billion of combustible rocket fuel on our immigration enforcement will do to our country.
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