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Minh Connors

Even before he started talking about assassinations and homemade bombs a couple of months ago, “Duke” had weirded out his fellow members in an anti-government militia group.

He belonged to the Virginia Kekoas, a cluster of armed “preppers” in the Norfolk area. Leaders recalled he asked nosy questions about the group’s finances and tried to bring an unvetted friend to a weapons training. For security, the Kekoas prefer using only nicknames, even among themselves, but they said in interviews that Duke’s odd behavior led them to uncover his real identity: Russell Vane IV. The Post verified his identity through phone and employment records.

Vane, 42, was a former Marine reservist with an intelligence background whose loose talk about explosives and Russian government connections unnerved his fellow militia members. The Kekoas kicked him out in early March, suspecting he was either a government informant trying to set them up or an unstable militant heading for trouble — either way, a dangerous liability.

But the decision posed a conundrum: How does a group that doesn’t trust the government warn authorities about a potential threat?

They turned to the independent journalist Ford Fischer, whose News2Share outlet is known for coverage of activist and militant movements. Fischer, who posted a 34-minute <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmbd3vOXTrM" target=_blank>YouTube video</a> and <a href="https://x.com/FordFischer/status/1774773763013324943" target=_blank>long thread</a> on X detailing the Kekoas’ removal of Vane, told The Washington Post that such a public warning was “unprecedented” in his seven years of chronicling the shadowy militia world.

Two members, using their real names, provided Fischer screenshots of private chats and details about internal operations in a blow-by-blow account of the weeks leading up to Vane’s ouster. The result was a rare look at the self-policing and increased vigilance inside militia-style groups following the Justice Department’s landmark seditious conspiracy cases against extremists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/january-6-capitol-riot/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Jan. 6</a>, 2021.

Since the Capitol attack dragnet, extremism researchers say, many anti-government groups have given up national organizing, moving underground and operating in a more diffuse, local manner. They’re also “highly attuned to newcomers” for signs of either law enforcement infiltrators or violent actors who could ensnare them in federal charges, said Amy Cooter of the Middlebury Institute’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism.

“This is a case where these folks clearly trust the public marketplace more so than they do a direct report to the feds,” said Cooter, whose <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nostalgia-Nationalism-US-Militia-Movement/dp/1032421975" target=_blank>book </a>on the militia movement was released in February. “To me, it comes across as them wanting to have a public paper trail.”

The group’s trail on Vane ends March 11, when he was informed of his removal by text message. Since then, the Kekoas said, they’ve had no contact. The Post, like Fischer, was unable to reach Vane for comment despite multiple attempts. An obituary for Vane was posted online, then removed.

In interviews, two members who agreed to be identified publicly, told The Post they spent hours revisiting every interaction, going down conspiratorial rabbit holes to solve the mystery that has upended their small, tightknit group: Who was “Duke” and what were his intentions?

Like many other armed factions on the right, the Virginia Kekoas transformed after the Capitol attack to avoid law enforcement scrutiny. They broke from the “boogaloo” movement that promotes violent revolution and rebranded to focus on Second Amendment activism and doomsday prepping.

Extremism monitors categorize groups like the Kekoas as part of the anti-government militia movement, which has points of overlap with white-supremacist organizing but typically tries to distinguish itself by espousing a “constitutionalist,” libertarian-leaning ideology. The Kekoas say racists have no place in their organization.

“Many of these guys really interpret what they’re doing as lawful, as complementing the government, as complementing the Constitution,” Cooter said.

The Virginia Kekoas operate largely in the open and are among the most visible groups on the state’s crowded militia scene. The Post interviewed members <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2023/ar-15-armed-extremist-militia-groups/" target=_blank>for a series about the AR-15 rifle last year</a> and photographed them outside the Virginia Capitol in January <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/01/15/virginia-assembly-gun-rights-rally/" target=_blank>during a demonstration against gun-control laws</a>.

Mindful of the conspiracy convictions for leaders of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, the Kekoas said they’ve loosened their organizational structure and don’t collect dues or have chapters. They’ve also doubled down on the vetting of recruits, citing the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/09/15/gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-aquittal/" target="_blank">kidnapping plot</a> involving Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) as a reminder to be on alert for infiltrators pushing violence.

Duke drew suspicions as soon as he contacted the Kekoas in April 2022 to express interest in membership. They said he told them he was a U.S. Marine veteran who worked in the intelligence field and lived in Northern Virginia. When they met up in person, members said, Duke looked more like a Beltway bureaucrat than a gun-toting woodsman.

“We’re a bunch of ragtag-looking dudes,” said Cody Beckner, a member who goes by “Sasquatch” for his large build and scraggly appearance. Duke, on the other hand, was military-sharp, with pristine firearms and a blond coif that the Kekoas teasingly referred to as “the fed haircut.”

Ryan M. Kelly

For more than a year, Duke remained in a private vetting chat group where the Kekoas sized him up. Early on, he had irked some of the guys with questions about group finances — a no-no in an era of conspiracy cases — and by asking about forming his own chapter in Northern Virginia before he was an official member.

Beckner said leaders tried to keep in mind that Duke was new to the movement and might not understand that such probing “makes people nervous.” They agreed to conduct “extra monitoring on this guy,” Beckner said.

Nicknames or call signs are common in the militia world as an extra layer of security that protects the wider group in case of questioning by authorities, but the Kekoas probed beyond Duke’s nom de guerre because of his tales of combat as a Marine and his claims of working in the intelligence world, including ties to the Defense Department and CIA.

If his story checked out, the Kekoas said, that background could be an asset to the group. If it didn’t, they might have a problem.

The Kekoas said Duke seemed shocked when they figured out his real identity, which Beckner said they found easily through a phone number he used, a lapse in digital security that struck them as sloppy for someone supposedly in the intelligence field. They confirmed his identity by matching the name to a high school photo of Vane on <a href="http://ancestry.com/" target=_blank>Ancestry.com</a>. They said he then switched to using burner phones.

In August, after a year of vetting and much internal discussion, the Kekoas finally welcomed Vane as an official member. As Beckner recalled: “Of all the votes we’ve had to vote people in or let them go, that was the most divided.”

At a Second Amendment rally in Gloucester, Va., where a reporter from The Post was present, the Kekoas were all heavily armed but Vane went a step farther by “going prone,” lying on the ground with his rifle pointed toward a school parking lot as cars passed by.

“He was being more tactical than he needed,” Kekoas leader Eddie Ray, who goes by “Ice,” recalled in Fischer’s video interview.

In Richmond in September, after a night of heavy drinking at the goodbye party of a militia associate who was leaving to fight in Ukraine, Vane took out a knife when the group encountered a seemingly drug-addled man as they walked along a dark street, two members recalled.

“I patted him on the back and was like, ‘Put that away,’” Beckner said.

The next incident came in December, when Vane asked to bring an unknown friend to a firearms training session, as documented by the text exchanges in Fischer’s report. The friend, according to Vane, was in the United States on a work visa, a status that, with few exceptions, makes it illegal to own or keep a gun. When the Kekoas said no, they told The Post, Vane was disgruntled and gave excuses for missing the training.

They didn’t see him again until Jan. 15, when Vane left an annual rally at the Virginia Capitol without saying goodbye, skipping a group meal at a Richmond pub. “He just bolted,” Beckner said.

Then, on Feb. 5, Ray said he received a text from Vane that caused alarm. According to the screenshots published by Fischer, Vane wrote: “Would you be interested in learning some things about HME or is that too spicy for this stage of the game.”

Homemade explosives, Vane explained, using a blast emoji. Unsettled, the Kekoas held a group call that night during which Vane was warned against that line of discussion. “We’re not about that,” Ray recalled telling him.

Two days later, in a chat group with members of other regional militias, Ray and Beckner told The Post that Vane floated the idea of collecting hydrogen peroxide, which they interpreted as a second reference to bombmaking in a week.

“We all went quiet,” Beckner recalled.

Beckner said leaders later ripped into Vane on a “pretty intense” video call. The thrust of it, he said, was: “We don’t want anything to do with this. We’re not terrorists. We are not going to get ‘Whitmer plotted.’ We are not going to be involved in any of this.”

“We put him on a 60-day probationary period, but before we could even really tell him that, he screwed up a third time,” Beckner said.

The Kekoas had joined another regional prepper group to train in the woods in early March. During a “land navigation” exercise, Ray recalled, he and Vane hiked out to a spot where “it was just me and him and nobody around.” Ray said he asked Vane to turn his phone off. The private setting, Ray said, was ideal for a tough talk about the group’s suspicions.

“At which point he brings up Russia,” Ray said. “He said, ‘What if I could put you in touch with a Russian dignitary at a Russian embassy that would be willing to pay up to $50,000 a month to unify all militias in Virginia?’”

“I looked at him and said, ‘You’re f---ing crazy,’” Ray said.

Later at the campsite, before the Kekoas could consult privately on the Russia comments, Ray said Vane again raised eyebrows after a convoy training.

“Out of the blue, he looked at the leader of the other group and said, ‘Do y’all have a plan if the president gets assassinated?’” Ray recalled.

At home that evening, before a leadership call to deal with the problem, Beckner remembered that in the morning Vane had handed him a file marked, “Confidential.” He opened it and found Defense Intelligence Agency reports related to homemade explosives precursors. The documents were pictured in screenshots published in Fischer’s report. The Post did not independently verify the provenance of the papers.

“It freaked me the hell out,” Beckner told Fischer. He added that the documents, marked for official use only, reminded him of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/discord-leaks/" target=_blank>the case of Jack Teixeira</a>, the military computer technician who pleaded guilty last month to leaking highly classified government intelligence.

Explosives. Russia. An intelligence dossier. It was all too much for a small prepper group in the woods of southeastern Virginia.

“My name ain’t Tom Clancy,” Beckner said.

The Kekoas went into damage-control mode, severing all ties with Vane and removing him from chat groups. Then they made the unusual decision of going public via Fischer, whom they knew and trusted.

“If we’re playing poker, we’re putting all our cards out there,” Ray said. “Ultimately, the interview thing was better than turning stuff over to a government agency we thought might be trying to entrap us.”

Despite the hours of detailed interviews with militia members and a cache of screenshots, only a fuzzy portrait has emerged of the man who calls himself Duke.

A review of his social media activity by The Post shows that he portrayed himself as a family man with young children and interests in sports and the outdoors. He posted frequently about the military, raising awareness about depression and suicide among service members.

Like Fischer, The Post tried unsuccessfully to reach Vane by phone, email and through his parents, whose home in Arlington, Va., is listed as his address. Some elements of the stories Vane told the Kekoas checked out through public records, though other details about his employment history and military service could not be verified. The FBI declined to comment on whether Vane was on the bureau’s radar.

The Marine Corps confirmed that Vane served as an intelligence specialist for eight years and left as a staff sergeant in 2017. Records show he was a reservist, not active duty. He received an Overseas Service Ribbon and a Global War on Terror service medal, but it was unclear whether the battlefield tales he shared with the Kekoas ever occurred. Next to “deployments” on his service record are the words “none noted,” though he could have worked overseas in other capacities.

Vane told the Kekoas he was working as an intelligence analyst for a defense contractor. The Post wasn’t able to verify his current place of employment. More than a decade ago, Vane worked at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, according to an old <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/booz-allen-hamilton_today-we-thank-all-our-employees-who-have-activity-5805729874627170304-NLF_?trk=public_profile" target=_blank>news release</a> about veteran employees that mentions “Russell ‘Duke’ Vane, a Marine who recently returned from deployment.” A spokesperson for Booz Allen Hamilton said he left the company more than 10 years ago.

On Wednesday, two days after the publication of his Kekoas report, Fischer discovered an obituary <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20240403173825/https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/russell-vane-iv-obituary?id=54784523" target=_blank>posted on Legacy.com</a> that said Vane had died in Vienna, Va., on March 11, the same date he was notified of being kicked out of the militia. No cause of death was given. The online post eulogized him for “his bravery and outspoken nature” and said he’d “struggled with a disability that impacted his brain and perception of reality.”

Fischer, horrified by the news but skeptical because of the wording, said he set about trying to verify Vane’s death. A close friend of Vane’s — the one he’d tried to bring to the firearms training — told Fischer he’d spoken with Vane since March 11 and would know if something were wrong. Fischer provided The Post with the full identity of the man and a recording of his interview. The man did not return a message from The Post seeking comment.

Jennifer Starkey, administrator of the Virginia medical examiner’s Northern District office, which handles deaths in Fairfax County, said there was no record matching Vane, but added that not all deaths fall under the district’s jurisdiction and that not all deaths are reported.

The profile picture on what appears to be Vane’s Facebook page was changed on April 1. Vane’s mother, a business owner, posts regular social media updates that make no mention of a death in the family. She also has commented on Vane’s page in recent days. An attempt to contact her by phone was unsuccessful.

Vane’s father is a data scientist and war game designer whose statements and published writings refer to a career in defense and intelligence work. He did not reply to a voice-mail message or email.

The Post tried again on April 4 to reach Vane. This time, someone picked up on the cellphone number identified as his by the Kekoas and public records. A muffled male voice answered, saying, “Who are you?” When asked for comment about the Kekoas video, the person, sounding pained, whispered, “Duke killed himself. Could you just leave us alone?” He hung up and did not respond to follow-up texts.

The online obituary disappeared April 5. The Post could not verify whether Vane had died.

For the Kekoas, who already operate in a paranoid, conspiracy-fueled milieu, the strange twists reinforce their deep suspicions about government infiltration and covert operations. “This feels like a crazy dream but it’s reality,” Ray posted on X.

“I’m confident we as leadership in the Kekoas made the right decision to put him out and go public with it,” Ray said. “What doesn’t feel comfortable is that, even though his life is right in front of us, I don’t know what this guy’s next move will be.”

Alex Horton contributed to this report.

Nieman Fellow, 2009, Harvard University

Overseas Press Club Hal Boyle Award for coverage of Iraq (McClatchy team)

George Polk Award for coverage of Syria (McClatchy team)

National religion reporting awards including the Wilbur, the Goldziher Prize and Religion News Association

University of Oklahoma, BA in mass communications

Hannah Allam covers extremism and domestic terrorism as part of the National Security team.

Hannah Allam

University of Southern California, B.A. in Journalism

Razzan Nakhlawi is a researcher on The Post's National Security desk.

Razzan Nakhlawi

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