CHRISTOVAL, Tex. – A few years ago, a man named Crockett Keller wearing a wide-brimmed cowboy hat reached for the butt of his holstered gun as I approached him for an interview outside his cabin in a small Texas town. He had received death threats after he declared in an ad for one of his gun classes that he refused to teach liberals and Muslims. Once we sorted things out — “I was looking to see if you were armed,” he said — Mr. Keller put his weapon in his truck and agreed to talk.
The moral of the story is that when reporters knock on doors in rural Texas, they must do so politely, quickly and a tad nervously.
On Tuesday afternoon, as I walked toward a house in this West Texas town, a photographer by my side, I wondered if Mr. Keller had moved to Christoval. A Confederate battle flag waved on the porch. A wooden sign next to the screen door featured an image of a machine gun and read: “Warning: The door you are about to break down is locked for your protection!”
Christoval has been in a state of low-grade anxiety and mild unease. It is one of more than a dozen mostly rural communities in Texas where a military exercise called Jade Helm 15 will be conducted starting Wednesday. The exercise — a seven-state war game featuring helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, weapons loaded with blanks, and military personnel playing the roles of both the good and bad guys —
has fueled speculation and paranoia that it is part of a plot to take over Texas or to take away people’s guns.
The goateed man who opened the screen door had a cigarillo in his mouth. He was not Mr. Keller, but he shared some of the same traits, and he seemed to embody the fears and suspicions Jade Helm 15 has produced in ordinary people. After I identified myself as a reporter and told the man that we were in town to cover the war game exercises, he stepped out, closed the front door and the screen door, and said we should all sit down on the porch.
His name was Scott Degenaer, 53, a retired Navy veteran. He was funny, frank, courteous, tough, smart and paranoid, all at once.
“I’ve been involved in several military exercises but never of this scale,” he said, puffing his cigarillo. “Excuse me, I know how you New Yorkers are about smoke.” I told him I live in Houston, but it scored me no points.
He complained that officials in Tom Green County never advertised that they were going to be briefed by the military about their plans to conduct the exercise in the county. Videos were available to the public of the presentations Army officials made to other counties. “I started looking through our back records online with our county commissioners’ court,” Mr. Degenaer said. “And I went all the way through March, and there was one video I couldn’t access. But I backdoored it — didn’t hack it; they had a smaller link going to it — and then it was suddenly available. So I watched that.”
And what was his level of concern?
“My level of warm fuzziness?” he said with a smirk. “Let’s say my needle would be right in the neutral area ready to peg either to green or red.”
He talked about his frustration with the Obama administration. I asked him if he knew that the military wanted to use the community center a few blocks away for a Jade Helm 15 activity. He was not really listening, though. He was looking carefully at the photographer, Tamir Kalifa, who was wearing boots and who happens to have a beard.
“I like the way this gentleman is dressed,” he said, looking at Mr. Kalifa. “He’s wearing old combat boots.” He pointed out our neat, short haircuts and said Special Operations troops grow beards. He asked if we had military identification. We assured him we did not, and the interview went on.
Later, he noticed the car I was driving had California plates and asked why. I told him it was a rental from the airport in San Angelo. He asked why I would fly rather than drive from Houston. I told him my press identification was in the car and maybe I should get it. He said it was all right, and we continued talking.
He talked about the logistics of a military takeover. “Martial law would be hard to do on the bigger cities with as thin as our military is right now,” he said. “But then that’s why all these other federal branches, agencies and departments that never had use for weapons and ammo before suddenly have them. B.L.M.: They’ve got SWAT teams. Why do they have to have SWAT teams?” he said about the Bureau of Land Management. “I.R.S.: Why do they have to have SWAT teams? You put all these federal departments together, you’ve got your own little army.”
After the interview, I drove to the parking lot of the community center and worked from the passenger seat of the car on my laptop. After several minutes, Mr. Degenaer pulled up in his truck. I showed him my press cards, and it seemed to put him at ease.
We talked about the military using the community center for what one local official described as an “altercation site” for the Army war game. Mr. Degenaer said there were retired veterans in the area. He was concerned they would be alarmed by a mock altercation if they had PTSD, and he worried that the cars would prevent emergency vehicles at the fire station next door from getting out.
A few hours later, my cellphone rang. It was Mr. Degenaer. He had a tip: The Sam’s Club store in San Angelo appeared to have suddenly closed, and there was a fence preventing people from looking inside. Maybe it was Jade Helm.
The next day a spokesman for the company told me that the fence is unrelated to the military’s presence. The store is undergoing a remodeling and is still open to the public.