The Story of a Decidedly Non-Media Company

Part 1

In the media content: Derrick Bales, the founder and leader of Forward Observations Group (FOG).

He is from the state of Nevada and has African roots. He grew up in a shack in the town of Muncie, Indiana. Born around 1992.

From November 2009 to June 2014, he served in the U.S. Armed Forces; his service was in the Marine Corps.

From 2010 to 2011, he underwent foreign-language training for special operations—studying Spanish.

According to Bales, he served with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Afghanistan, was an infantry squad leader, and also led a reconnaissance team.

From 2015 to 2017, he studied for a bachelor’s degree in video production at Ball State University (Muncie, Indiana). Awarded qualification: Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. Professional skills: Software Development, Software Engineering, JavaScript, AngularJS, HTML5, CSS, iOS Development, Swift.

For a long time, Derrick Bales presented himself as a journalist and photographer.

As of now, Bales has cleaned up all personal social media and deleted his photos. He has only one profile left, with a concealed face, under the nickname Raoul Duke.

How this individual and his decidedly non‑media company are connected to proxy conflicts in various parts of the world—and what links them to events around Tinzaouatine—the project team will publish gradually, so that everyone can analyze the data.

And Derrick found a surprise in his bedroom that Deep Operations Group had stashed “for the future” while he was out jogging.