John Cullen
John Cullen (@I_Am_JohnCullen on X, with long-form commentary on YouTube and Patreon) is the open-source investigator most responsible for putting aircraft at the centre of the Charlie Kirk investigation. His flight-record method — pulling ADS-B tracks, altitude and speed profiles, and departure fields, then asking what an airframe was doing at that altitude at that minute — set the template other researchers copied. His claim inventory is compiled at John Cullen — X Posts.
Cullen is also the clearest example on this site of a researcher whose work cuts both ways. He advanced the most aggressive intelligence-aircraft theory in the case, and he is simultaneously the most prominent skeptic of the Egyptian-jet "armada" theory that other investigators built. Both positions are recorded below.
The N1098L HADES thesis
Cullen's signature contribution is the flight profile of N1098L — a U.S. Army HADES-class ISR aircraft (callsign AXLE10) — near Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025. Per his posts, the aircraft descended to roughly 204–335 feet AGL and slowed to about 118 knots within two miles of campus roughly 20 minutes after the shot, and had flown a similar profile about three hours before it. (Source)
He argues the aircraft is a military or CIA-linked ISR asset capable of signals-intelligence collection, and that if it was ISR-tasked, the federal government holds airborne sensor records of the kill zone that have never been produced. The full flight-profile analysis is on the N1098L page; the wider program context is at ISR Operations, and the departure field he traced the track back to is covered at Biggs Army Airfield.
The drone launch-and-recovery theory
In Patreon and YouTube commentary titled "Why Was a Pentagon HADES Spy Plane at the Scene of Charlie Kirk's Assassination, Twice That Day?", Cullen went further than surveillance and promoted a drone launch/recovery theory — that an armed UAV, rather than the charged suspect, fired the shot. Related posts claim a UAV took off seven seconds before Kirk was shot and that TPUSA drones were airborne over UVU an hour before the event. (Source)
This is Cullen's stated theory, not a confirmed finding, and it has not been substantiated. It is laid out in full at N1098L Air-Launched Drones and Provo Airport Counter-UAS.
The refutation, recorded alongside it
@TJPHager, by his own account, set out specifically to refute Cullen's drone-deployment claim. His counter-argument is that the airframe carried interior equipment only, with no exterior modifications matching the full HADES ME-11B contracted specification a genuine drone-launch platform would require — and that the low passes are explained by routine ISR training. This site records the refutation next to the claim so the aggressive theory is not presented as settled.
N55906 — "the gorilla in the room"
Cullen has repeatedly flagged a second tail number, N55906, as an aircraft of interest alongside N1098L. His framing: "HADES N1098L is the elephant in the room. N55906 is the gorilla in the room." He has not published a confirmed route or operator for it, so the site records it as an open lead worth pulling records on, not as a finding.
Where Cullen pushed back: the maintenance-contract dismissal
The Egyptian and Israel-linked VIP jets parked at Provo — SU-BTT, SU-BND, SU-BTU, SU-BTV, SU-BGM — became one of the largest threads in the case. Cullen dismissed a strong association between those aircraft and the assassination, citing long-standing Falcon and VIP-jet maintenance contracts with Duncan Aviation at Provo said to date back to roughly 1999. In his reading, a foreign government fleet cycling through a U.S. MRO facility is a decades-old routine arrangement, not an operation.
He is reported to have walked back an earlier drone-association speculation about SU-BTT on the same grounds. Critics of the dismissal note a Dassault Falcon is not serviced every two weeks — so the maintenance-versus-operation question turns on realistic MRO frequency. The full argument on both sides is at Egyptian Armada and Egyptian Crew Hotel.
That a researcher who pushed the hardest aircraft theory in the case also killed the second-hardest one is the strongest available evidence that the plane work is not uniform conspiracy-building.
Method and influence
Cullen's flight-record technique became shorthand among other researchers. Flight-record investigator @AnaEscobarShow wrote that she planned to go "John-Cullen-level autist on the flight records" while working the N102DZ Provo ground movements — a direct citation of his method rather than his conclusions.
Case notes also record a second-hand account that a contact at the National Counterterrorism Center said officials there were not aware of N1098L's flight path and described the maneuvers as "too damning" alongside the drone findings. That is an attributed, second-hand account, not a confirmed official statement.
Status: John Cullen — Alive
Laws (Charlie Kirk)
- Airborne sensor records, ADS-B and radar tapes, HADES tasking orders, and any drone flight logs for September 10, 2025 are precisely the categories of federal record the Charlie Kirk Investigation Laws are written to force into the open — the fastest way to settle Cullen's theory in either direction.
What This Site Does and Does Not Say
This page documents public commentary and open-source analysis. Nothing here is a finding by this website that any living person committed a crime, acted unlawfully, or had advance knowledge of the assassination. Cullen's drone theory in particular is recorded as an unproven claim with its principal refutation attached.