A video showing dozens of United Nations vehicles parked at a Maryland warehouse gave way to the baseless claim that the organization is establishing its presence in the U.S.
The caption of an Oct. 18 Facebook video read, in all capital letters: “The United Nations is already coming and setting up shop in U.S. states for when WW3 is officially declared.”
In the video, a man introduces himself as Alistair Williamson and says he’s in Hagerstown, Maryland. He then shows footage of what he calls a convoy of U.N. armored vehicles and shipping containers that say “U.N.”
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The video misleads about why the vehicles were in Maryland.
We found a YouTube channel under Williamson’s name and it included a longer version of the video shared to Facebook. The longer version was uploaded in September 2017.
An article linked in the YouTube video’s caption — no longer accessible but archived here — included the location of the Hagerstown warehouse in the video. A portion of the warehouse was previously leased to the U.S. General Services Administration. The U.S. Department of State listed a site under the same address as of 2016.
When asked about the claim, a State Department spokesperson told PolitiFact that U.N. peacekeeping vehicles were manufactured in the U.S. and stored at a State Department warehouse in Hagerstown, Maryland, until they were shipped overseas.
The spokesperson said the vehicles were used exclusively in U.N. peace operations abroad.
The U.N. conducts peacekeeping operations that include protecting civilians and disarming ex-combatants.
U.N. peacekeepers include civilian, military and police personnel from member states. Similar claims have been circulating for years about U.N. vehicle sightings in Virginia and Kentucky, Toronto, and New South Wales, Australia. In all cases, fact-checkers confirmed the vehicles were to be shipped to other continents.
The video doesn’t prove that the United Nations is “setting up shop in U.S. states.” We rate that claim False.
