A QUESTIONABLE MILITARY RECORD

If the Posse Comitatus Act is rewritten or eliminated, the recent history of the Defense Department has done little to inspire confidence that traditional American liberties will be respected.

For example, following the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon announced the creation of an Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) designed to present a more favorable view of the US military to foreign news media. The new unit provoked an immediate controversy when it was learned that it planned to influence international opinion by planting false stories in the foreign media. Critics felt such phony stories might find their way back to the domestic media. This, of course, was nothing new. The CIA had done the same thing for decades but this was too blatant. Even the major media, including the New York Times, were stirred to action.

In a rare step backward, the government announced in early 2002 the office would be closed. Rumsfeld, while arguing that criticism of the office was “off the mark,” nevertheless admitted that, “the office has been so damaged that…it's pretty clear to me that it cannot function.”

However, the defense secretary refused to let the matter lie. At a November 18, 2002, press briefing, Rumsfeld brought up the controversial office, defiantly stating, “And then there was the Office of Strategic Influence. You may recall that. And ‘oh my goodness gracious isn't that terrible, Henny Penny, the sky is going to fall.’ I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing fine I’ll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I’m gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.”

Rumsfeld's vow to continue the program of disinformation was not repeated in the corporate mass media yet apparently the functions of the OSI have continued within the Office of Global Communications, established by President Bush in 2002, and the Information Awareness Office (IAO), a creation also in 2002 of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the purpose of using surveillance and information-gathering technology to track suspected terrorists.

Causing further anxiety among knowledgeable persons was a plan revealed in late 2002 for the US Army to use computers to investigate hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Americans on the chance one might be a terrorist. The plan called for the Army's Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) headquartered at Fort Belvoir, VA, to use high-powered computers to secretly search email messages, credit card purchases, telephone records and bank statements on the chance that one might be associated, or sympathetic to, terrorists. Known as the Pentagon's new Information Awareness Office (IAO), this organization was to create a “vast centralized database” filled with information on the most minute details of citizens’ private lives.

To add insult to injury in the minds of opponents of this plan was the appointment of former National Security Adviser Vice Admiral John Poindexter to head this new office. Poindexter lost his national security adviser job in 1990 after being convicted of lying to Congress, defrauding the government and destroying evidence in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration. That scandal involved the illegal sale of weapons to Iran and the profits being sent illegally to the CIA-backed “Contra” army fighting in Nicaragua, all done in defiance of Congress. But as vice president of Syntek Technologies, Poindexter had worked with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop “Genoa,” a powerful search engine and information harvesting program. Poindexter's convictions were later reversed because Congress had promised him immunity for his testimony. “And he has been given a $200 million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans,” warned William Safire in the New York Times.

Critics, already suspicious over such an overreaching program so susceptible to abuse, were not assuaged by the DARPA logo, which depicts the occult “all-seeing eye” of knowledge perched on an incomplete pyramid overlooking an image of the Earth.

Christopher H. Pyle, a teacher of constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke College, wrote, “That law enforcement agencies would search for terrorists makes sense. Terrorists are criminals. But why the Army? It is a criminal offense for Army personnel to become directly involved in civilian law enforcement [the Posse Comitatus Act]. Are they seeking to identify anti-war demonstrators whom they harassed in the 1960s? Are they getting ready to round up more civilians for detention without trial, as they did to Japanese Americans during World War II? Is counterterrorism becoming the sort of investigative obsession that anti-Communism was in the 1950s and 1960s, with all the bureaucratic excesses and abuses that entailed? This isn't the first time that the military has slipped the bounds of law to spy on civilians. In the late 1960s, it secretly gathered personal information on more than a million law-abiding Americans in a misguided effort to quell anti-war demonstrations, predict riots and discredit protesters. I know because in 1970, as a former captain in Army intelligence, I disclosed the existence of that program.”

Pyle, in writing two book-length reports on the Army's spying for Senator Sam Ervin's Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, was struck by the harm that could be done if the government ever gained untraceable access to the financial records and private communications of its critics. “Army intelligence was nowhere near as bad as the FBI [with its infamous COINTEL program], but it responded to my criticisms by putting me on Nixon's enemies list, which meant a punitive tax audit. It also tried to monitor my mail and prevent me from testifying before Congress by spreading false stories that I had fathered illegitimate children. I often wondered what the intelligence community could do to people like me if it really became efficient.”

Today the national security apparatus is gaining that efficiency, thanks to the computer, yet the public awareness of the danger is not nearly as great as it was in the pre-computer 1970s.

Many people fear any control over the civilian population by the military, even in times of “national emergency,” will lead to draconian measures such as the establishment of large concentration camps.

FEMA’s call for contractors to build such camps did little to ease the anxiety of the more extreme conspiracy minded. The Internet is alive with sites detailing a string of concentration camps across America, just primed and waiting for the lines of detainees or dissidents to be herded inside.

For the uninitiated, this undoubtedly sounds like paranoia and most people pay little attention to what they perceive as delusional statements; however the record clearly shows that such camps do exist. Many such camps are in actuality military bases, either reported closed or maintained by skeleton crews. Others are operated by FEMA and some facilities began as World War II camps for Axis prisoners.

Author and retired USAR Lt. Col. Craig Roberts stated, “In actuality, there are two true sets of camps. First is the military, which can use any base at will to house detainees…Fort Chaffee, for instance, has in the past had warehouses full of mattresses, bunks, barbed wire rolls, fence posts, etc. All of these were to be used around empty barracks to provide for a detention facility if needed…Some of the‘closed’ military bases have been designated as ‘emergency holding facilities’ and already have barracks, mess halls, compounds and latrines in place. All they need are guards, administrators, logistics people and they're in business. All this can be accomplished in 72 hours…Operational plans are in existence for the ‘handling’ of civilian prisoners and laborers on military installations, both male and female.

“The second category is FEMA. We know they have let a contract for 1,000 ‘emergency relocation camps’ in case of widespread terrorism, biological or chemical attacks on the cities. Again, this can be speedy. The President can declare a national emergency, evoke [Executive Order] 11490, and take over the country without deferring to Congress or the Constitution. Bingo! New World Order in a couple of days.” Roberts said the most ominous of these potential concentration camps is located at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska. “Millions of acres adjoining this base have been deeded to the federal government by the State of Alaska. Its designated use is for a ‘mental health facility.’ It is our version of Siberia and the gulag,” he added.

The creation and maintenance—even the very existence—of such camps is lost in a bewildering maze of Executive Orders (EO) dating back to World War II. Many EOs can be traced to the Kennedy presidency and were issued under the duress of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Many of the EOs detailed on the Internet are outdated, canceled, revoked or superseded by others. Even a careful search of the Federal Register fails to clarify this issue.

But it is clear from the FEMA website that that agency has many plans—including tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding in addition to a nuclear or biological strike—that include evacuation of major cities. Where are those people to go? Who will feed them? How will they live? The answers to these questions remain elusive. And in the meantime, dozens of large military installations sit, mutely awaiting future inhabitants.

As the Department of Homeland Security moved closer to reality in 2002, the US military was also reshuffling its command structure to include a new United Command Plan which would include a new combatant command responsible for homeland security called US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). Headed by at least a four-star general or Flag Officer, USNORTHCOM would control all military efforts in North America, to include Alaska, Canada, the United States and Mexico and out to 500 nautical miles offshore. Conceived as part of the response to the War on Terrorism, an “appropriate” role also was under consideration for USNORTHCOM in the flagging War on Drugs.

Even though the Posse Comitatus Act seems to have been largely ignored in recent years, there were ongoing calls to alter or even abolish the law. In an October 2001, letter to Rumsfeld, Senator John Warner, a Republican from Virginia and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote, “Should this law [PCA] now be changed to enable our active-duty military to more fully join other domestic assets in this war against terrorism?”

This cry continued into late 2002 when Rep. Tom Trancredo along with members of the Immigration Reform Caucus and families of victims slain in the course of immigration troubles presented Congress with a petition demanding that military troops patrol the US borders. Jumping on the anti-terrorist bandwagon, Trancredo stated, “As long as our borders remain undefended, we cannot claim that we are doing everything possible to protect the nation from terrorism…It's time to authorize the deployment of military assets on our borders.”

Also in 2002, a FEMA official named John Brinkerhoff wrote a paper stating, “President Bush and Congress should initiate action to enact a new law that would set forth in clear terms a statement of the rules for using military forces for homeland security and for enforcing the laws of the United States. Things have changed a lot since 1878, and the Posse Comitatus Act is not only irrelevant but also downright dangerous to the proper and effective use of military forces for domestic duties.”

This paper remained on the Homeland Security website in 2010.