Just in Time for the Capitalist Meltdown: Army, Justice Department to Field "Pain Ray"

Back in July I reported that Raytheon (No. 4 on Washington Technology's "Top 100 List of Prime Defense Contractors," with $5,170,829,645 in revenue) was developing a microwave "non-lethal" weapons (NLW) system for the U.S. Army.

At a cost of $25 million, five truck-mounted NLWs will soon be shipped off to Iraq for heavy-lifting in Iraqi cities for use against militant oil workers and citizens should U.S. energy multinationals finally get their greedy little hands on that nation's oil wealth. A slimmed-down version of the Active Denial System (ADS) is sought for deployment in the "homeland. According to Aviation Week,

Raytheon is kicking off a U.S. Army program to mount Joint Silent Guardian non-lethal, directed energy weapons--with a range of more than 250 meters--on Ford 550 commercial trucks for crowd control.

The high power microwave (HPM) device heats water in a person's outer layers of skin to the point of pain. Tests have shown that the effects can reach through cracks in and around concrete walls and even through the glass of automobiles, company officials say. (David A. Fulghum, "High Power Microwave Nearly Operational," Aviation Week, October 9, 2008)

Aviation Week also reports "the program is expected to be awarded by year's end. A year after the contract is signed, the combination vehicle/weapons will start be fielded at the rate of one per month."

With the American automative industry in a death-spiral as a result of capital's historic credit crunch, what better means to "rescue" the industry than buying a fleet of Ford 550's for "crowd control."

Particularly handy for deployment in American cities should "rioters" object to a stolen presidential election or the state moves to terminate what little is left of the social "safety net" (in the interest of kick-starting the "recovery," of course) Silent Guardian is a product whose time has come!

Raytheon describes the system as "a revolutionary less-than-lethal directed energy application that employs millimeter wave technology to repel individuals or crowds without causing injury." Without a hint of irony considering its intended use, Silent Guardian is touted as a "protection system" that can "save lives" and even "de-escalate aggression." Designed as a tool for "law enforcement, checkpoint security" and "peacekeeping missions," the Department of Justice's (DoJ) National Institute of Justice (NIJ) has been hawking its "benefits" for several years. According to the NIJ:

NIJ is leveraging a less-lethal technology developed by the U.S. Department of Defense for use in law enforcement and corrections. The technology, called the Active Denial System, causes people to experience intolerable discomfort. It makes them stop, turn away and leave the area.

The Active Denial System emits electromagnetic radiation (radiofrequency waves) at 95 GHz. The system stimulates nerve endings and causes discomfort but does not cause permanent injury--the radiation penetrates less than 1/64th of an inch into a person's skin. Symptoms dissipate quickly when the device is turned off or the person moves away from the radiation beam. ...

NIJ has created a small working prototype of the military Active Denial System that law enforcement and correction officers can carry. ("Active Denial System Deters Subject without Harm," National Institute of Justice, October 25, 2007)

It now appears that Silent Guardian is ready for prime time.

But not so fast. A new report by Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung (DSF, German Foundation for Peace Research) physicist Dr. Jürgen Altmann, states that the ADS may be highly-damaging or even lethal. According to Dr. Altmann,

The Active Denial System (ADS) produces a beam of electromagnetic millimetre waves; such radiation is absorbed in the upper 0.4 mm of skin. The beam stays approximately 2 m wide out to many hundreds of metres. With a power of 100 kilowatts, the beam can heat the skin of target subjects to pain-producing temperature levels within seconds. With a prototype weapon, mounted in a military multi-purpose vehicle, the effects have been tested on hundreds of volunteers. In order to produce pain while preventing burn injury, the power and duration of emission for one trigger event is controlled by a software program. Model calculations show that with the highest power setting, second- and third-degree burns with complete dermal necrosis will occur after less than 2 seconds. Even with a lower setting of power or duration there is the possibility for the operator to re-trigger immediately. (Dr. Jürgen Altmann, "Millimetre Waves, Lasers, Acoustics for Non-Lethal Weapons? Physics Analyses and Inferences," Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung (DSF), 2008, p. 4)

Between 1995 and 2006, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) have spent approximately $51 million on the technology. What have U.S. taxpayers gotten for their money? Dr. Altmann avers,

In 2005 the military press reported about requests from the armed forces and mentioned fast deployment to Iraq. However, in September 2006 Secretary of the Air Force Wynne was quoted as being reluctant to deploy ADS on the battlefield; to avoid vilification in the world press it should be used on crowds in the US first.

In January 2007 a media day with live demonstrations of ADS system 1 was held at Moody AFB, Georgia. A deployment date of 2010 was mentioned; press reports said that the beam heats the skin to 50C [122F] without lasting harm, not mentioning the fact that this depends on the beam being switched off immediately when such a temperature is reached. (Altmann, op. cit., p. 18) [emphasis added]

Yes, you did read that correctly: "to avoid vilification" it was recommended that the pain beam "should be used on crowds in the US first." Dr. Altmann continues,

As a consequence, the ADS provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and third degree. Because the beam of diameter 2 m and above is wider than human size, such burns would occur over considerable parts of the body, up to 50% of its surface. Second- and third-degree burns covering more than 20% of the body surface are potentially life-threatening--due to toxic tissue-decay products and increased sensitivity to infection--and require intensive care in a specialised unit. Without a technical device that reliably prevents re-triggering on the same target subject, the ADS has a potential to produce permanent injury or death. (Altmann, op. cit., p. 24)

Never mind that the system may cause permanent injury or even death via "complete dermal necrosis," our capitalist masters are plowing full-speed ahead! A June 2007 accident report, initially covered-up by the JNLWD, reveals that a lack of operator training and the removal of ADS safety features led to a "test subject" suffering painful burns that required hospitalization in a burn unit. Obtained by Wired defense analyst Sharon Weinberger the internal JNLWD document describes how,

Crucially ... the "ADS Crew did not realize that the ADS, when it came back to 'stand-by' mode, had defaulted to the previous setting of 100% power and allowed at least a 4 second trigger pull." A casual, or secondary, factor was related to hardware: specifically, there was no working built-in range finder during the test, which could have helped prevent over-exposure.

Two people who reviewed the unredacted report for DANGER ROOM said the accident raises some basic questions about the weapon. Built-in range finders "have been basic features of high tech line-of-sight weapons and sensors for decades" and typically will prevent operators from using systems in an unsafe fashion, says one Pentagon official familiar with weapon's development. "Yet those critical safety features, that were integrated into the HMMWV [Humvee] ADS System 1, were removed by the AFRL [Air Force Research Lab] prior to testing, exposing the test subjects to unconscionable risks." (Sharon Weinberger, "Pain Ray Test Subjects Exposed to 'Unconscionable Risks'," Wired, October 14, 2008)

Just another day at the office for Pentagon weaponeers. And given how local beat cops love tasering "suspects," imagine the hijinks when the riot squad lets loose on a bunch of commie protesters down at the old Stock Exchange!

As University of Bradford researcher Neil Davison points out, the United States and their NATO "partners" are resisting any moves to restrict NLWs from being developed or deployed, despite risks to their intended "targets": "homeland" citizens rebranded as "rioters" and "domestic terrorists."

For emerging acoustic and directed energy weapons, however, there are no international agreements restricting their development and proliferation beyond compliance with international humanitarian law, and the additional protocol to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) that prohibits laser weapons intentionally designed to blind. Military establishments are keen to resist additional constraints on the development and use of "non-lethal" weapons technologies, as exemplified in a recent NATO report: "In order to ensure that NATO forces retain the ability to accomplish missions, it will be important that nations participating in NATO operations remain vigilant against the development of specific legal regimes which unnecessarily limit the ability to use NLWs." (Neil Davison, "The Contemporary Development of 'Non-Lethal' Weapons," Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project (BNLWRP), May 2007, p. 37)

In a telling--and chilling--description of why the ADS is "needed," the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, informs us,

The ADS will support a full spectrum of operations ranging from non-lethal methods of crowd and mob dispersal, checkpoint security, perimeter security, area denial, port protection, infrastructure protection and clarification of intent (identifying combatants from non-combatants). Most currently available non-lethal weapons use kinetic energy, where the size and range of the target can limit or change the effectiveness of the weapon. The range of the ADS is 10 times greater than other non-lethal weapons and will have the same compelling non-lethal effect on all human targets, regardless of size, age and gender. ("Frequently Asked Questions Regarding the Active Denial System," Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, no date) [emphasis added]

Yet despite these risks, the National Institute of Justice in a cool "risk-benefit" analysis worthy of Dr. Mengele, is very much interested in a "hand-held, probably rifle-sized, short range weapon that could be effective at tens of feet for law enforcement officials."

As global capitalism enters a new and potentially "terminal" phase of its disintegration, the U.S. ruling class and their European "partners" will increasingly resort to escalating levels of violence--from the criminalization of dissent to martial law--should "domestic terrorist" threats "get out of hand." A general deployment of "non-lethal weapons" for use in "homeland" cities clearly has a prominent role to play along this repressive continuum. As Durham University geographer Stephen Graham avers,

Those experiencing frequent 'terrorist' labelling by national governments or sympathetic media since 9/11 include anti-war dissenters, critical researchers, anti-globalization protestors, anti-arms-trade campaigners, ecological and freedom of speech lobbyists, and pro-independence campaigners within nations like Indonesia allied to the US. Protagonists of such a wide spectrum of opposition to transnational US dominance are thus all too easily dehumanized or demonized. Above all, they become radically delegitimized. Who, after all, will speak out in favour of 'terrorists' and their sympathizers? ("Cities and the 'War on Terror'," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 30.2, June 2006, p. 257)

And so it goes during the never-ending "Year Zero" of the Bush regime. Silent Guardian: Coming soon to a city near you!

Militarizing the "Homeland": NORTHCOM's Joint Task Force-Civil Support

Antifascist Calling reported October 6 that nine months prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Donald Rumsfeld signed off on revisions for the Pentagon's secretive Continuity of Operations Program (COOP).

Based on a document (AR 500-3) published by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks, it described "all hazards COOP planning" as the mechanism by which "the Army remains capable of continuing mission-essential operations during any situation, including military attack, terrorist activities, and natural or man-made disasters."

The Wikileaks document is all the more relevant since a September report in Army Times described how the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) would be deployed October 1 "under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North," the "service component" of NORTHCOM.

Since that article appeared September 8, Army Times has done a partial climb-down and now claims that the "non-lethal crowd control package" described earlier for operations in the heimat, "is intended for use on deployments to the war zone, not in the U.S., as previously stated."

But this mendacious claim by Army Times is belied by current political trends in the U.S. Under cover of the "war on terror," driftnet surveillance and moves toward suppressing dissent, most recently on display when protests during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions were criminalized and organizers were charged with "domestic terrorism" under the Patriot Act, are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Wholesale spying on activists by the Pentagon's now defunct Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), as well as revelations that State police agencies in Maryland routinely spied on antiwar organizers, shared this information with the National Security Agency and classified them as "terrorists" in government-run databases, are viewed as exemplary means to "keep the rabble in line"--and under wraps, if necessary.

A highly-disturbing report by Christopher Ketchum in the May/June 2008 issue of Radar Magazine, outlined how the top secret Main Core database linked to Continuity of Government contingency planning, "includes dissidents and activists of various stripes, political and tax protesters, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, gun owners, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, and a great many other harmless, average people."

Reporting in July for Salon, investigative journalist Tim Shorrock was told by a source that Main Core is "'an emergency internal security database system' designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law. Its name ... is derived from the fact that it contains 'copies of the 'main core' or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community'."

As the historic economic and political crisis gripping capitalism deepens and intensifies, and as stop-gap measures deployed by the U.S. Treasury Department intended to shore-up the crumbling financial sector crash, one by one, "forward thinking" ruling class factions are openly preparing a "Pinochet option" for the American people.

In this context, the militarization of domestic law enforcement is now coupled with the military's own rapid development and deployment of "non-lethal weapons" systems which inevitably, will be "shared" with civilian police for "crowd control." As with data mining, DHS spy-satellite surveillance, blanket CCTV coverage of American cities, illegal FBI deployment of infiltrators and provocateurs, "mission creep" by the Pentagon into civil affairs are signs that stronger measures to blunt the crisis may be in the offing. (For more on the Pentagon's development of NLW's, see: Antifascist Calling, "'Non-Lethal' Weapons: Where Science and Technology Service Repression," July 8, 2008; and, Antifascist Calling, "The Calmative Before the Storm," July 12, 2008)

During the recent Vibrant Response exercise at Fort Stewart, Georgia, three units of NORTHCOM's Consequence Management Response Force (CCMRF, pronounced "sea-smurfs"), including two combat units from the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Army Division and the elite 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade participated in mock drills designed to "coordinate with local governments and interagency organizations such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Emergency Management Agency," according to a report on U.S. Northern Command News.

Interestingly enough, Fort Stewart is also the site of a top secret NSA listening post that routinely "intercepted and transcribed satellite phone calls of American civilians in the Middle East for the NSA," according to a whistleblower and former Arab linguist attached to the illegal NSA project, Wired reports.

Code-named "Operation Highlander," the top secret program was initiated in the wake of the September 11 attacks on orders from the Bush administration. According to Wired,

If the allegations are true, it would seem to indicate that warrantless spying of Americans approved by President Bush following 9/11 expanded rapidly beyond U.S. borders to citizens overseas, notwithstanding United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18, or USSID 18--an NSA rule that bars overseas surveillance of Americans without authorization and probable cause. (Kim Zetter, "Inside Operation Highlander," Wired, October 10, 2008)

While the ostensible purpose of Vibrant Response was to wargame scenarios where chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive incidents (CBRNE) were launched "in the nation's heartland," what other events could trigger the declaration of a "national security emergency," or even martial law in the U.S.?

As Amy Goodman reported in a column for Democracy Now!

Military participation in domestic operations was originally outlawed with the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878. The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, however, included a section that allowed the president to deploy the armed forces to "restore public order" or to suppress "any insurrection." While a later bill repealed this, President Bush attached a signing statement that he did not feel bound by the repeal. ("Invasion of the Sea-Smurfs," Democracy Now!, October 2, 2008)

As I pointed out in my October 6 article, current Army doctrine is heavily-weighted towards contingency planning for "civil disturbances." While these programs are not new and in fact, plans such as Garden Plot and Cable Splicer have been integral to military doctrine since the late 1960s, what is new--and highly disturbing--is the launch of NORTHCOM's Joint Task Force Civil Support (JTF-CS).

Located at Ft. Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, JTF-CS is described on NORTHCOM's website as "a subordinate command of U.S. Northern Command, a unified combatant command formed in October 2002 to plan, organize and execute both homeland defense and civil support missions."

While NORTHCOM claims that JTF-CS would be deployed "only after a Governor requests federal assistance from the President, and after the President issues a Presidential Disaster Declaration," the Bush signing statement as well as secret annexes in updated Continuity of Government planning documents, National Security Presidential Directive 51/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (NSPD 51/HSPD 20) means, as Commander-in-Chief,

The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government. In order to advise and assist the President in that function, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (APHS/CT) is hereby designated as the National Continuity Coordinator. ...

Federal Government COOP, COG, and ECG plans and operations shall be appropriately integrated with the emergency plans and capabilities of State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to promote interoperability and to prevent redundancies and conflicting lines of authority. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall coordinate the integration of Federal continuity plans and operations with State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to provide for the delivery of essential services during an emergency. (The White House, President George W. Bush, NSPD 51/HSPD 20, May 7, 2007)

It should be kept in mind that top secret annexes of this document have been withheld from Congress, despite repeated requests--and legal oversight requirements--by the House Homeland Security Committee, as Peter Dale Scott reported in March for CounterPunch.

NORTHCOM avers that,

The Primary Federal Agency [PFA] is the federal civilian agency designated to coordinate and direct the government's response to a disaster or emergency situation. Presidential Decision Directive 39 designated the Federal Emergency Management Agency as the PFA for managing the consequences of CBRNE events. In most instances, FEMA will be the PFA, however, the Federal Bureau of Investigation serves as the PFA for crisis management in events designated as an act of terrorism. Although the JTF-CS supports the PFA throughout a CBRNE consequence management operation, the unit operates within a clear Department of Defense chain of command. (U.S. Northern Command, Joint Task Force Civil Support, FAQ, no date)

In other words, although civilian agencies are the nominal PFA's during a "disaster or emergency situation," JTF-CS "operates within a clear Department of Defense chain of command" that begins and ends with the Executive Branch, that is, the President in his role as the leader of the "unitary executive branch" and Commander-in-Chief. Were a "national emergency" of any kind declared by the President, rules governing Continuity of Government operations would place civilian agencies, including "State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure," under the effective control of the military.

This is clearly delineated in Department of Defense Directive 3025.12 (DoD 3025.12), "Military Assistance for Civil Disturbances (MACDIS)":

Ensure continuous planning by the DoD Components, both in the Department of Defense and in cooperation with civil government agencies for MACDIS operations that may be required during any time or condition of peace, war, or transition to war, including any national security emergency. ...

The President is authorized by the Constitution and laws of the United States to employ the Armed Forces of the United States to suppress insurrections, rebellions, and domestic violence under various conditions and circumstances. Planning and preparedness by the Federal Government and the Department of Defense for civil disturbances are important due to the potential severity of the consequences of such events for the Nation and the population.

Military resources may be employed in support of civilian law enforcement operations in the 50 States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the U.S. territories and possessions only in the parameters of the Constitution and laws of the United States and the authority of the President and the Secretary of Defense, including delegations of that authority through this Directive or other means.

The primary responsibility for protecting life and property and maintaining law and order in the civilian community is vested in the State and local governments. Supplementary responsibility is vested by statute in specific Agencies of the Federal Government other than the Department of Defense. The President has additional powers and responsibilities under the Constitution of the United States to ensure that law and order are maintained. ("Military Assistance for Civil Disturbances [MACDIS]," Department of Defense Directive, No. 3025.12, February 4, 1994, pp. 1, 3) [emphasis added]

The Executive Branch's leading role in MACDIS operations are underscored by the following:

Delegations of Authority. The Secretary of Defense shall be assisted in executing his responsibility for MACDIS by the following:

The Secretary of the Army shall be the DoD Executive Agent and shall act for the Secretary of Defense in accordance with this Directive and any supplemental direction or guidance received from the Secretary of Defense. In that capacity, the DoD Executive Agent shall develop planning guidance, plans, and procedures for MACDIS, in accordance with this Directive. The DoD Executive Agent has the authority of the Secretary of Defense to task the DoD Components to plan for and to commit DoD resources, in response to requests from civil authorities under MACDIS. The DoD Executive Agent shall coordinate with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff any commitment of Military Forces assigned to the Combatant Commands.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shall communicate to the Commanders of the Combatant Commands appropriate guidance issued by the DoD Executive Agent for their compliance with this Directive, and also shall assist the DoD Executive Agent in developing MACDIS planning guidance for all conditions of war or attacks on the United States or its territories. ...

For response to domestic terrorist incidents and other purposes, the DoD Executive Agent shall obtain authority from the Secretary of Defense for any employment of U.S. counterterrorism forces. The DoD Executive Agent shall coordinate with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff any request, contingency plan, directive, or order affecting the employment of such forces and, simultaneously, shall provide all applicable information to the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict), who provides policy oversight for the Secretary of Defense, in accordance with DoD Directive 5138.3 (reference (h)).

The Secretary of Defense reserves the authority to modify or terminate the Executive Agency established by this Directive if operational needs so require in a particular situation. (MACDIS, op. cit., pp. 5-6)

What those "operational needs" are that might require the Secretary of Defense to "modify or terminate" the "Executive Agency" are not specified in the MACDIS Directive. However, in this regard, it is clear that a leading role of U.S. military "civil disturbance" operations will be assumed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and not a "Prime Federal Authority," that is a civilian agency. The JCS will,

In coordination with the DoD Executive Agent, facilitate communications by the DoD Executive Agent with Commanders of Combatant Commands, as appropriate.

Ensure the compatibility of MACDIS plans with other military plans.

Assist in the DoD Executive Agent's determination of military units and capabilities sufficient for all contingencies of the GARDEN PLOT plan.

Support training for and coordinated evaluation of MACDIS plans and capabilities by the Commanders of the Combatant Commands through exercises or other means, as appropriate. (MACDIS, op. cit., pp. 10-11)

Clearly, NORTHCOM's Vibrant Response exercise, initiated by the Joint Task Force-Civil Support falls under the broad purview of Garden Plot and other planning "contingencies." In terms of dealing with a "national security emergency" declared by the Executive Branch under rules governing Continuity of Government operations, DoD 3025.12 describes "civil disturbances" as,

Group acts of violence and disorders prejudicial to public law and order in the 50 States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the U.S. possessions and territories, or any political subdivision thereof. The term "civil disturbance" includes all domestic conditions requiring the use of Federal Armed Forces under this Directive. (MACDIS, op. cit., p. 17)

Would, let's say, the eruption of mass protests as a result of a stolen presidential election or mass actions as a legitimate and exemplary civilian response to limiting bank withdrawals, a freeze on Social Security payments, a prohibition on strikes or the declaration of a "national security emergency" as a result of prerevolutionary challenges to the legitimacy of federal authority (as took place in Argentina in 2000 during that nation's economic meltdown) trigger MACDIS and other Continuity of Government operations?

DoD 3025.12 states, "Under reference (r), the terms "major disaster" and "emergency" are defined substantially by action of the President in declaring that extant circumstances and risks justify Presidential implementation of the legal powers in those statutes." In other words, "extant circumstances" are "defined substantially" by the President. Once triggered by Executive Order, the scope of operations undertaken by the military acting as the enforcement arm of the "unitary executive branch" are virtually unlimited.

Under these rules, martial law, suspension of habeas corpus, indefinite detention would render lawful rules guiding a constitutional republic moot; mere footnotes written on the "blank page" of America's "new normal," what Naomi Klein has termed "disaster capitalism." Klein writes,

A more accurate term for the system that erases the boundaries between Big Government and Big Business is not liberal, conservative or capitalist, but corporatist. Its main characteristics are huge transfers of public wealth to private hands, often accompanied by exploding debt, an ever-widening chasm between the dazzling rich and the disposable poor and an aggressive nationalism that justifies unlimited spending on security. For those inside the bubble of extreme wealth created by such an arrangement, there can be no more profitable way to organize a society. But because of the obvious drawbacks for the vast majority of the population left outside the bubble, other features of the corporatist state tend to include aggressive surveillance (once again, with government and large corporations trading favors and contracts), mass incarceration, shrinking civil liberties and often, though not always, torture. (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007, p. 15)

Now that the economic bubble for the vast majority of Americans has burst, "shrinking civil liberties" are rushing headlong towards the vanishing point.

While DoD 3025.12 states that "any employment of Military Forces in support of law enforcement operations shall maintain the primacy of civilian authorities," as noted above JTF-CS "operates within a clear Department of Defense chain of command," answerable to the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Army as the "DoD Executive Agent for MACDIS."

Clearly, a "terrorist attack" or "any national security emergency" so designated by the President would trigger MACDIS guidance for "civilian law enforcement operations" and fall under the purview of NORTHCOM and JTF-CS as "a subordinate command" and would play a leading role in responding to "any national security emergency" declared by the President.

Despite the repeal of the "Insurrection Act Rider" to the 2007 Defense Appropriations bill that gave the President sweeping emergency power to deploy the military for any "condition" he might cite, not merely a terrorist atrocity or CBRNE "event," the Bush "signing statement" reported by Amy Goodman above, effectively nullified Congress' intent not to give the president carte blanche to station U.S. troops on American streets.

While NORTHCOM insists that JTF-CS, "will not be called upon to help with law enforcement, civil disturbance or crowd control, but will be used to support lead agencies involved in saving lives," as I have outlined above, citing the DoD's own documents and Executive Branch National Security Presidential Directives, contingency plans for suppressing "civil disturbance" such as the Garden Plot scenario are, like an iron fist inside a velvet glove, already in place and capable at a moment's notice of striking the American people.

During these dark times, it is well-worth recalling the sage advice of the great American revolutionary Thomas Jefferson: The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Exclusive: Rumsfeld Updated Army's Continuity of Operations Plan before 9/11

Nine months before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved an updated version of the U.S. Army's secret operational Continuity of Government (COG) plans.

A draft document published by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks entitled, "Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program," dated 19 January 2001, spells out changes in Army doctrine.

Issued by Headquarters, Department of the Army and signed off by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Secretary of the Army, the document is affixed with a warning: "Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document." The restricted document as published by Wikileaks states:

History. This regulation is a revision of the original regulation that was effective on 10 July 1989. Since that time, no changes have been published to amend the original.

Summary. This regulation on the Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program has been revised to update Army COOP policy and extend the requirement for all-hazards COOP planning to all Army organizations. Classified information contained in the 1989 version of this AR has been removed and placed in a classified HQDA Operations Plan (OPLAN).

Applicability. This regulation applies to the Active Army, the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR), and when federalized to the Army National Guard (ARNG). In the event of conflict between this regulation and approved OSD or JCS publications, the provisions of the latter will apply. ("Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program," 19 January 2001, p. 3) [emphasis added]

"All-hazards COOP planning" is described as the means by which "the Army remains capable of continuing mission-essential operations during any situation, including military attack, terrorist activities, and natural or man-made disasters." While the Army stresses the updates described in AR 500-3 relate to chemical, biological, nuclear attacks, "natural disasters" and "technical or man-made disasters or accidents," current Army doctrine is also heavily weighted towards contingency planning for "civil disturbances."

Two national "civil disturbance" plans, Garden Plot and Cable Splicer have been operational since the 1960s. Researcher Frank Morales has detailed how,

Under the heading of "civil disturbance planning," the U.S. military is training troops and police to suppress democratic opposition in America. The master plan, Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, is code-named, "Operation Garden Plot". Originated in 1968, the "operational plan" has been updated over the last three decades, most recently in 1991, and was activated during the Los Angeles "riots" of 1992, and more than likely during the recent anti-WTO "Battle in Seattle." ...

Equipped with flexible "military operations in urban terrain" and "operations other than war" doctrine, lethal and "less-than-lethal" high-tech weaponry, US "armed forces" and "elite" militarized police units are being trained to eradicate "disorder", "disturbance" and "civil disobedience" in America. Further, it may very well be that police/military "civil disturbance" planning is the animating force and the overarching logic behind the incredible nationwide growth of police paramilitary units, a growth which coincidentally mirrors rising levels of police violence directed at the American people, particularly "non-white" poor and working people. (Frank Morales, "U.S. Military Civil Disturbance Planning: The War at Home," in Police State America, ed. Tom Burghardt, Toronto/Montreal: Arm The Spirit/Solidarity, 2002, P. 59)

AR 500-3 should be viewed in this context. Plans for Continuity of Government have been in place since the 1950s. Originally conceived during the Cold War when fears of a nuclear strike envisaged by atomic war-gamers at the RAND Corporation, believed that an immobilization of government functions and a breakdown of civilian rule would follow a nuclear attack. But from their inception, COG planning has been shrouded in secrecy.

In addition to constructing nuclear-proof underground facilities where the civilian leadership could escape a decapitation strike, other COG provisions included a series of executive orders designating which officials would assume Cabinet-level posts and other Executive Branch positions. Officials so designated would constitute a "shadow government" should office holders be killed in an attack "or otherwise incapacitated."

However, when these and other Pentagon "civil disturbance" plans surfaced in the 1980s during the Iran-Contra hearings, they were roundly criticized by members of Congress, civil liberties groups and the media before disappearing once again, down Orwell's "memory hole." The inherent dangers implicit in such plans are that unelected Executive Branch officers could assume the Presidency and other appointed offices subject neither to congressional scrutiny nor judicial oversight.

Exercising sweeping emergency powers buried within Presidential Decision Directives (PDDs), unelected officials could suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and create an Executive Branch dictatorship that rests solely on the power of the U.S. military.

Most troubling, Executive Branch officials under secret rules of a COG regime could suppress and usurp the lawful powers of Congress and the Judicial Branch (by force of arms if deemed necessary) as a means of ensuring "cooperation" under a "unitary executive."

As we have seen, the "unitary executive" theory has been a salient feature of Bushist rule since the December 2000 judicial coup d'état, when the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore decision handed a contested election to George W. Bush by stopping the vote count in Florida.

Since assuming office, the administration has ruthlessly wielded executive power in order to achieve their antidemocratic agenda: from the looting of the economy through "deregulation," massive deficit spending and tax cuts for their corporate "clients," to waging a preemptive war of conquest in Iraq, the "unitary executive" has systematically shredded America's constitutional system of checks and balances.

The Bush administration put COG plans into operation for the first time in U.S. history in the hours directly following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. They have never been rescinded.

Their implementation involves a rotating staff of 75-150 senior government officials and others from every Cabinet department in two "secure, undisclosed locations" on the East Coast. However, key congressional representatives have been kept out of the loop and House and Senate leaders have said they were not informed the "shadow government" had "gone live."

So secretive are Bush administration plans that Peter DeFazio (D-OR), a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, was denied access in 2007 to the classified version of the COG plans contained in top secret Presidential Decision Directive annexes. This too, is unprecedented.

While the Bush administration admitted that COG was activated in 2001, their disclosure came only after The Washington Post broke the story based on confidential administration sources troubled by the scope of the program and its secretive implementation.

Since the late 1980s, Rumsfeld was a habitué of COG exercises along with Vice President Dick Cheney. Indeed early COG drills had been organized by the right-wing Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). As investigative journalist Andrew Cockburn revealed in his definitive political biography of the former Defense Secretary:

This highly secret program was known as Project 908, and among the individuals earmarked to take power when disaster struck was Donald Rumsfeld. ... There, for several days, he would be immured in artificial caverns, staring at electronic displays streaming data of disaster and confusion, sleeping on cots and subsisting on the most austere rations. ...

Insofar as the COG games gave the illusion of reality, they taught Rumsfeld and his fellow players some dangerous lessons, particularly when the fall of the Soviet Union induced some changes in the usual scenarios. Although the exercises continued, still budgeted at over $200 million in the Clinton era, the vanished Soviets were now customarily replaced by terrorists. The terrorism envisaged however, was almost always state-sponsored. ...

There were other changes, too. In earlier times the specialists selected to run the "shadow government" had been drawn from across the political spectrum, Democrats and Republicans alike. But now, down in the bunkers, Rumsfeld found himself in politically congenial company, the players' roster being filled almost exclusively with Republican hawks. (Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy, New York: Scribner, 2007, pp. 85-86, 88)

As researcher Peter Dale Scott revealed, in early 2006 the Department of Homeland Security awarded a $385 million contract to a Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, to provide "temporary detention and processing facilities." Scott wrote,

The contract--announced Jan. 24 by the engineering and construction firm KBR--calls for preparing for "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs" in the event of other emergencies, such as "a natural disaster." The release offered no details about where Halliburton was to build these facilities, or when. ...

After 9/11, new martial law plans began to surface similar to those of FEMA in the 1980s. In January 2002 the Pentagon submitted a proposal for deploying troops on American streets. One month later John Brinkerhoff, the author of the 1982 FEMA memo, published an article arguing for the legality of using U.S. troops for purposes of domestic security. (Peter Dale Scott, "Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps," Pacific News Service, February 8, 2006)

The DHS contract to KBR had been preceded by the April 2002 creation of the Pentagon's Northern Command (NORTHCOM), specifically empowered by the Bush administration for domestic U.S. military operations in direct violation of Posse Comitatus prohibitions forbidding the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. At the time, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld called NORTHCOM's launch "the most sweeping set of changes since the unified command system was set up in 1946."

Sweeping indeed! Last month Army Times reported that the Army's "3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team [BCT] has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys. Now they're training for the same mission--with a twist--at home." According to Army Times,

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks. ...

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities. ...

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. ...

The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to use "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

"It's a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they're fielding. They've been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we're undertaking we were the first to get it."

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets. (Gina Cavallaro, "Brigade Homeland Tours Start Oct. 1," Army Times, September 8, 2008)

While senior Pentagon brass have downplayed the significance of deploying a BCT that has taken part in aggressive occupation duties to suppress the Iraqi people's resistance, Col. Lou Vogler, NORTHCOM's chief of future operations said in an interview that the military "will integrate with law enforcement to understand the situation and make sure we're aware of any threats." An article published by the Army News Service disclosed,

During the exercise, commanders and staff of the force will train, rehearse and exercise--from academic classes to making decisions and executing orders--all to help prepare them for the mission they will assume on Oct. 1, said Vogler.

"It's an opportunity for network building in an unprecedented assignment of forces," said [Marine Corps Lt. Col.] Shores. "DOD always had allocated contingency sourced forces--but this is precedent-setting network building with the forces that we ultimately will go out and execute with. It's an opportunity to get to know our forces, to see them in execution, to mission-orient them and be that much better--to be that much more responsive."

One goal of the exercise is to exercise with partners from the civilian agencies they would support. To that end, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other interagency representatives are participating to ensure integration with civilian consequence managers who would lead a response, said Vogler.

"The overall federal response builds on the local and state response in accordance with the incident command system and existing plans and processes that are out there," said Vogler. "The response force would supplement local efforts." ("Consequence Management Response Force to join Army Northern Command," Army News Service, September 15, 2008)

Vogler and Shores were discussing an exercise code-named Vibrant Response, that took place September 8-19 at Fort Stewart in Georgia. Three brigades form the core of NORTHCOM's Consequence Management Response Force: the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Army Division; the 1st Medical Brigade, Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. All three units participated in Vibrant Response.

As researcher and analyst Michel Chossudovsky comments:

The BCT is an army combat unit designed to confront an enemy within a war theater.

With US forces overstretched in Iraq, why would the Pentagon decide to undertake this redeployment within the USA, barely one month before the presidential elections?

The new mission of the 1st Brigade on US soil is to participate in "defense" efforts as well as provide "support to civilian authorities".

What is significant in this redeployment of a US infantry unit is the presumption that North America could, in the case of a national emergency, constitute a "war theater" thereby justifying the deployment of combat units.

The new skills to be imparted consist in training 1st BCT in repressing civil unrest, a task normally assumed by civilian law enforcement.

What we are dealing with is a militarization of civilian police activities in derogation of the Posse Comitatus Act. ("Pre-election Militarization of the North American Homeland. US Combat Troops in Iraq repatriated to 'help with civil unrest'," Global Research, September 26, 2008)

One scenario envisaged by Chossudovsky is that "civil unrest resulting from from the financial meltdown is a distinct possibility, given the broad impacts of financial collapse on lifelong savings, pension funds, homeownership, etc."

One might reasonably inquire, what "precedent-setting network" does the Army have in mind that would "ensure integration" with "civilian agencies" such as FEMA (a branch of Homeland Security)? As the World Socialist Web Site reports:

It is noteworthy that the deployment of US combat troops "as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters"--in the words of the Army Times--coincides with the eruption of the greatest economic emergency and financial disaster since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Justified as a response to terrorist threats, the real source of the growing preparations for the use of US military force within America's borders lies not in the events of September 11, 2001 or the danger that they will be repeated. Rather, the domestic mobilization of the armed forces is a response by the US ruling establishment to the growing threat to political stability. (Bill Van Auken, "Army deploys combat unit in U.S. for possible civil unrest," World Socialist Web Site, 25 September 2008)

As the 2001 COOP planning document describes, a host of on-going Army plans and exercises have been revised by the Bush administration. In addition to Vibrant Response discussed above, they include: Plan EXCALIBUR, a COG Army training exercise; ADOBE, described by investigative journalist William M. Arkin as a "FEMA continuity of government special access program designation." Arkin describes special access programs or SAPs as,

Classified research and development, acquisition program, operation, intelligence activity, or plan that is so sensitive or critical that the value of the information warrants enhanced protection beyond that normally provided for access to Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret information. (William M. Arkin, Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World, Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2005, p. 598)

The impetus for revising Army COOP was, according to AR 500-3 primarily because,

The end of the Cold War and the breakup of the former Soviet Union significantly reduced the probability of a major nuclear attack on CONUS but the probability of other threats has increased. Army organizations must be prepared for any contingency with a potential for interruption of normal operations. To emphasize that Army continuity of operations planning is now focused on the full all-hazards threat spectrum, the name "ASRRS" has been replaced by the more generic title "Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program." (p. 13)

Towards this end, the Rumsfeld-era document states that the Army's new "mission-critical" functions will be restructured so that, "Army COOP plans must ensure that the Army remains capable of continuing mission-essential operations during any situation, including military attack, terrorist activities, and natural or man-made disasters." (p. 13) The Army, following various contingencies analyzed in the document will "coordinate with mission-essential external organizations and agencies." (p. 14)

So sensitive are the political ramifications of these plans that under the heading, 3-12 Operational Security (OPSEC), the Army avers,

a. The success of COOP planning relies on denying access by unauthorized parties to information on COOP plans, procedures, capabilities and facilities.

b. Overhead imagery, signals intelligence, human sources, and exploitation of open literature during peacetime are threat capabilities used to gain knowledge of Army emergency plans, command and control systems, and facilities.

c. See Appendix B, Security Classification Guide, for guidance on the level of classification of COOP-related information. (COOP, op. cit., p. 20)

Appendix A of AR 500-3 lists relevant references for changes included in the COOP planning document. These include:

Section I
Required Publications

HQDA Operations Plan EXCALIBUR, 30 April 1999 (Being Revised)
HQDA Continuity of Operations Plan (cited in para 1-4.f)

Section II

Related Publications a related publication is merely a source of additional information. The user does not have to read it to understand this publication.

Executive Order 12656
National Security Emergency Preparedness (NSEP), 18 November 1988

DoD Directive (Dodd) 2000.12
DoD Antiterrorism/Force Protection (AT/FP) Program, 13 April 1999

CJCSM 3410.01
Continuity of Operations Plan for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (COOP-CJCS), 1 March 1999

Executive Order 12787
Prescribing the Order of Succession of Officers to Act as Secretary of Defense, 31 December 1991

DoDD 3020.26
Continuity of Operations (COOP) Policy and Planning, 26 May 1995

DoD 3020.26P
Continuity of Operations Plan, 21 June 2000 (Classified SECRET)

DoDD 3020.36
Assignment of National Security Emergency Preparedness (NSEP) Responsibilities to DoD Components, 2 November 1988

DoDD 3025.15
Military Support to Civil Authorities (MSCA), 18 February 1997

The Federal Response Plan, April 1999

Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 67, (Top Secret) Enduring Constitutional Government (ECG) and Continuity of Government (COG) Operations, Oct 21, 1998

Federal Preparedness Circular 65, Federal Executive Branch Continuity of Operations, (COOP), July 26, 1999

As Peter Dale Scott reported in CounterPunch, apparently members of Congress are considered "unauthorized parties" to be denied access "to information on COOP plans, procedures, capabilities and facilities." Congressman DeFazio had been denied access to the classified annexes of National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (NSPD 51/HSPD 20) Scott wrote,

NSPD 51 contains "classified Continuity Annexes" which shall "be protected from unauthorized disclosure." Congressman DeFazio twice requested to see these Annexes, the second time in a letter cosigned by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Christopher Carney. It was these requests that the White House denied. ...

DeFazio's inability to get access to the NSPD Annexes is less than reassuring. If members of the Homeland Security Committee cannot enforce their right to read secret plans of the Executive Branch, then the systems of checks and balances established by the U.S. Constitution would seem to be failing.

To put it another way, if the White House is successful in frustrating DeFazio, then Continuity of Government planning has arguably already superseded the Constitution as a higher authority. (Peter Dale Scott, "The Showdown," CounterPunch, March 31, 2008)

With the stunning revelations published by Wikileaks, it is abundantly clear that top Bush administration officials were busily revising Continuity of Government plans, including "civil disturbance" contingencies for suspending the Constitution and imposing martial law, long before the 9/11 attacks.

Since that fatal and tragic day seven long years ago, we have been told repeatedly by the government and their media sycophants that 9/11 was the day "when everything changed."

We now know thanks to Wikileaks, that as with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the unprecedented and lawless surveillance of Americans, the illegal detention and torture of prisoners of war, that Bush administration assertions are no more than a pack of murderous lies.

One fact is abundantly clear from the mass of conflicting evidence and assertions made by proponents of various theories surrounding the 9/11 events: AR 500-3 demonstrates that from the very first moments after being installed in office, the Bush regime was involved in a "controlled demolition" of the U.S. Constitution.

Correction: An attentive reader discovered the math error that appeared when this piece was originally posted Monday. It has been corrected to read, "Nine months before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks..." The original post read "Ten months." Antifascist Calling regrets the error and gives a shout-out to the reader who caught it. Oops!

Homeland Security's Space-Based Spying Goes Live

While America's attention has shifted to the economic meltdown and the presidential race between corporate favorites John McCain and Barack Obama, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) National Applications Office (NAO) "will proceed with the first phase of a controversial satellite-surveillance program, even though an independent review found the department hasn't yet ensured the program will comply with privacy laws."

As I wrote in June, NAO will coordinate how domestic law enforcement and "disaster relief" agencies such as FEMA use satellite imagery intelligence (IMINT) generated by U.S. spy satellites. Based on available evidence, hard to come by since these programs are classified "above top secret," the technological power of these military assets are truly terrifying.

Unlike commercial satellites that beam TV programs, forecast the weather or provide global positioning services, their military cousins are far more flexible, have greater resolution and therefore, more power to monitor human activity. By utilizing different parts of the light- and infrared spectrum, spy satellites, in addition to taking ultra high-resolution photographs to within a meter of their "target," can also track the heat signatures generated by people inside a building. ("Homeland Security's Space-Based Spies," Antifascist Calling, June 4, 2008)

In other words, when combined with illegal NSA and FBI domestic surveillance programs--from data-mining to the massive interception of telephone and internet communications--NAO will furnish DHS and outsourced corporate grifters who actually run the program, with the blanket coverage of American citizens long sought by securocrats. Aside from The Wall Street Journal and The Raw Story, not a single media outlet has disclosed this vital information to the public.

Despite the absence of rigorous oversight that would determine whether or not NAO complies with what's left of privacy laws, DHS is proceeding full speed ahead. The Journal reports,

A new 60-page Government Accountability Office report said the department "lacks assurance that NAO operations will comply with applicable laws and privacy and civil liberties standards," according to a person familiar with the document. The report, which is unclassified but considered sensitive, hasn't been publicly released, but was described and quoted by several people who have read it.

The report cites gaps in privacy safeguards. The department, it found, lacks controls to prevent improper use of domestic-intelligence data by other agencies and provided insufficient assurance that requests for classified information will be fully reviewed to ensure it can be legally provided. ( Siobhan Gorman, "Satellite-Surveillance Program to Begin Despite Privacy Concerns," The Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2008) [emphasis added]

Reporting on the shocking absence of oversight features built into the program, Nick Juliano writes,

Essentially, the bill only requires the Homeland Security Secretary to assure lawmakers that NAO programs comply with exisiting laws. Congress also has required the DHS Inspector General to provide quarterly classified reports on how much information has been collected by the domestic satellite surveillance, although the bill required those reports be made to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, not the Homeland Security Committees that are traditionally in charge of DHS oversight. ("DHS satellite spy program going forward despite objections," The Raw Story, October 2, 2008)

The GAO's suppressed report is not the first to criticize the breathtaking scope of this repressive program. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a study in June raising critical questions about NAO's legality.

Members of Congress and outside groups have raised concerns that using satellites for law enforcement purposes may infringe on the privacy and Fourth Amendment rights of U.S. persons. Other commentators have questioned whether the proposed surveillance will violate the Posse Comitatus Act or other restrictions on military involvement in civilian law enforcement, or would otherwise exceed the statutory mandates of the agencies involved. Such concerns led Congress to preclude any funds in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008 (H.R. 2764, P.L. 110-161), from being used to "commence operations of the National Applications Office ... until the Secretary [of the Department of Homeland Security] certifies that these programs comply with all existing laws, including all applicable privacy and civil liberties standards, and that certification is reviewed by the Government Accountability Office." (Section 525.) Similar language has been included in FY2009 homeland security appropriations bills. (Richard A. Best Jr. and Jennifer K. Elsea, "Satellite Surveillance: Domestic Issues," Congressional Research Service, June 27, 2008)

But as the Journal reported, Congress' "partial funding" for the program in "a little-debated $634 billion spending measure," means that an operational NAO will now provide federal, state and local officials "with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery--but no eavesdropping--to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism."

Such hollow "no eavesdropping" assurances to Congress from quarterly classified reports from the DHS Inspector General fly in the face of the steady erosion of constitutional protections by the Bush administration.

What "other agencies" might the GAO have in mind when citing concerns over potential abuse of intelligence data supplied by the National Applications Office? Well, take your pick since the U.S. "intelligence community" is comprised of 16 different agencies under the operational control of the Office of National Intelligence (ODI) and the powerful Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

Led by Michael McConnell, a ten-year veteran of the spooky Booz Allen Hamilton corporation, purchased this year by the sinister Carlyle Group, ODNI can truly be described as a "public-private partnership" in political repression. As CorpWatch reported in March,

McConnell ... spent more than 10 years as a Booz Allen senior vice president in charge of the company’s extensive contracts in military intelligence and information operations for the Pentagon. In that job, his official biography states, McConnell provided intelligence support to "the U.S. Unified Combatant Commanders, the Director of National Intelligence Agencies, and the Military Service Intelligence Directors." That made him a close colleague of not only Donald Rumsfeld, who ran the Pentagon from 2001 to 2007, but of Vice President Cheney, who has served President Bush as a kind of intelligence godfather since the earliest days of the administration. (Tim Shorrock, "Carlyle Group May Buy Major CIA Contractor: Booz Allen Hamilton," CorpWatch, March 8, 2008)

Investigative journalist Tim Shorrock revealed last year, that the intelligence-sharing system to be managed by NAO,

...will rely heavily on private contractors including Boeing, BAE Systems, L-3 Communications and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). These companies already provide technology and personnel to U.S. agencies involved in foreign intelligence, and the NAO greatly expands their markets. Indeed, at an intelligence conference in San Antonio, Texas, last month, the titans of the industry were actively lobbying intelligence officials to buy products specifically designed for domestic surveillance. ("Domestic Spying, Inc." CorpWatch, November 27, 2007)

NAO will utilize the military imagery and mapping tools of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). NGA maintains a symbiotic relationship with both the NSA and the ultra-secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), that builds and maintains America's fleet of spy satellites. Additionally, NRO operates the planetary wide network of ground stations where NSA's signals intelligence (SIGINT) and NGA's imagery intelligence (IMINT) are processed and analyzed.

Shorrock revealed that the program was kick-started in 2005 and the impetus came from veteran spooks with extensive ties to the military-industrial-security apparatus and corporate outfits such as Booz Allen Hamilton. The company was "tasked" with studying how "intelligence from spy satellites and photoreconnaissance planes could be better used domestically to track potential threats to security within the U.S." Completed in 2005, the Booz Allen plan became the basis for NAO.

Veteran spook Charles Allen told The Wall Street Journal in August 2007 that NAO is "an idea whose time has arrived." As DHS chief intelligence officer, Allen will head the new program.

Additionally, an "independent study group" appointed in 2005 by the Director of National Intelligence, tasked with reviewing the deployment of military reconnaissance assets in the "homeland" reached the desired conclusions. According to a press release by the Department of Homeland Security,

The study group unanimously recommended in its September 2005 report that the scope of the Civil Applications Committee be expanded beyond civil applications to include homeland security and law enforcement applications, and concluded that there is an urgent need for action. The study group concluded a new approach is needed to effectively employ Intelligence Community capabilities for civil applications, homeland security and law enforcement uses. ("Fact Sheet: National Applications Office," Department of Homeland Security, August 15, 2007)

How "independent"? You make the call! Shorrock reported that the group,

... was chaired by Keith Hall, a Booz Allen vice president who manages his firm's extensive contracts with the NGA and previously served as the director of the NRO.

Other members of the group included seven other former intelligence officers working for Booz Allen, as well as retired Army Lieutenant General Patrick M. Hughes, the former director of the DIA and vice president of homeland security for L-3 Communications, a key NSA contractor; and Thomas W. Conroy, the vice president of national security programs for Northrop Grumman, which has extensive contracts with the NSA and the NGA and throughout the intelligence community. (Shorrock, 2008, op. cit.)

From the start, the group's findings were "heavily weighted" toward corporations "with a stake" in both foreign and domestic intelligence. No surprise then, when the group's "contractor-advisers" called for "a major expansion in the domestic use of the spy satellites that they sell to the government."

A power-grab by the ODNI and DHS should raise serious alarms of further encroachments by a lawless "unitary executive" and serve as a warning that domestic law enforcement is rapidly coming under the purview of opaque Pentagon spy agencies.

While the creeping militarization of civilian policing is not a new phenomenon, the NAO launch represents a qualitative leap towards the surveillance society dreamed up by Iran-Contra felon and former DARPA administrator John Poindexter, before he was kicked to the curb when plans for the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program first gained notoriety in 2003.

And like the newly-launched NAO, TIA was managed by none other than Booz Allen Hamilton and their sidekicks at the San Diego-based Science Applications International Corporation! Small world (of open-ended contracts for giant Bush regime-connected multinationals).

The NAO will be overseen by the National Applications Executive Council (NAEC). In turn, NAEC will be "tri-chaired" by the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, the Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior (DOI), and the Principal Deputy of the Director of National Intelligence, a position held by Donald M. Kerr.

As with the vast majority of top securocrats, Kerr has served in a multitude of capacities inside and outside government. When he ended his tenure as Director of the National Reconnaissance Office in 2007, Kerr joined ONI. The one-time CIA and FBI employee was also a SAIC executive vice president during the 1990s.

Tim Shorrock reported in his essential book, Spies for Hire, that Kerr described how "ninety-five percent of the resources over which we have stewardship in fact go out on a contract to our industrial base. It's an important thing to recognize that we cannot function without this highly integrated industrial government team." Brutal honesty for brutal times.

Despite rigorous objections by members of Congress and civil liberties' groups to a program with the breathtaking potential to invade our privacy in newer and more lethal ways, NAO is now reality. America's headlong flight towards constructing a post-Constitutional "new order" just added another brick in the wall.

Top White House Officials Discussed and Approved Torture, Rice Admits

White House officials discussed torturing suspected "enemy combatants" early in 2002, according to a detailed questionnaire put to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by Senate investigators. The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) released a series of new documents that shed additional light on the origins of U.S. torture policies. The Washington Post reports,

The details of the controversial program were discussed in multiple meetings inside the White House over a two-year period, triggering concerns among several officials who worried that the agency's methods might be illegal or violate anti-torture treaties, according to separate statements signed by Rice and her top legal adviser. ("Top Officials Knew in 2002 of Harsh Interrogations," Joby Warrick, The Washington Post, Thursday, September 25, 2008; A07)

John Bellinger III, Rice's legal adviser at the State Department and during her tenure at the National Security Council (NSC), said in answer to written questions by Senate investigators, "I expressed concern that the proposed CIA interrogation techniques comply with applicable U.S. law, including our international obligations."

As The New York Times reported,

The documents provide new details about the still-murky early months of the C.I.A.'s detention program, when the agency began using a set of harsh interrogation techniques weeks before the Justice Department issued a written legal opinion in August 2002 authorizing their use. Congressional investigators have long tried to determine exactly who authorized these techniques before the legal opinion was completed. (Mark Mazzetti, "Bush Aides Linked to Talks on Interrogations," The New York Times, September 25, 2008)

In other words, as with the invasion and occupation of Iraq, indeed as with a host of other illegal White House programs across the entire "battlespace" of the "war on terror," legal niceties were supplied by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and then crafted, as with pre-war intelligence, "to fit the policy" (torture) already in place.

The Times reported that "Justice Department lawyers gave oral guidance to the C.I.A. before the secret memo was completed." Fearful of prosecution, CIA lawyers ordered the use of "harsh techniques" employed by CIA officers "suspended" until their formal authorization by White House proxies in the Justice Department.

Mazzetti reported that former National Security Council legal adviser Bellinger wrote "that during the White House meetings, Justice Department lawyers frequently issued oral guidance to the C.I.A. about the interrogation program. One who did was John Yoo, the principal author of the August 2002 memo, Mr. Bellinger said."

As ABC News revealed in April,

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News. ("Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'," Jan Crawford Greenburg, Howard L. Rosenburg and Ariane de Vogue, ABC News, April 9, 2008)

As chair of the National Security Council, Rice presided over the meetings but when the ABC News story first broke, the White House declined to comment on her participation. With good reason, as it turns out!

In 2002, the National Security Council's Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell as well as CIA Director George Tenet and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

According to ABC News "Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies." Discussions around specific techniques to be used by CIA interrogators were so detailed, ABC News reported, they "were almost choreographed" by high-level Bush administration officials.

The network also reported that at one meeting, Ashcroft famously complained: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly." Nor would federal prosecutors if America were a "normal" country.

Viewed as an exemplary means of expanding executive power, Cheney's shop instructed the Office of Legal Counsel to write a series of still-classified memos that gave the CIA formal legal authority to use what the administration and corporate media euphemistically call "enhanced interrogation techniques" on alleged al-Qaeda suspects.

The Bybee-Yoo memos, with major input from Cheney's legal adviser (now Chief of Staff), David Addington, are referred to as a "Golden Shield" for CIA repressors fearful of future prosecution as war criminals.

In her response to the question posed by Senate investigators, "Where did it [discussion of prisoner interrogation] take place (e.g., meeting at the Pentagon, etc)?" Rice confirmed ABC's report, "All of the meetings I attended on these matters occurred inside the White House."

When pressed by investigators: "Were you present at a meeting at which the OLC gave oral advice about the legality of interrogation techniques proposed for or in use by the CIA?" the Secretary of State replied, "I was present in meetings at which DoJ lawyers provided legal advice about the CIA program. I recall that John Yoo provided advice at several of these meetings. I do not recall if other members of OLC were also present. ... I do not know whether any oral advice provided by OLC attorneys differed from OLC's written advice."

But as congressional investigators and media reports have previously revealed, the OLC's "oral advice" most certainly did not differ from their "written advice" since it was supplied by torture-enabler Yoo who acted as a proxy for Cheney's legal adviser, David Addington.

SASC investigators then turned their attention to the Pentagon's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) programs. "On July 25, 2002 the Chief of Staff to the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) informed the DoD Office of the General Counsel [run by Addington protégé William J. Haynes II], that 'JPRA will continue to offer exploitation assistance to those governmental organizations charged with the mission of gleaning intelligence from enemy detainees.' Were you aware that JPRA was offering such assistance?" Rice replied, "I am unfamiliar with the JPRA and am unaware of whether it offered any assistance with interrogations."

Investigators then questioned NSC legal adviser John Bellinger III. Right from the start, Bellinger played the "Alberto Gonzales card" in his written responses: "The Committee's questions relate to events that occurred five and six years ago while I served as NSC Legal Adviser during an extraordinarily busy and taxing period. In many cases, I simply do not recall the specific details the Committee has requested." (emphasis added)

To the questions: "Was there any discussion(s) of specific interrogation techniques used or proposed for use in detainee interrogations?" And: "Was there any discussion(s) about physical and/or psychological pressures used in SERE training?" Bellinger replied: "I was present at meetings in 2002 and 2003 with some or most of the listed individuals at which specific interrogation techniques used or proposed for use in detainee interrogations by the CIA was discussed." And: "I was present in meetings at which SERE training was discussed. I recall being told that numerous U.S. military personnel had undergone SERE training without significant ill-effect."

But the policy on the use of reverse-engineered SERE tactics had already decided upon months earlier by Rumsfeld's Pentagon. Indeed, an April 16, 2002 email from Dr. Bruce Jessen, an outsourced psychologist employed by JPRA and the CIA, to Col. Randy Moulton, the Commander of the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) and copied to two other contractors, Christopher Wirts and Mike Dozier demonstrate JPRA's enthusiasm for the project. Entitled: "Draft Exploitation Plan," Jessen writes,

Sir,

My initial draft plan. If you decide to proceed with this I will have more details to add to this skeleton.

I am sending this to Mike and Chris so they can operationalize my draft into a CONOP [Concept of Operations] for your consideration.

Bruce

Jessen's "concept" has been conveniently redacted from SASC documents but Moulton's reply is significant in that JPRA's Commander whole-heartedly endorsed reverse-engineering SERE techniques for prisoner torture.

Doc,

We need to craft a 10-12 slide briefing to take up for approval to include what generated this requirement, why we (USG) need it, how it falls within our Chartered responsibilities (or if not, why we should do it) and then make a recommendation.

Colonel Randy Moulton
Commander JPRA

Jessen, as we've subsequently learned, supplied what JPRA and their Pentagon masters were looking for in spades. Along with partner James Mitchell, another outsourced psychologist employed by JPRA and the CIA, the duo's Spokane, Washington-based Mitchell, Jessen & Associates was located close to the Air Force's SERE school program. The pair, along with military psychologists, did the heavy-lifting to tailor SERE for CIA and Pentagon torture programs. According to investigative journalist Jane Meyer,

Soon, the former SERE psychologists were training CIA interrogators and advising the CIA on implementing a program that one knowledgeable source describes as "a Clockwork Orange kind of approach." As psychologists they were unusually well-equipped to understand the human psyche. (Jane Meyer, The Dark Side, New York: Doubleday, 2008, p. 163)

"Well-equipped" indeed. According to SASC Chairman Senator Carl Levin, in July 2002, Richard Shiffrin, a Pentagon Deputy General Counsel called Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Baumgartner, the Chief of Staff at the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) "and asked for information on SERE techniques." Baumgartner responded by drafting a memo with three attachments. According to Levin's June 17, 2008 statement and supporting documentation released by the SASC,

One of those attachments (TAB 3) listed physical and psychological pressures used in SERE resistance training including sensory deprivation, sleep disruption, stress positions, waterboarding, and slapping. It also made reference to a section of the JPRA instructor manual that talks about "coercive pressures" like keeping the lights on at all times, and treating a person like an animal. Another attachment (TAB 4), written by Dr. Ogrisseg, also a witness today, assessed the long-term psychological effects of SERE resistance training on students and the effects of the waterboard.

During SASC hearings last Thursday, Colonel Steven Kleinman, a senior officer at the Air Force Academy who supervised that service's SERE program said in testimony he was "shocked" when he witnessed use of the harsh physical and psychological tactics used to train combat pilots facing potential capture during hostile encounters, employed haphazardly on Iraqis in a U.S. prison camp.

Kleinman told Senate investigators that SERE training "had morphed into a form of punishment for those who wouldn't cooperate." He testified that he told the task force commander "that the methods were unlawful and were in violation of the Geneva Conventions."

But as we now know, SERE techniques were reverse-engineered on orders from the highest levels of the Defense Department and the Vice President's office precisely as a mechanism to break recalcitrant "al-Qaeda" and Iraqi prisoners stripped by White House lawyers of all rights under the Geneva Conventions.

Disingenuously however, Kleinman claimed that SERE tactics were adopted from torture methods used by "Chinese communists." While historically accurate up to a point, Kleinman failed to disclose their current provenance: the decades-long programs developed by both the CIA and U.S. Military Intelligence that refined crude Stalinist-era methods of psychological torture.

After the Korean war, the CIA embarked on a nightmarish program, MKULTRA. Indeed, as I wrote in April, the programs employed at Guantánamo Bay, CIA "black sites" in Europe and Afghanistan and at prisons across Iraq were a distillation of coercive techniques devised during the 1950s and 1960s by MKULTRA psychiatrists.

Indeed, as Scott Shane reported in The New York Times, a 1957 Air Force study titled "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War," written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist, served as one of the primary sources of the CIA's torture manual, "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation."

CIA-Military Intelligence PSYWAR programs were further crystallized with the publication of the "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual-1983" (HRE). The secret manual, compiled from sections of the KUBARK guidelines and from U.S. Military Intelligence field manuals were "written in the mid 1960s as part of the Army's Foreign Intelligence Assistance Program code-named 'Project X'," The National Security Archive reports.

In other words, while "Chinese communists" may have gotten the psychological torture ball rolling, the United States Government's intelligence apparatus picked it up and ran with it.

The "refined" methods described in KUBARK and HRE included: forced drugging, hooding, sexual humiliation, extended sensory deprivation, prolonged interrogation, environmental and dietary manipulation, beatings, stress positions and other methods of "self-inflicted pain." CIA officers and their Military Intelligence doppelgängers, at the urging of White House masters, systematically committed war crimes on defenseless prisoners in their custody.

In a major breakthrough that demolished the mendacious claims of the Bush regime, documents released by the Senate Armed Service Committee in June, provided irrefutable evidence that top Pentagon and CIA officials sought out military and "outsourced" mercenary personnel, including psychologists like Jessen and Mitchell, precisely to reverse-engineer SERE tactics for use on prisoners designated "enemy combatants" by the administration.

Psychoanalyst Stephen Soldz, Salon investigative journalist Mark Benjamin and Jane Meyer's reports in The New Yorker have all documented that moves by Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCT) tasked to the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, followed hot on the heels of explicit demands by the Bush torture team to "take the gloves off." At Guantánamo and elsewhere, BSCT psychologists held operational positions and did not function as mental health providers but rather, were present at Guantánamo for the purpose of instructing personnel in the use of "enhanced interrogation" tactics, torture.

While hearings by the Senate Armed Services Committee has provided solid evidence of widespread human rights abuses by the Bush administration and their minions, the Democratic-controlled Congress has systematically failed to bring these war criminals to justice.

There is no mistaking the pattern: given ample opportunity to purge the American political landscape of these miscreants, Congress has abnegated its legal right and moral duty to remove Bushist malefactors from power.

With "impeachment off the table," as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi infamously declared in 2006, from preemptive wars of conquest to warrantless wiretapping, and from the systematic looting of the economy to the heinous torture of prisoners of war, the Democratic Party is fully complicit with the Bush administration's high crimes and misdemeanors.

The cover-up continues...

Documents Reveal Massive DHS Border Spying Operations

New documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) revealed that the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) subunit "reversed a two-decades-old policy that restricted customs agents from reading and copying the personal papers carried by travelers, including U.S. citizens."

After suing DHS under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the civil liberties organizations received 661 pages of heavily redacted files from the department and will be seeking withheld documents as well as the blacked-out material in federal district court this fall.

Antifascist Calling has reviewed many of these files; in some cases 50% or more of the documents have been censored. One might call it DHS' lame attempt at remaking the 1980 hit thriller Fade to Black!

In 2007, CBP quietly loosened 1986 federal guidelines restricting the examination of travelers' documents and papers. More than 20 years earlier a lawsuit, Heidy v. U.S. Customs Service, was filed by a group of solidarity activists targeted by the government after returning from Nicaragua. Their suit, charging the state with an illegal seizure of books, documents and personal papers led to the Reagan administration guidelines.

During the 1980s Nicaragua was a target of U.S. destabilization programs and a "dirty war" waged by the CIA and their drug-dealing Contra allies against the leftist Sandinista government. Reagan-era Customs agents claimed they had a right to seize "subversive literature" at the border.

Based on dubious legal authority, agents confiscated diaries, datebooks and other personal papers and photocopied the files. U.S. Customs then shared the activists' personal details with the FBI on the grounds that the government was engaged in a "counterintelligence operation" against a "hostile power." According to The Washington Post,

"Essentially they were using that as a pretext to do intelligence gathering on critics of our policies on Nicaragua," said David D. Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who was then a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, representing the activists suing the government in Heidy v. U.S. Customs Service. (Ellen Nakashima, "Expanded Powers to Search Travelers at Border Detailed," The Washington Post, Tuesday, September 23, 2008; A02)

As the Center for Constitutional Rights documented, "Pretrial discovery revealed a broad pattern of Customs abuses, including the use of Customs authority to gather intelligence about returnees from Nicaragua and the entry of that information into a nationwide Customs computer."

The Heidy decision, in other words, specifically barred Customs officials from rifling through travelers files in pursuit of so-called "actionable intelligence." The state was specifically barred from sharing the spoils of these illegal searches with other federal agencies. Fast-forward 22 years. As EFF revealed,

The documents show that in 2007, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) loosened restrictions on the examination of travelers' documents and papers that had existed since 1986. While CBP agents could previously read travelers' documents only if they had "reasonable suspicion" that the documents would reveal violations of agency rules, in 2007 officers were given the power to "review and analyze" papers without any individualized suspicion. Furthermore, whereas CBP agents could previously copy materials only where they had "probable cause" to believe a law had been violated, in 2007 they were empowered to copy travelers' papers without suspicion of wrongdoing and keep them for a "reasonable period of time" to conduct a border search. The new rules applied to physical documents as well as files on laptop computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices. ("Internal DHS Documents Detail Expansion to Read and Copy Travelers' Papers," Electronic Frontier Foundation, September 23, 2008)

In keeping with an avalanche of rule changes governing the expansive reach of America's intelligence agencies, the "quaint" notion of "probable cause"--that a targeted individual is suspected of a crime--is now a thing of the past, replaced by the Orwellian concept of "thought crimes" where everyone is miraculously transformed into a "suspect" by securocrats.

Under the guise of "keeping America safe," counterterrorism is the new stand-in for what covert operators once referred to as countersubversive operations that targeted left-wing political groups for destruction. As America's constitutional guarantees circle the drain awaiting only the final flush into oblivion, the religious and political beliefs of citizens and legal residents re-entering the country are now considered "fair game" by Bushist spooks.

ALC staff attorney Shirin Sinar denounced these patently illegal moves by the administration saying, "For more than 20 years, the government implicitly recognized that reading and copying the letters, diaries, and personal papers of travelers without reason would chill Americans' rights to free speech and free expression. But now customs officials can probe into the thoughts and lives of ordinary travelers without any suspicion at all."

It appears that simply attempting to legally cross the border constitutes "suspicious behavior" and is an occasion for state security agencies to have access to all our personal details, regardless of their relevance to an "ongoing terrorism investigation." Or, as is more likely in America's "new normal" regime, border crossings now serve as a pretext for future "terrorism investigations."

In a further move to subvert the 1986 guidelines, ALC and EFF noted that "CBP's wide latitude to collect this data attracted significant attention from other law enforcement agencies that sought to access it." In other words, under cover of conducting "counterterrorist" border searches, dodgy outfits such as the CIA, FBI, and the NSA are now asserting a "right" to have access to data seized from travelers' cell phone directories, laptops, financial data or confidential business records stored in CBP databases "available" for their perusal.

DHS spokeswoman Amy Kudwa told the Post "the updating of policies reflects an effort to be more transparent." Or cover DHS ass-ets since they were forced to release the files in the first place! The policy change according to Kudwa "reflects the realities of the post-9/11 environment," that is, an unaccountable Executive branch that has assumed "plenary" (unlimited) powers "during a time of war" (of their own choosing).

All is not well in Homelandia, however.

As The Washington Post reported two weeks ago, "In the five years since it was created, the Department of Homeland Security has overseen roughly $15 billion worth of failed contracts for projects ranging from airport baggage-screening to trailers for Hurricane Katrina evacuees, according to congressional data." Dana Hedgpeth wrote,

The contracts wound up over-budget, delayed or canceled after millions of dollars had already been spent, according to figures and documents prepared by the House Committee on Homeland Security. A panel of experts is to testify today before the House Subcommittee on Management, Investigations and Oversight on how to fix problems with the DHS acquisitions process. ...

The experts are to talk about a series of problem projects: About $351 million was wasted and not properly overseen in the U.S. Coast Guard's Deepwater program after ships were built and then scrapped, according to Homeland Security committee staffers and oversight agency reports. A $1.5 billion Boeing program to help secure U.S. borders with electronic sensors and other equipment is being shelved after it was over-budget, late and had technology problems. ("Congress Says DHS Oversaw $15 Billion in Failed Contracts," The Washington Post, Wednesday, September 17, 2008; D02)

While $15 billion may seem like chump change in today's climate of trillion dollar financial bailouts for Washington's favorite grifters in the banking and securities industry, neither Congress nor DHS have a "fix" for these wasteful programs, unless that is, the fix is already in and taxpayers not privy to information available to various "wise men" peacefully ensconced in their "secure, undisclosed locations" remains "classified."

But I digress...

Documents revealed that a July 11, 2007 email originating from CBP's New York office noted the "wide interest among other government agencies in CBP's ability to collect information." Indeed, the nameless CBP bureaucrat wrote, "As we all know, CBP's data collection capabilities have been widely discussed in the law enforcement community and we have been asked by many various agencies to copy and transmit documentation being carried by travelers for legitimate law enforcement reasons."

And under current rule changes enacted in July, DHS is allowed to share data obtained at the border with other agencies if there is a "suspicion" a law is being violated. Last year, documents revealed that the Assistant Commissioner, Office of Field Operations wrote:

There may be situations where an agency or entity, in furtherance of its respective mission, wishes to retain or disseminate copies of the information provided to it by CBP for technical assistance. Any such retention and/or dissemination will be governed by that agency or entity's existing legal authorities or policies, including periodic reviews of retained materials to evaluate and ensure continued relevance. (Memorandum for: Directors, Field Operations, Office of Field Operations. From: Assistant Commissioner, Office of Field Operations. Subject: Border Search/Examination of Documents, Papers, and Electronic Information, July 5, 2007)

What these "situations" are that might merit sharing personal information with the CIA, FBI or NSA (or the Main Core database for that matter) and what would constitute "continued relevance" is not specified by the Assistant Commissioner.

As the civil liberties groups noted, ALC received more than two dozen complaints from U.S. citizens, particularly those who were Muslim, South Asian, or Middle Eastern. Those illegally detained "were grilled about their families, religious practices, volunteer activities, political beliefs, or associations when returning to the United States from travels abroad."

Since "traveling while Arab" is apparently an enforceable offense, these individuals had their books, hand written notes, personal photos, laptop computer files and cell phone directories scrutinized and copied. Indeed, as EFF/ALC averred "CBP appears to have no policy constraining agents from questioning travelers on their religious practices or political views, in spite of the fact that many travelers have complained about being grilled on such First Amendment-protected activities."

Nor will CBP agents be "constrained" from violating our constitutional rights. While some will chalk it up to America's "enhanced security environment" where Bushist cronies reap the spoils of their ill-gotten wealth, "business as usual"--as always--is standard operating procedure in post-Constitutional America.

Oh, and by the way, Welcome to the United States!