Department of Homeland Security
The Coming Police State?
“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have...a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the character and conduct of their rulers.” — John Adams, 1816.
If George W. Bush has his way, and the now pending Frankenstein, “The Department of Homeland Security” (H.R. 5005) is passed and signed into ‘law’; and enforced in combination with secret Presidential Decision Directives (such as PDD 25), Presidential Executive Orders already in effect, and the already passed “USA Patriot Act”— in what would be the most massive consolidation and reorganization of the federal government in 50 years— America will be changed into a police state potentially more suppressive than the Soviet system under Stalin or Hitler’s Third Reich.
The DHS legislation has just been rammed through the House of Representatives and is pending in the Senate. “Conservative Republicans” overwhelmingly voted in favor of the bill. Neither the controlled media nor our elected officials are telling Americans what is being planned. Here are just a few of the totalitarian measures for which, the Bush administration says, “the details will be worked out and implemented later.”
Twenty-two federal police, intelligence and emergency agencies would be consolidated into a ‘SS Corps’ with centralized control of just about every phase of American life, including intelligence gathering and dissemination, and almost total control of information flow from the executive branch of government to the press and the people. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer responded to press complaints about the growing secrecy by saying, “The press is asking a lot of questions that I suspect the American people would prefer not to be asked or answered.”
The Constitutional protections of state and local autonomy and sovereignty would be destroyed, supplanting the authority of state police and local sheriffs, and other state and local agencies and institutions with secretive centralized federal authority.
Standardized “biometric travel documents” and a “National I.D. Card” with embedded microchips in the form of national driver‘s licenses (HR 4633, introduced by Cong. Jim Moran and Tom Davis, both of Virginia) would be required for Americans, as well as the development of “screening tools to predict human behavior.” Screening tools would include expanded use of iris scans, implantable biometric microchips, DNA ‘fingerprinting’, and biometric face scans using computerized scanning cameras, which are now in operation in many parts of America, including Washington, D.C. Data would be stored in a “national data bank.”
Unconstitutional “Federal Police” (Gestapo) would be allowed to search and seize anyone or anything at will, and to incarcerate and indefinitely hold Americans and/or their private property without arrest, without warrants, and with no legal recourse or due process. Recently, Georgetown University law professor David Cole correctly stated, “This is really an astounding assertion of authority. It‘s not just that you have no right to a lawyer; it's that you have no right to even have a hearing. If this is true, then there is really no limit to the President’s power to label U.S. citizens as bad people and then have them held in military custody indefinitely.”
U.S. military would be allowed to conduct “lethal operations” on American soil, ending the protections for citizens under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act — passed after the War Between the States to prevent a recurrence of the barbaric and despotic acts by the Federal Army against Southern and Northern civilians alike. Federal officials have already called for the use of foreign military troops to “assist” U.S. troops in domestic ground operations. Foreign NATO troops have already been flying AWACS over America. Foreign troops have held joint training exercises in “domestic peace-keeping operations” with U.S. troops, civilian law enforcement agencies and with United Nations personnel and equipment (Associated Press, July 18, 2002) on American soil.
The Bush administration has clearly indicated it may call on the Canadian and/or Mexican military to help quell “domestic unrest” during a “national emergency”— the same corrupt Mexican military which has a blind eye for, and even assists the tens of thousands of illegals crossing the border, including thousands from Mideast terrorist nations, Communist China and the former Soviet Union states— the same Mexican army which regularly crosses into American territory and fires fully automatic weapons at U.S. Border Patrol agents.
The use of foreign armed forces on American soil, serving as “peacekeepers”, has been an essential part of the New World Order plan for destruction of the sovereignty and for control of dozens of nations, and is planned for America as part of the continued push for merging our nation into a totalitarian One World Government regime. By using the Marxist-Hegelian Dialectic formula— problem-reaction-solution— a crisis is created and then government offers a solution to the ensuing turmoil and fear.
“Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government.” — Henry Kissinger, Evian, France, at a May 21, 1992 Bilderburgers meeting.
Foreign troops operating under U.N. sanction as “peacekeepers” have a sordid history of criminal acts against civilian populations. The photo at the right was taken during the U.N. “Restore Hope” mission in Somalia. Two Belgian paratroopers admitted to “roasting” a Somali boy in a Brussels court in June of 1997. Fifteen members of the 3rd Battalion of the parachute regiment were investigated in 1995 for “acts of sadism and torture.” Another boy was murdered by being locked in a container in the desert sun for 48 hours. A thirteen year-old girl was “tied to the front of an armoured carrier” and repeatedly raped while Italian officers looked on. When the officers “wanted to have fun, everybody went along with it.” Canadian troops were investigated for torturing a Somali to death and killing three others. Paratroopers “were specifically trained in methods of torture to aid interrogation.” One of them stated: “What's the big deal? They are just niggers anyway.”
The President would be allowed to unilaterally procure taxpayer's dollars without the vote and consent of Congress and to act in secret. The Freedom of Information Act has already been suspended by presidential directive for certain “national security purposes.”
“The Bush administration is mounting the most sustained assault on open government since the early Reagan administration or perhaps even since President Gerald Ford vetoed the FOIA amendments in 1974,” stated Tom Blanton, director of the nonpartisan National Security Archives at George Washington University.
A “Domestic Informant” program would be created, modeled on the programs of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, where 1 in 24 Americans would act as spies or paid informants on their fellow Americans. The Sydney Morning Herald stated, “Historically, informant systems have been the tools of non-democratic states.” Even though this measure was taken out of the House version of the bill, the Bush administration is still pushing for it.
During the Reagan administration, from 1982-84, Colonel Oliver North assisted FEMA in drafting civil defense preparations including executive orders providing for suspension of the Constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and for turning over government to the president and FEMA.
A Miami Herald article on July 5, 1987, reported that the former FEMA director Louis Guiffrida‘s deputy, John Brinkerhoff, handled the martial law portion of the planning. The plan was said to be similar to one Mr. Giuffrida had developed earlier to combat “a national uprising by black militants.” It provided for the detention “of at least 21 million American Negroes in assembly centers or relocation camps.” Today Mr. Brinkerhoff is with the highly influential Anser Institute for Homeland Security. Following a request by the Pentagon in January that the US military be allowed the option of deploying troops on American streets, the institute, in February, published a paper by Mr. Brinkerhoff arguing the legality of this. Mr. Ridge, the Director of Homeland Security, has just advocated a review of U.S. law regarding the use of the military for law enforcement duties. The full facts and final contents of President Reagan’s national plan remain unknown because President Bush took the unusual step of sealing the Reagan presidential papers last November. However, many of the key figures of the Reagan era are part of the present administration, including John Poindexter, to whom Oliver North later reported.
At the time of the Reagan initiatives, Attorney General William French Smith, wrote to national security adviser Robert McFarlane: “I believe that the role assigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the revised Executive Order exceeds its proper function ... this department and others have repeatedly raised serious policy and legal objections to an ‘emergency czar’ role for FEMA.” Criticism of President Bush's response to September 11 echoes Mr. Smith‘s warning. On June 7, former presidential counsel John Dean spoke of America’s sliding into a “constitutional dictatorship” and martial law.
Pastor Chuck Baldwin, founder of the Crossroads Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida, and a nationally syndicated radio broadcaster and writer, recently stated: “Right now, George Bush and his fellow travelers compose the greatest threat to freedom and constitutional government that exists. Instead of fighting terrorism, they are actually destroying the very principles of liberty that they claim to be protecting?It should be obvious to everyone by now that?(he) is in the process of creating a communist-style form of government in the United States.”
Dr. William R. “Dick” Burcham, a retired U.S. Navy Commander, who now works as an analyst at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said that the nation should “take a page out of history?crisis is never the time to make sweeping changes? No one in the White House and Congress has defined terrorism?What are we waging a war against? Are we waging a war against psychological warfare?” In that case, he said, the victims of the President's “war on terrorism” might be the U.S. citizens, and their Constitution. “We have not fought this type of war before, [and we] may not prevail without adopting an original and resourceful national strategy. To prevail we must do more than just the defeat of our enemies, we must also preserve our representative republic form of government and rights and freedoms set forth in the Constitution ... [which] was ordained and established as a sacred pledge to the citizens of this country; a pledge to protect their personal freedoms and the rights of states. Far more than a global war on terrorism will be lost if the importance of the promises to our posterity and ourselves, expressed in the Constitution are ever forgotten.”
On June 25, in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Justice Department oversight, Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) told Attorney General Ashcroft, “Now, the last time you appeared here, you brought an al-Qaeda operations manual to make the point that the war on terrorism is serious and that you take it seriously. I want to make it clear that everybody? every member of this committee is very much against terrorism? but you‘ve taken an oath to support the Constitution, as have I ... This country has an operation manual. We have an operation manual called the United States Constitution that has served us for 225 years. It’s served us in good times and bad times?and the only times we have been less than defended is when we have ignored the protections of that Constitution.”
Congressman Ron Paul of Texas spoke on the House floor on June 27, asking if we are doomed to a police state: “Mr. Speaker, my subject today is whether America is a police state. I‘m sure the large majority of Americans would answer this in the negative (but) terror and fear are used to achieve complacency and obedience, especially when citizens are deluded into believing they are still a free people?Most police states, surprisingly, come about through the democratic process with majority support. During a crisis, the rights of individuals and the minority are more easily trampled, which is more likely to condition a nation to become a police state than a military coup? The masses are easily led to believe that security and liberty are mutually exclusive? Once it's discovered (that) the sacrifice of liberty inevitably led to the loss of prosperity and no real safety, it’s too late? take a look at our Capitol for any evidence of a police state. We see: barricades, metal detectors, police, military soldiers at times, dogs, ID badges required for every move, vehicles checked at airports and throughout the Capitol. The people are totally disarmed, except for the police and the criminals. But worse yet, surveillance cameras in Washington are everywhere to ensure our safety? Our government already keeps close tabs on just about everything we do and requires official permission for nearly all of our activities (and) over 80,000 federal bureaucrats now carry guns to make us toe the line?”
Hitler's rise to power provides many examples of the use of agents provocateur and opportunistic exploitation of events to further evil objectives. The Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933 is the most famous example. The Nazis capitalized on the event with a vengeance. Insisting that the Reichstag fire was a communist attack against the German Fatherland (Homeland), Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to sign an emergency decree “for the Protection of the People and the State,” suspending constitutional liberties and allowing the state to exercise extraordinary powers in the name of “public safety.”
As a cure for the “crisis” facing Germany, Hitler instituted “Gleichschaltung” (coordination) by which the central government absorbed the power and political functions of the German states. On March 23, 1933, the Reichstag, succumbing to the Nazis‘ conspiratorial maneuvers, passed the “Enabling Act,” making the central government responsible for all law enforcement and giving Hitler’s cabinet exclusive legislative powers for four years. This one act transformed Hitler from chancellor to dictator. He promised “the government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures.” After the Reichstag fire came the “Night of the Long Knives” when Hitler eliminated the top leadership of Roehm‘s Brownshirts which had become competitors. A plausible pretext for the purge was needed. A coup “plot” by Roehm was fabricated which served the purpose of providing further justification for legalized government terror. Hitler’s law read: “The measures taken on June 30 and July 1 and 2 (1934) to strike down the treasonous attacks are justifiable acts of self-defense by the state.” What followed was a nightmare.
Americans must awaken to what is happening in the real world and must not be misled by demagoguery or by ranting of fools living in a state of denial. Our freedom and free institutions are under attack, not from without, but from within. America can not be conquered or destroyed by invading armies or by foreign terrorists unless first weakened by the greed, ignorance and apathy of our people, and the deceptions of the corporate media and the treason of our ‘leaders’.
“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them.” President Washington‘s prophetic words were written over 225 years ago as he sought God’s protection and guidance in a war for the freedom of a new nation— a war against a tyrant king named George.