GOP: "duty" to spy on Americans: "5th Column"

[Moses]

It is shocking that this shocking statement by Senator Graham in yesterday's hearings has gone unreported. It not only asserts the "right" and "duty" of Bush to spy on Americans without warrants, but indicates that he is already doing so, and defines those who may be targets of this surveillance as ANYONE who may "sympathise" with the "enemy".

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601359.html

GRAHAM: Thank you for -- that is absolutely the point I've been trying to make for a year and a half. I want to give that troop an answer that we can all live with.

And let me take this just a little bit further. The FISA statute, in a time of war, is a check and balance. But here's where I think I'm your biggest fan. During the time of war, the administration has the inherent power, in my opinion, to surveil the enemy and to map the battlefield electronically -- not just physical, but to electronically map what the enemy is up to by seizing information and putting that puzzle together.

And the administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue fifth column movements.

And let me tell folks who are watching what a fifth column movement is. It is a movement known to every war where American citizens will sympathize with the enemy and collaborate with the enemy. And it's happened in every war.

And President Roosevelt talked about, "We need to know about fifth column movements."

So my friends on the other side, I stand by this president's ability, inherent to being commander in chief, to find out about fifth column movements, and I don't think you need a warrant to do that.

[Moses]

The Post's reprint of the transcripts stop right after this statement by Graham. Here are the links to the transcripts up to that point:

Part One: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020600931_pf.html

Part Two: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601001.html

Part Three: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601359_pf.html

[karpomrx]

It is incredible that so many people in this country are potential agents of terror. What happened? Thousands of enemies of Freedom lurking and plotting EVERYWHERE! Goodness, gracious, when did this happen? I sure hope that the security services aren't as riddled with evil as the rest of society seems to be! Maybe we should have them take an oath, or something.

[Moses]

Some supporters of the NSA effort advocate a broader approach. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) urged the administration to consider expanding the program to allow eavesdropping without warrants for communications inside the United States.

    "There is no less reason to do it than there is to intercept international communications with respect to a potential terrorist warning or attack," he said.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/07/AR2006020701745.html

[camaxtle]

Yes I think that the government should spy on us because if your not doing anything wrong then you shouldn't have anything to worry about. And if you are doing something wrong, wouldn't you want someone from the government to let you know that you did something wrong? you know like having an OPINION that goes contrary to the reality being pushed through by our wonderful government. I mean they are doing it so we will feel safer. So we won't look up from our feeding bins and won't be scared when the great blade comes down and slices our heads off.

[Moses]

SEnator Graham's statement that he is a 'fan' of Gonzales in respect to carrying out unlimited warrantless surveillance on Americans for the purpose of identifying a "fifth column" indicates that this is already being done. And what is it that they mean by a "fifth column"?:

[/b], fronts for the communist Workers World Party, and United for Peace and Justice, the group headed by Marxist Leslie Cagan. These groups constitute the main forces behind the various "anti-war" demonstrations held in the U.S.

Under the heading of "alternative news," the pro-terrorist website recommends Al-Jazeera and the following "progressive" and left-wing sites—buzzflash,  common dreams, Counterpunch, Daily Kos, Democracy Now, Pacifica Radio, truthout, and The Nation, affiliated with  The Nation magazine.

These links are relevant when considering that some elements of the far left-wing in the U.S. have made common cause with the Iraqi-based terrorists and Osama bin Laden. In his recent audio taped message, bin Laden named Rogue State, a left-wing book by William Blum, as a field manual for understanding and undermining U.S. foreign policy.

The fact that bin Laden would cite the Blum book demonstrates that bin Laden is counting on a leftist fifth column in the U.S. to undermine the war on terrorism and hand him a victory on the battlefield.

It is also significant that Bin Laden, in his message, alluded to "documents" cited in the Western press for his complaint that President Bush had "planned to bomb" the Al-Jazeera office in Qatar.
[/ul]

www.aim.org/aim_report_print/4368_0_4_0/

www.aim.org/static/20_0_7_0_C

Some comments on Accuracy in Media by Justin R.

Profiles in Chutzpah

One of the “vast Right Wing Conspiracy” organizations that Scaife funds very generously (through the “Sara Scaife Foundation,” the “Scaife Family Foundation” AND the “Carthage Foundation,” to the tune of over $2 million between 1-1-1995 and 1-1-2002) is “Accuracy In Media” -- a right wing media attack group whose usage of “accuracy” is derived from the same dictionary that Faux Nooz’s “Fair and Balanced” comes from. Accuracy in Media decided a few years ago to set up a satellite attack group called “Accuracy in Academia.”

This is where our real story begins.

From their website: “What is Accuracy In Academia?


“Accuracy in Academia, a non-profit research group based in Washington, D. C., wants schools to return to their traditional mission-the quest for truth. To promote this goal, AIA documents and publicizes political bias in education in Campus Report, its monthly newsletter. CR articles focus on:

*

The use of classroom and/or university resources to indoctrinate students;
*

Discrimination against students, faculty or administrators based on political or academic beliefs; and
*

Campus violations of free speech.



For a good chunk of 2003, AIA was staffed by a young woman, fresh out of Yale, named Sara Russo. Ms. Russo had been an arch-conservative at Yale, and also at George Mason U. which she seems to have attended. She maintained a blog, entitled “Russo’s Republic” wherein she opined on such matters as a Woman’s Right To Choose (ain’t got none); American Idol (liked it); GOOGLE (liked it because of her high ranking); how many pictures there are of her in the Yale DAILY NEWS (“one photo has me holding a sign that says ‘Al Gore is the Unabomber’”) and other weighty matters.

Her “Conservative Activism” page states: “I started this site because as a recent graduate of Yale University and a veteran of many activism campaigns, from protesting a campus celebration of the 50th anniversary of the People's Republic of China to assisting a campaign to stop Yale from using student tuition to fund abortion, I realized I had many ideas to share. 

“In my day job as a program officer and conference director for Accuracy in Academia, I routinely meet conservative students from all over the United States.”

A virulent anti-abortionist, she even had a separate page on how to convince people to her side. She brays about writing for AIA as an undergraduate, praising GOOGLE for including “my many articles for Accuracy in Academia.”

Here is a sample: “Bias Revealed Among Ivy League Faculty --Professors Voted 84% for Gore, 9% for Bush

“A new poll of professors at Ivy League universities has found an alarming disparity between the numbers of liberal and conservative faculty on the campuses.

“Commissioned by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, the survey revealed that of those Ivy League faculty that voted in the 2000 presidential election, more than 80 percent voted for Democrat Al Gore while only nine percent chose Republican candidate George W. Bush. By contrast, the popular vote in America was evenly divided, with 48% going to each candidate.

“The other findings of the poll are similarly startling, and reveal how wide the breach is between the views held by Ivy League professors and the beliefs held by ordinary Americans. When asked about a number of highly controversial political issues, including abortion and slavery reparations, the professors consistently gave answers far to the left of the American political mainstream.”

One can only gasp at the presumption of these awful professors. Why, they probably don’t drive pickup trucks or drink Budweiser. How DARE they not be “ordinary”? Clearly Sara was a woman on a mission.

Young Sara Russo had the world by the tail: A Yale Graduate, a nice Washington DC job with AIM/AIA, a nice neocon resume and the experience of running AIA’s “Conservative University.”

This fact didn’t stop her from archly tooting her own horn when she wrote: “A record enrollment of over one-hundred students converged on Washington, DC, July 18 to attend Accuracy in Academia's most successful Conservative University to date. The students from such schools as Harvard, Stanford, and UCLA were joined by dozens of interns from the Washington, DC- area, who gladly gave up their weekend to hear eminent conservative speakers such as Burt Folsom and John Lott cover topics that are absent from their campus curriculums.

“Thousands more were able to participate in the four-day event through nationally televised coverage from C-SPAN, which aired lectures by Conservative Caucus chairman Howard Phillips, Accuracy in Academia conference director Sara Russo, National Republican Senatorial Committee research editor Shamed Dogan, and Accuracy in Media prize-winning film producer Roger Aronoff.”

Passing over the questionable ethics of praising your own event in a “news story” on a website purportedly devoted to “accuracy,” it should be noted that Shamed Dogan was an old friend of Russo’s from Yale, linked from her blog to his blog, and, that Sarah Russo shortly thereafter changed her name, reflecting her new marital status, to “Sara Dogan.” Hmmmm.

So, perhaps it will come as no surprise that when former liberal David Horowitz, of Southern California, decided to launch a frontal assault on the “ideology” of university faculty, he would pick Sara Russo (soon to be Dogan) in 2003, to head his “Students for Academic Freedom,” a typically disingenuously named right-wing attack group pushing an equally dishonest proposal of Horowitz’ entitled, “The Student Bill of Rights.”

So Sara moved her desk from 4455 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 330, Washington, DC 20008 to Students for Academic Freedom, 1411 K Street, NW, Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20005, and became: “Sara Dogan (formerly Sara Russo), National Campus Director, Students for Academic Freedom.” (from their website 1-17-05). From a location on the outskirts of power (near Tilden and Nebraska Streets), Sara was now six blocks from the White House, and less than a mile from the Capitol.

Perhaps Horowitz was convinced by this in Sara’s Ivy League Bias article: “David Horowitz, President of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, the organization that commissioned the survey, believes that the poll's results indicate a disturbing conformity in academia. "This survey confirms what I have been saying for years-that our universities are less intellectually free than they were even in the McCarthy era, when I was an Ivy League undergraduate myself," commented Horowitz.

"For all the Ivy League's talk of diversity, it is painfully evident from this survey that there is no real diversity when it comes to the political attitudes and social values of Ivy League professors," Horowitz continued. "Not only is there an alarming uniformity among liberal arts professors at our elite universities, but this uniformity bears the clear stamp of the Democratic Party and the political left."

Sarah Russo and David Horowitz were ideological soul-mates inasmuch as both believed that the evil “leftist” Democrat professors were Joe McCarthys, stamping out the hate-speech of the Right. And so Sara was installed as Oberstgruppenfuhrer of Horowitz’ SA(F) -- a seemingly wholly-owned subsidiary of the CSPC.

According to Transparency in Media, CSPC has received $5,425,000 since 1989 from Scaife foundations. And another major funder, The Bradley Foundation (“Name a conservative idea -- whether it's school vouchers, faith-based initiatives or the premise that there's a worldwide clash of civilizations -- and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is apt to have its fingerprints on it, “ wrote reporter  MARK O'KEEFE of the Newhouse News Service; the Foundation is also noted for funding “the Project for a New American Century” and for their strong ties to the Bush Administration) gave CSPC $13,173,000 over the same period.

[It’s interesting to note Scaife and Bradley also gave, during the same period, an aggregate of $75,465,077 to the uber-conservative poster-group, the Heritage Foundation.]

By early this year, the so-called Students for Academic Freedom boasted that they had 135 chapters at Universities around the USA.

They had created a  stir at the University of Colorado at Boulder, according to the right-wing (Rev. Sun Yung Moon-owned) WASHINGTON TIMES, 9-15-2003: “A Republican proposal to boost pluralism in academia in Colorado has enraged the left, prompting cries of McCarthyism and calls for an investigation.  The flap erupted last week after word surfaced that Colorado Republican leaders are throwing their support behind the ‘Academic Bill of Rights,’ a document drawn up over the summer by Los Angeles-based conservative activist David Horowitz.

“The eight-point manifesto calls for increasing intellectual diversity in academia by urging universities to seek more conservative professors, include more classics in the curriculum, invite conservative speakers to campus, and protect students who disagree with liberal professors from academic harassment.“

A similar fracas ensued at Ball State University late in 2004, as professor George Wolfe was accused by the SAF schlock troopers as “supporting terrorism.” Er .. make that David Horowitz himself.

According to the Muncie Star Press, 11/30/04, the accusation, “resulted in Wolfe receiving so much hate e-mail from Oregon, Florida and other places that he has had to close down his e-mail. ‘My e-mail is impossible to manage,"’ Wolfe said. "One person said I should move to a communist country.’"

“The controversy started when conservative Ball State student Brett Mock, who took one of Wolfe's classes, filed a complaint with Students for Academic Freedom accusing Wolfe of being biased. SAF is a national organization founded by Horowitz to expose politically biased college professors and administrators.”

In both cases, the National Campus Coordinator, Sara Dogan, was all over it, responding to every editorial, writing letters to the University presidents, and beating the drum for the well-orchestrated attack on the wrong-partied “ideology” of professors.

Clearly the agenda is to use the media megaphone provided by fanatical contributors like Scaife and Bradley to crush any remaining “blue state” pockets of resistance that might be hiding in the Universities.

And they’re succeeding. Donald Lazere, professor emeritus of English at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo reported, in The CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION on July 2, 2004 (the 228th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, ironically enough) “In March the Georgia Senate adopted the Academic Bill of Rights Resolution, modeled on David Horowitz's campaign calling for colleges to promote intellectual diversity and academic freedom on their campuses. In May the American Legislative Exchange Council -- which describes itself as "a clearinghouse of information for 2,400 conservative officeholders in 50 states, almost one-third of the 7,500 state legislators in the country" -- adopted a sample resolution and model statutory language based on Horowitz's bill, and pledged to work toward the statute's passage in the legislature of every state. Meanwhile, according to the Horowitz-affiliated Students for Academic Freedom, Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, plans to sponsor a resolution in the Senate in September echoing the language in the ‘academic bill of rights.’ Sessions's bill would accompany a similar House resolution introduced last fall by Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican. ‘It's been an incredibly successful week for Students for Academic Freedom,’ boasts the May 14 announcement by the group's national campus director, Sara Dogan.” Well, the boasting we already know about.

Which brings us home to Oregon. And to the REGISTER-GUARD, who, on January 2, 2005 wrote an editorial entitled: “A slippery slope: 'Academic bill of rights' law isn't the answer,” noting rightly that “the bill of rights is a Trojan Horse.”

And, being the paid attack-dog that she is, Sara Dogan wrote a letter to the editor published on January 10th, claiming that the bullying left-wing U of O professors were oppressing noble conservative students. In part it reads: “The liberal faculties of universities in Oregon and elsewhere refuse to hire conservatives. A recent study by Professor Daniel Klein of Santa Clara University shows that in the next generation, liberal professors will outnumber conservatives by a factor of 30 to 1.”

Funny: for a party that repudiates science and reason, e.g. “evolution” I can’t imagine why more professors aren’t big conservatives. But, be that as it may, the cited Klein turns out to be a rabid Libertarian (hates Democrats with a purple passion) and has a methodological skew in his “results”: Only “liberal arts” professors are counted, to find “liberals.” This is the sort of literal mindedness that characterizes Right Wing thinking, of course. But then, of course, since the Earth is only 4000 years old, nuance just hasn’t had enough time to develop, one might posit. The R-G could not go unchalleneged, evidently.

Sara Dogan, pampered poster child of the New Right, concludes with this purring threat: “If academics answered the editorial's call ‘to demonstrate a genuine willingness to acknowledge and address legitimate complaints of bias’ or adopt the Academic Bill of Rights themselves, we would be happy to withdraw the legislation - as we have already done in Colorado.”

Except ... the R-G editorial doesn’t say a THING about legislation. So, what is this “legislation” she’s referring to? Bragging and threatening: these are the “conservative” values that universities are expected to show more tolerance for?

[Moses]

Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'

By Nat Parry
February 21, 2006


Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration’s domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.

“The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements,” Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.

“I stand by this President’s ability, inherent to being Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that,” Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.

“Senator,” a smiling Gonzales responded, “the President already said we’d be happy to listen to your ideas.”

In less paranoid times, Graham’s comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways – ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror.

But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy.

Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush’s actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by “news informers” in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com “Upside-Down Media” or below.]

Detention Centers

Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,” KBR said. [Market Watch, Jan. 26, 2006]

Later, the New York Times reported that “KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.” [Feb. 4, 2006]

Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times focused on concerns about Halliburton’s reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services.

“It’s hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars,” remarked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California.

Less attention centered on the phrase “rapid development of new programs” and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs” might be.

Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott and Maureen Farrell, have pursued what the Bush administration might actually be thinking.

Scott speculated that the “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.” He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized Rex-84 “readiness exercise,” which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 “refugees,” in the event of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the United States.

Farrell pointed out that because “another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge” of immigrants flooding across the border.

Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said, “Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.”

Labor Camps

There also was another little-noticed item posted at the U.S. Army Web site, about the Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This program “provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations.”

The Army document, first drafted in 1997, underwent a “rapid action revision” on Jan. 14, 2005. The revision provides a “template for developing agreements” between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.

On its face, the Army’s labor program refers to inmates housed in federal, state and local jails. The Army also cites various federal laws that govern the use of civilian labor and provide for the establishment of prison camps in the United States, including a federal statute that authorizes the Attorney General to “establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him” and “make available … the services of United States prisoners” to various government departments, including the Department of Defense.

Though the timing of the document’s posting – within the past few weeks –may just be a coincidence, the reference to a “rapid action revision” and the KBR contract’s contemplation of “rapid development of new programs” has raised eyebrows about why this sudden need for urgency.

These developments also are drawing more attention now because of earlier Bush administration policies to involve the Pentagon in “counter-terrorism” operations inside the United States.

Pentagon Surveillance

Despite the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibitions against U.S. military personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries, such as its role in domestic surveillance activities.

The Washington Post has reported that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Defense Department has been creating new agencies that gather and analyze intelligence within the United States. [Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2005]

The White House also is moving to expand the power of the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created three years ago to consolidate counterintelligence operations. The White House proposal would transform CIFA into an office that has authority to investigate crimes such as treason, terrorist sabotage or economic espionage.

The Pentagon also has pushed legislation in Congress that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies. But some in the Pentagon don’t seem to think that new laws are even necessary.

In a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2005, the U.S. Army’s top intelligence officer wrote, “Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military] intelligence components collecting U.S. person information.”

Drawing a distinction between “collecting” information and “receiving” information on U.S. citizens, the memo argued that “MI [military intelligence] may receive information from anyone, anytime.” [See CQ.com, Jan. 31, 2005]

This receipt of information presumably would include data from the National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. Bush approved the program of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11.

There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program. Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance program existed, but he said he couldn’t discuss the details without breaking classification laws.

Tice added that the “special access” surveillance program may be violating the constitutional rights of millions of Americans. [UPI, Feb. 14, 2006]

With this expanded surveillance, the government’s list of terrorist suspects is rapidly swelling.

The Washington Post reported on Feb. 15 that the National Counterterrorism Center’s central repository now holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a four-fold increase since the fall of 2003.

Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, “Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA.”

Homeland Defense

As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress also have questioned the elasticity of Bush’s definitions for words like terrorist “affiliates,” used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the wiretap program, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, complained that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees “have not been briefed on the scope and nature of the program.”

Feinstein added that, therefore, the committees “have not been able to explore what is a link or an affiliate to al-Qaeda or what minimization procedures (for purging the names of innocent people) are in place.”

The combination of the Bush administration’s expansive reading of its own power and its insistence on extraordinary secrecy has raised the alarm of civil libertarians when contemplating how far the Pentagon might go in involving itself in domestic matters.

A Defense Department document, entitled the “Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support,” has set out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions an “active, layered defense” both inside and outside U.S. territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges to “transform U.S. military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the … U.S. homeland.”

The Pentagon strategy paper calls for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to “defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States.” The plan “maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us.”

But there are concerns over how the Pentagon judges “threats” and who falls under the category “those who would harm us.” A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity’s TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.

In December 2005, NBC News revealed the existence of a secret 400-page Pentagon document listing 1,500 “suspicious incidents” over a 10-month period, including dozens of small antiwar demonstrations that were classified as a “threat.”

The Defense Department also might be moving toward legitimizing the use of propaganda domestically, as part of its overall war strategy.

A secret Pentagon “Information Operations Roadmap,” approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for “full spectrum” information operations and notes that “information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa.”

“PSYOPS messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public,” the document states. The Pentagon argues, however, that “the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices.”

It calls for “boundaries” between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but does not outline any corresponding limits on PSYOP campaigns.

Similar to the distinction the Pentagon draws between “collecting” and “receiving” intelligence on U.S. citizens, the Information Operations Roadmap argues that as long as the American public is not intentionally “targeted,” any PSYOP propaganda consumed by the American public is acceptable.

The Pentagon plan also includes a strategy for taking over the Internet and controlling the flow of information, viewing the Web as a potential military adversary. The “roadmap” speaks of “fighting the net,” and implies that the Internet is the equivalent of “an enemy weapons system.”

In a speech on Feb. 17 to the Council on Foreign Relations, Rumsfeld elaborated on the administration’s perception that the battle over information would be a crucial front in the War on Terror, or as Rumsfeld calls it, the Long War.

“Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic communication framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place,” Rumsfeld said.

The Department of Homeland Security also has demonstrated a tendency to deploy military operatives to deal with domestic crises.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the department dispatched “heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, (and had them) openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans,” reported journalists Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo on Sept. 10, 2005.

Noting the reputation of the Blackwater mercenaries as “some of the most feared professional killers in the world,” Scahill and Crespo said Blackwater’s presence in New Orleans “raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here.”

U.S. Battlefield

In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law already exists in the United States and has been in place since shortly after the 9/11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order No. 1 which empowered him to detain any non-citizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant.

“The President decided that he was no longer running the country as a civilian President,” wrote civil rights attorney Michael Ratner in the book Guantanamo: What the World Should Know. “He issued a military order giving himself the power to run the country as a general.”

For any American citizen suspected of collaborating with terrorists, Bush also revealed what’s in store. In May 2002, the FBI arrested U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in Chicago on suspicion that he might be an al-Qaeda operative planning an attack.

Rather than bring criminal charges, Bush designated Padilla an “enemy combatant” and had him imprisoned indefinitely without benefit of due process. After three years, the administration finally brought charges against Padilla, in order to avoid a Supreme Court showdown the White House might have lost.

But since the Court was not able to rule on the Padilla case, the administration’s arguments have not been formally repudiated. Indeed, despite filing charges against Padilla, the White House still asserts the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants.

This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield.

“In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the Nation learned all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part of the battlefield,” Bush's lawyers argued in briefs to the federal courts. [Washington Post, July 19, 2005]

Given Bush’s now open assertions that he is using his “plenary” – or unlimited – powers as Commander in Chief for the duration of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions.

As former Vice President Al Gore asked after recounting a litany of sweeping powers that Bush has asserted to fight the War on Terror, “Can it be true that any President really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited?”

In such extraordinary circumstances, the American people might legitimately ask exactly what the Bush administration means by the “rapid development of new programs,” which might require the construction of a new network of detention camps.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Moses]

kurtnimmo.com/?p=238

....paranoids such as David Horowitz have managed to infect influential Congress critters such as Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, heir apparent of the reactionary reptile Strom Thurmond, and member of the Armed Services and Judiciary committees in the Senate. Earlier this month, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing “on Wartime Executive Power and the National Security Agency’s Surveillance Authority,” Graham, in an exchange with AG Alberto Gonzales, declared “the administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue fifth column movements” and “I stand by this president’s ability, inherent to being commander in chief, to find out about fifth column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that.”

In other words the Bill of Rights does not apply to U.S. citizens who “sympathize with the enemy and collaborate with the enemy,” even though the idea of Americans collaborating with the resistance in Iraq is nothing short of absurd on its face and, moreover, sympathizing with the victims of Bush’s invasion is hardly illegal, although millions of Americans obviously find it offensive. “Senator, the president already said we’d be happy to listen to your ideas,” Gonzales enthusiastically responded.

In fact, as we know, the NSA snoop program is not about listening in on “al-Qaeda” phone calls (which do not exist) but rather is more precisely about snooping the email and phone calls of Americans, in particular Americans involved in “a fifth column communist movement,” as Horowitz would have it, exercising their one-time constitutional right to petition the government and speak their mind in the commons.

“In less paranoid times, Graham’s comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways—ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror,” writes Nat Parry. “But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy.”

For instance, this blog—and thousands of other websites—may be considered outlets disseminating information “considered helpful to the enemy” simply because they do not “support the troops,” or rather support the “war effort,” in fact an effort to illegally occupy a once sovereign nation. For diehard Straussian neocons and their facilitators such as Lindsey Graham, opposition to the invasion and occupation makes one a direct supporter of Osama bin Laden (or his ghost), Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (or his ghost), and Saddam Hussein (or his many doubles). As we know, Bush and the Straussian neocons live in a Manichean world where polarized black and white is the order of the day—you’re either with the neocons, neoliberals, and the Zionists or you’re with the terrorists, who consist of millions of Muslims in the Middle East (and possibly a billion or more if you throw in the Muslims of Asia and Africa).

There “was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with ‘an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,’ KBR said,” Parry continues.


Later, the New York Times reported that “KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.” [Feb. 4, 2006]

Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times focused on concerns about Halliburton’s reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services.

“It’s hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars,” remarked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California.

Less attention centered on the phrase “rapid development of new programs” and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs” might be.

Some of us, however, have a pretty good idea what these “new programs” might very well be. Rex-84 Alpha Explan (Readiness Exercise 1984, Exercise Plan) was a “gaming exercise” created specifically by FEMA and DoD—with the participation of other federal agencies, including the CIA, the Secret Service, the Treasury, the FBI, and the Veterans Administration—to “fight subversive activities” and provide “authorization for the military to implement government ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels,” “arrest of certain unidentified segments of the population” and impose “martial rule,” according to scholar Diana Reynolds. Rex-84 was part of “Operation Garden Plot,” or Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, an outgrowth of the Kerner Commission “study” of “civil disorder” during the Johnson administration in the 1960s. “Garden Plot evolved into a series of annual training exercises based on contingency plans to undercut riots and demonstrations, ultimately developed for every major city in the United States. Participants in the exercises included key officials from all law enforcement agencies in the nation, as well as the National Guard, the military, and representatives of the intelligence community According to the plan, joint teams would react to a variety of scenarios based on information gathered through political espionage and informants. The object was to quell urban unrest,” Donald Goldberg and Indy Badhwar wrote for Penthouse Magazine in 1985 (see Frank Morales, U.S. Military Civil Disturbance Planning: the War at Home).

In 2002, a few months after nine eleven, then AG Ashcroft made the Gestapo round-up aspect of REX-84 a frightening reality, although the corporate media buried the story in characteristic fashion. “Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft’s announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be ‘enemy combatants’ has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace,” Jonathan Turley wrote for the Los Angeles Times. “Ashcroft’s plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants…. The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft’s small inner circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see whether this vision could become a reality. The cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held without charges and subject to the arbitrary and unchecked authority of the government.”

Hamdi’s case went before the Supreme Court on June 28, 2004, and, as Justice O’Connor stated, “a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.” However, O’Connor has since retired, replaced by the Federalist Society reactionary, Samuel Alito, who will undoubtedly rule in favor of an imperial presidency in the not too distant future. On November 22, 2005, José Padilla was indicted on charges he “conspired to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas” after being held without charge since May 8, 2002, thus suspending the Constitution’s Fifth and 14th Amendments (”due process of law”) and Sixth Amendment (trial by “an impartial jury”) for several years.

“It is clear that the Bush administration is thinking seriously about martial law,” Peter Dale Scott wrote earlier this month, following a January announcement Halliburton subsidiary KBR had received the little-known $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to build “temporary detention and processing capabilities.” In the wake of nine eleven, “new martial law plans began to surface similar to those of FEMA in the 1980s,” Scott explains. “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 [continuity of government] memo, published an article arguing for the legality of using U.S. troops for purposes of domestic security” in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

“Many critics have alleged that FEMA’s spectacular failure to respond to Katrina followed from a deliberate White House policy: of paring back FEMA, and instead strengthening the military for responses to disasters,” Scott concludes. “A multimillion program for detention facilities will greatly increase NORTHCOM’s [specifically tasked with domestic U.S. military operations] ability to respond to any domestic disorders,” apparently including the “disorder” created by “fifth column movements,” or people opposed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq and, soon enough, the invasion or at minimum “shock and awe” attack on the next target on the Straussian neocon roster, Iran. “Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military] intelligence components collecting U.S. person information,” states a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2005. “MI [military intelligence] may receive information from anyone, anytime,” Lt. Gen. Robert W. Noonan Jr., the deputy chief of staff for intelligence, wrote in the memo.

“Despite the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibitions against U.S. military personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries, such as its role in domestic surveillance activities,” writes Nat Parry. One such operation falls under the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (or CIFA; see my CIFA: The Pentagon’s COINTELPRO) “The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago,” noted the Washington Post last November. “The proposal, made by a presidential commission—to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage,” and more than likely “fifth column” behavior considered treason by at least one senator from South Carolina and no shortage of Straussian neocons, both in the White House and Pentagon.

As the NSA snoop program revealed, “investigating crimes” such as “treason” is not strictly for the likes of CIFA and the Pentagon. “This receipt of information presumably would include data from the National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. Bush approved the program of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11,” Parry summarizes. “There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program. Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance program existed, but he said he couldn’t discuss the details without breaking classification laws.”

“Tice said he believes it violates the Constitution’s protection against unlawful search and seizures but has no way of sharing the information without breaking classification laws,” United Press International reported on February 14. “He is not even allowed to tell the congressional intelligence committees—members or their staff—because they lack high enough clearance.” As an example to what whistleblowers can expect in the future, the UPI article concludes: “Tice was testifying because he was a National Security Agency intelligence officer who was stripped of his security clearance after he reported his suspicions that a former colleague at the Defense Intelligence Agency was a spy. The matter was dismissed by the DIA, but Tice pressed it later and was subsequently ordered to take a psychological examination, during which he was declared paranoid. He is now unemployed.”

Horowitz’s reactionary paranoia and mistrust of “communist” antiwar citizens and anti-Bush activists has infected the very highest reaches of the White House and Pentagon, where dissent is considered treason and the Bill of Rights viewed as an impediment to the Straussian neocon plan to destroy Muslim societies and culture. According to Horowitz, “this country was too tolerant toward the treason of its enemies within” and should not repeat the mistake of the Vietnam era, for which he shares partial responsibility. But as Newsweek noted on a sarcastic note, these “seem to be lonely days for the Birkenstock-and-beads set,” and for good reason, although unmentioned by the likes of David Horowitz—because the vast majority of people opposed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq are wholly average, not especially radical and certainly not communist, middle class Americans. It is David Horowitz who lives in the past, not the antiwar “movement,” which is in fact not even a movement as we understand it, taking the late 60s and early 70s as our yardstick.

Of course, the Straussian neocons running foreign policy and now the national security state out of the Bush White House, Pentagon, Justice and State Departments are not especially concerned with Horowitz’s paranoid interior monologue as he chases “communist” ghosts from his antiwar and Black Panther past. Instead, as is the habit of all authoritarians and fascists, the Straussian neocons are simply interested in neutralizing and rendering ineffective any possible opposition—from Code Pink to legions of soccer moms—to their long-held master plan to decimate Islam and establish “American global military supremacy and to thwart the emergence of a rival superpower in Europe, Asia or the former Soviet Union,” as spelled out in a 1992 “Defense Planning Guidance” memo crafted under then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, then the Pentagon’s Under Secretary for policy, and subsequently adopted by the Project for the New American Century in 1997. In order to run “multiple wars” in “multiple theaters,” there will need to be zero tolerance for dissent on the home front—and that is what the Ministry of Homeland Security, the NSA snoop program, and CIFA are all about.

In the months ahead, we will see if the Halliburton camps are little more than another stupendous waste of taxpayer money or if the Straussian neocons sincerely intend to populate them with domestic enemies after some “catalyzing event” such as yet another “new Pearl Harbor” designed to light a fire under Iran or other targets on the neocon hit list. If history serves, chances are the latter will come to pass, and with a vengeance, as even a cursory examination of the Straussian philosophy reveals these guys are playing hardball and their teachers consist of the antediluvian Constitution hater Leo Strauss, the master of deception Niccolò Machiavelli, the “overman” theorist Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, and Nazi jurist and “concept of the political” (belligerent totalitarianism) proponent Carl Schmitt. If you throw these together and mix in a bit of Thomas Hobbes (”war of all against all”) you certainly have a recipe for not only a crisis of civilization, but nuclear Armageddon.