Bombshell: Bin Laden Worked for US Until 9/11

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It turns out that Reagan's little adventure with bin Ladin in the Middle East continued in Central Asia after the Russians quit Afghanistan. Apparently directed by the CIA, funded by at least in part, heroin sales world wide, this operation continued right up until 9/11. In 1998 after al-Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed a dozen Americans and hundreds of Africans, Bill Clinton sent cruise missles into Afghanistan to attach al Qaeda training camps. That appears now to be a warning to reign in bin Ladin's ambitions beyond Central Asia.

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript). In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained 'intimate relations' with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, "all the way until that day of September 11."

These 'intimate relations' included using Bin Laden for 'operations' in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These 'operations' involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner "as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict," that is, fighting 'enemies' via proxies.

As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from 'actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia') as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.

Control of Central Asia

The goals of the American 'statesmen' directing these activities included control of Central Asia's vast energy supplies and new markets for military products.

The Americans had a problem, though. They needed to keep their fingerprints off these operations to avoid a) popular revolt in Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), and b) serious repercussions from China and Russia. They found an ingenious solution: Use their puppet-state Turkey as a proxy, and appeal to both pan-Turkic and pan-Islam sensibilities.

Turkey, a NATO ally, has a lot more credibility in the region than the US and, with the history of the Ottoman Empire, could appeal to pan-Turkic dreams of a wider sphere of influence. The majority of the Central Asian population shares the same heritage, language and religion as the Turks.

In turn, the Turks used the Taliban and al Qaeda, appealing to their dreams of a pan-Islamic caliphate (Presumably. Or maybe the Turks/US just paid very well.)

Accordingto Sibel:

This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.

Uighurs

Sibel was recently asked to write about the recent situation with the Uighurs in Xinjiang, but she declined, apart from saying that "our fingerprint is all over it."

Of course, Sibel isn't the first or only person to recognize any of this. Eric Margolis, one of the best reporters in the West on matters of Central Asia, stated that the Uighurs in the training camps in Afghanistan up to 2001:

"were being trained by Bin Laden to go and fight the communist Chinese in Xinjiang, and this was not only with the knowledge, but with the support of the CIA, because they thought they might use them if war ever broke out with China."

And also that:

"Afghanistan was not a hotbed of terrorism, these were commando groups, guerrilla groups, being trained for specific purposes in Central Asia."

In a separate interview, Margolis said:

"That illustrates Henry Kissinger's bon mot that the only thing more dangerous than being America's enemy is being an ally, because these people were paid by the CIA, they were armed by the US, these Chinese Muslims from Xinjiang, the most-Western province.

The CIA was going to use them in the event of a war with China, or just to raise hell there, and they were trained and supported out of Afghanistan, some of them with Osama Bin Laden's collaboration. The Americans were up to their ears with this."

more via GlobalResearch.ca

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SIBEL EDMONDS' DEPOSITION: VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT RELEASED

Long-gagged FBI whistleblower's full under-oath testimony from Ohio election case, details Congressional blackmail, bribery, espionage, infiltration, more...

via The BRAD BLOG : SIBEL EDMONDS' DEPOSITION: VIDEO AND TRANSCRIPT RELEASED.

Bush Admin. worse than our Nightmares

Impeach Bush and Cheney, impeach them now!

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Back in the bad old days of Bush's corrupt gang, we on the left were pilloried for suggesting that the administration was manipulating terrorism-related news in order to win the 2004 elections. But when Tom Ridge says it . . .In fact, I argued in summer, 2004, that when Ridge did raise the terrorism alert, it had the unfortunate effect of outing an al-Qaeda double agent who had been turned by the Pakistani government and was helping set a trap for al-Qaeda in the UK. In turn, that caused the British government to have to move against the people it had under surveillance prematurely, harming the case.

[..]The horrible thing is that Wolf Blitzer on CNN assembled David Frum and Frances Townsend, former members of the Bush administration, to sit around on his afternoon news and analysis program on Thursday afternoon and more or less either call Ridge a liar or pooh-pooh the significance of what he is saying. There wasn't a single centrist or left of center voice to show any outrage. I mean, I know that Time Warner is not made up of people who necessarily care about the little person or social justice or anything. But a little bit of shame?

It isn't enough that the corporate media lied to us for Bush for 8 years, they are continuing to do it. Give money to Amy Goodman.

via Informed Comment: Bush Admin. worse than our Nightmares.

Cheney kept CIA program from Congress, source says

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CNN.com

The CIA withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress during the Bush administration on direct orders from then-Vice President Dick Cheney, current CIA director Leon Panetta told members of Congress, a knowledgeable source confirmed to CNN.
The disclosure to the House and Senate intelligence committees about Cheney's involvement by Panetta was first reported in the New York Times. Efforts to contact Cheney for reaction were unsuccessful late Saturday.
The source who spoke to CNN did not want to be identified by name because the matter is classified, and CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano declined comment on the report.
"It's not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing," Gimigliano said. "When a CIA unit brought this matter to Director Panetta's attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect."
The fact that Panetta recently briefed lawmakers on an unspecified counterterrorism program was first revealed Wednesday, when a letter from seven House Democrats to Panetta was made public. The June 26 letter characterizes Panetta as testifying that the CIA "concealed significant actions from all members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week."
The letter contained no details about what information the CIA officials allegedly concealed or how they purportedly misled members of Congress.
A knowledgeable source familiar with the matter said the counterterrorism program in question was initiated shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
The program was on-again, off-again and was never fully operational, but was rather, a tool put on the shelf that could have been used, the source said. Panetta has put an end to the program, according to the source.
The disclosures follow a May spat between the spy agency and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who accused the CIA of misleading Congress during a secret 2002 briefing on harsh interrogation techniques being used on terrorism suspects. The CIA responded that Pelosi was told about the harsh techniques, including waterboarding, at the briefing.
However, the June 26 letter from the seven House Democrats noted that Panetta told CIA employees in a May 15 letter -- a response to the Pelosi allegation -- that it was not CIA policy to mislead Congress. The letter from the House Democrats asked Panetta to correct his May 15 statement "in light of your testimony."
Asked about the Democrats' letter, CIA spokesman George Little said Panetta "stands by his May 15 statement."
"This agency and this director believe it is vital to keep the Congress fully and currently informed. Director Panetta's actions back that up," Little said in a statement. "As the letter from these ... representatives notes, it was the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight committees."
The latest revelations come as lawmakers consider expanding the number of House and Senate members privy to the kind of secret briefing that Pelosi received.
The White House opposes a measure that would increase the number of briefing participants from the current eight to 40 members of Congress. A White House memo warned President Obama's senior advisers would recommend a veto of the bill if it contained the expanded briefing provision.

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Presidential Surveillance Program: Spying Went Beyond Warrantless Wiretapping

This is not exactly new news, see here.

George W. Bush via last.fm

Huffingtonpost.com

The Bush administration authorized secret surveillance activities that still have not been made public, according to a new government report that questions the legal basis for the unprecedented anti-terrorism program.
It's unclear how much valuable intelligence was yielded by the surveillance program started after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, according to the unclassified summary of reports by five inspectors general. The reports mandated by Congress last year were delivered to lawmakers Friday.
President George W. Bush authorized other secret intelligence activities _ which have yet to become public _ even as he was launching the massive warrentless wiretapping program, the summary said. It describes the entire program as the "President's Surveillance Program."
The report describes the program as unprecedented and raises questions about the legal grounding used for its creation. It also says the intelligence agencies' continued retention and use of the information collected under the program should be carefully monitored.
Many senior intelligence officials believe the program filled a gap in intelligence. Others, including FBI, CIA and National Counterterrorism Center analysts, said intelligence gathered by traditional means was often more specific and timely, according to the report.
The Bush White House acknowledged in 2005 that it allowed the National Security Agency to intercept international communications that passed through U.S. cables without court orders.
The inspectors general interviewed more than 200 government officials and private sector personnel, including former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Five former Bush administration officials refused to be interviewed, including former CIA Director George Tenet and former Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Story continues below
The others: former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card; former top Cheney aide David Addington; and John Yoo, who served as a deputy assistant attorney general.
The IG report said an unnamed White House official inserted a paragraph into the first threat assessment prepared by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks, which was used to justify the extraordinary intelligence measures.
The paragraph said that the "individuals and organizations involved in global terrorism possessed the capability and intention to undertake further terrorist attacks within the United States," according to the report. It also said that the president should authorize the NSA to conduct the surveillance activities.
The memos were revised and renewed thereafter every 45 days. The report said that the president consistently gave that authorization for the surveillance activity, and that both CIA chief Tenet and his successor, Porter Goss, never withheld their signatures from threat assessment memoranda.
The report also questions the legal advice used by President Bush to set up the program, pinpointing omissions and questionable legal memos written by Yoo at the Justice Department.
The report suggests Yoo ignored an explicit provision in the FISA law designed to restrict the government's authority to conduct electronic surveillance during wartime. And it said flaws in Yoo's memos later presented "a serious impediment" to recertifying the program.
Congress required the review of the so-called warrantless wiretapping program last year when it revised the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA is a 30 year-old law that created a secret court to oversee government electronic surveillance.
The inspectors general of the CIA, Justice Department, Defense Department, National Security Agency and Office of the National Intelligence Director also reviewed the Bush-era surveillance program.

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The Hush-Hush Story: Why They Tortured

The LA Progressive

The US Senate Armed Services Committee report, issued April 21, on the interrogation techniques employed against detainees following the September 11 terrorist attack, wrote Pepe Escobar in the Asia Times, "reads like deja vu all over again: the US establishment under Bush was a replay of the Spanish Inquisition. And it all started even before a single 'high-profile al-Qaeda detainee' was captured.
What Bush, vice president Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assorted little inquisitors wanted was above all to prove the non-existent link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al-Qaeda, the better to justify a pre-emptive, illegal war planned by the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in the late 1990s. The torture memos were just a cog in the imperial machine."
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman mentioned it in his column April 24, writing, "For the fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract 'confessions' that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way." Krugman was more explicit in his blog, titled "Grand Unified Scandal" appearing the previous day, after the Senate report came out. "Let's say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link," he wrote. "There's a word for this: it's evil."
The impetus for the comment by Krugman and Escobar was a story carried April 21 in the McClatchy Newspapers by Jonathan S. Landay The story has made the rounds on the internet and in some of the foreign press but as of this writing has been ignored or obscured by most of the major U.S. media.
"The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist," wrote Landay. "Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.
"The use of abusive interrogation - widely considered torture - as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them."
Landay went on to quote "A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue" saying former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld 'demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.'
"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," Landay was told. "The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

Few dare call Ahmed Chalabi what he is, an Iranian intelligence agent, who along with AIPAC officials, Israeli Intelligence agents duped Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal into invading Iraq.
And now the Israeli spies will get away with it because the truth of the huge security hole in the Bush Administration will become obvious to all.
Reuters

"Given the diminished likelihood the government will prevail at trial under the additional intent requirements imposed by the court and the inevitable disclosure of classified information that would occur at any trial in this matter, we have asked the court to dismiss the indictment," Dana Boente, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.

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The Sick Logic of the CIA Memos: Abuse Isn't Torture If a Doctor Is There

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AlterNet

Perhaps the most chilling aspect is that medical professionals apparently conducted a form of research on the detainees, without their consent.
Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden was fond of saying that when it came to handling high-value terror suspects, he would play in fair territory, but with "chalk dust on my cleats." Four legal memos released by the Obama administration make it clear that the referee role in CIA interrogations was played by its medical and psychological personnel.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, which authored the memos, legal approval to use waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other abusive techniques pivoted on the existence of a "system of medical and psychological monitoring" of interrogations. Medical and psychological personnel were assigned to monitor interrogations and intervene to ensure that interrogators didn't cause "serious or permanent harm" and thus violate the U.S. federal statute against torture.
The reasoning sounds almost circular. As one memo, from May 2005, put it: "The close monitoring of each detainee for any signs that he is at risk of experiencing severe physical pain reinforces the conclusion that the combined use of interrogation techniques is not intended to inflict such pain."
In other words, as long as medically trained personnel were present and approved of the techniques being used, it was not torture.
The memos provide official confirmation of both much-reported and previously unknown roles of doctors, psychologists, physician assistants and other medical personnel with the CIA's Office of Medical Services (OMS). The government's lawyers characterized these medical roles as "safeguards" for detainees.
Medical oversight was present from the beginning of the special interrogation program following the 9/11 attacks and appears to have grown more formalized over the program's existence. The earliest of the four memos, from August 2002, states that a medical expert with experience in the military's Survival Evasion Resistance, Escape (SERE) training would be present during waterboarding of detainee Abu Zubaydah and would put a stop to procedures "if deemed medically necessary to prevent severe medical or physical harm to Zubaydah." (All interrogation techniques, the memos said, were "imported" from SERE.)
Later, OMS personnel were involved in "designing safeguards for, and in monitoring implementation of, the procedures" used on other high-value detainees. In December 2004, the OMS produced a set of "Guidelines on Medical and Psychological Support to Detainee Rendition, Interrogation and Detention," a still-secret document that is heavily quoted from in three legal memos that were written the following year.
The CIA declined our request to comment further on the OMS' role in detainee treatment. The OMS employs physicians, psychologists and other medical professionals to care for CIA employees and their families.
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of the memos is their intimation that medical professionals conducted a form of research on the detainees, clearly without their consent. "In order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented," one memo reads. The documentation included not only how long the procedure lasted, how much water was used and how it was poured, but also "if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled ... and how the subject looked between each treatment." Special instructions were also issued with regard to documenting experience with sleep deprivation, and "regular reporting on medical and psychological experiences with the use of these techniques on detainees" was required.
The Nuremberg Code, adopted after the horrors of "medical research" during the Nazi Holocaust, requires, among other things, the consent of subjects and their ability to call a halt to their participation.
The memos also draw heavily on the advice of psychologists that interrogation techniques would not be expected to cause lasting harm. At times this advice sounds contradictory. While calling waterboarding "medically acceptable," the OMS also deemed it "the most traumatic of the enhanced interrogation techniques."
The fact that traumatic events have the potential to cause long-lasting post-traumatic stress syndrome has been well documented. Physicians for Human Rights, in interviews with eleven former detainees held in Iraq and Afghanistan, found "severe, long-term physical and psychological consequences." "All the individuals we evaluated were ultimately released without ever being charged," said Dr. Allen Keller, medical director of the Bellevue/New York University School of Medicine Program for Survivors of Torture.
The memos describe the techniques in highly precise and clinical detail, befitting a medical textbook. During waterboarding, in which a physician and psychologist were to be present at all times, "the detainee is monitored to ensure that he does not develop respiratory distress. If the detainee is not breathing freely after the cloth is removed from his face, he is immediately moved to a vertical position in order to clear the water from his mouth, nose and nasopharynx." Side effects including vomiting, aspiration and throat spasm that could cut off breathing were each addressed: "In the event of such spasms ... if necessary, the intervening physician would perform a tracheotomy."
While physician assistants could be present when most "enhanced" techniques were applied, "use of the waterboard requires the presence of a physician," one memo said, quoting the OMS guidelines.
Doctors were also described as having vetted the practices for safety. Certain limits on waterboarding were created "with extensive input from OMS." One memo states that OMS "doctors and psychologists" confirmed that combining the various techniques "would not operate in a different manner from the way they do individually, so as to cause severe pain."
Medical and psychological personnel were required to observe whenever interrogators came into physical contact with detainees, including slapping them and pushing them into flexible walls ("walling"). Whenever a detainee was doused with cold water, a medical officer had to be on hand to monitor for signs of hypothermia. Confining prisoners to cramped boxes required "continuing consultation between the interrogators and OMS officers." Prisoners made to stand for long periods to prevent sleep were to carefully monitor detainees for swelling of the legs and other dangerous conditions, and at least three times early in the program were switched, on medical advice, to "horizontal sleep deprivation."
This was one example of how medical personnel could, according to the CIA, help prevent "severe physical or mental pain or suffering" on the part of the detainees. However, the memos show that the OMS' role was not merely to limit the medical impact of interrogations, but also to consult on the effectiveness of interrogations. A May 30, 2005, memo quotes the OMS suggesting that cramped confinement was "not ... particularly effective" because it provides "a safe haven offering respite from interrogation."
Some medical professionals are calling for their colleagues to be investigated and sanctioned for participating in practices that professional medical and psychological organizations and officials in the Justice Department now call torture. "We stand ready to adjudicate these issues," said American Psychological Association spokesperson Rhea Farberman.
But finding out which professionals were involved in designing, monitoring and implementing the interrogation techniques may be difficult. The four memos were released almost in their entirety. The few redactions concerned mainly the names of the personnel involved.

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Armitage: "They Tortured" "Maybe I should Have Resigned"

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Informed Comment

Armitage admits:
1. He and his boss Colin Powell lost a major battle within the Bush administration on whether the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war applied to guerrillas captured during the "war on terror."
2. That the Bush administration engaged in torture in the form of waterboarding, though he denied that he had sure knowledge of this practice at the time he was in office
3. That he probably should have resigned, but hung on for fear of how bad policy could get if he and others were not there to fight the battles
4. He says that the US Senate should have known about the torture, calls them "AWOL," and implies that there will be no investigation of Bush crimes against humanity because such a process would implicate the senators themselves, as at the very least having been derelict in their duty to advise and consent. (I wonder if he is also implying that some Democratic senators knew about the waterboarding and remained silent, so that they will not now launch a prosecution?)
A Spanish judge is considering an indictment of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and several other Bush administration officials for having sanctioned torture at Guantanamo Bay. In breaking news Thursday morning, it was announced in Spain that the government prosecutor has advised the judge to drop the case; apparently he still has the discretion to continue.
The others who would likely be indicted if the case went forward, according to Scott Horton, are "Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith."
Armitage's revelation that he and his boss "lost" a battle to preserve a commitment to the Geneva Conventions in Washington in this period seems likely to me to become part of the Spanish prosecution.
Japanese officers were tried for war crimes after World War II by the United States for having engaged in waterboarding.
It has been suggested that the six implicated Bush administration officials would, in case of formal indictmen, no longer be able safely travel to Europe, because judges claiming universal jurisdiction over crimes against humanity might well order their arrest, as happened to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

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Do the Secret Bush Memos Amount to Treason? Top Constitutional Scholar Says Yes

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AlterNet

Legal expert Michael Ratner calls the legal arguments made in the infamous Yoo memos, "Fuhrer's law."
In early March, more shocking details emerged about George W. Bush legal counsel John Yoo's memos outlining the destruction of the republic.
The memos lay the legal groundwork for the president to send the military to wage war against U.S. citizens; take them from their homes to Navy brigs without trial and keep them forever; close down the First Amendment; and invade whatever country he chooses without regard to any treaty or objection by Congress.
It was as if Milton's Satan had a law degree and was establishing within the borders of the United States the architecture of hell.
I thought this was -- and is -- certainly one of the biggest stories of our lifetime, making the petty burglary of Watergate -- which scandalized the nation -- seem like playground antics. It is newsworthy too with the groundswell of support for prosecutions of Bush/Cheney crimes and recent actions such as Canadian attorneys mobilizing to arrest Bush if he visits their country.
The memos are a confession. The memos could not be clearer: This was the legal groundwork of an attempted coup. I expected massive front page headlines from the revelation that these memos exited. Almost nothing. I was shocked.
As a non-lawyer, was I completely off base in my reading of what this meant, I wondered? Was I hallucinating?
Astonished, I sought a reality check -- and a formal legal read -- from one of the nation's top constitutional scholars (and most steadfast patriots), Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been at the forefront of defending the detainees and our own liberties.
Here is our conversation:
Naomi Wolf: Michael, can you explain to a layperson what the Yoo memos actually mean?'
Michael Ratner: What they mean is that your book looks moderate in respect to those issues now. This -- what is in the memos -- is law by fiat.
I call it "Fuhrer's law." What those memos lay out means the end of the system of checks and balances in this country. It means the end of the system in which the courts, legislature and executive each had a function and they could check each other.
What the memos set out is a system in which the president's word is law, and Yoo is very clear about that: the president's word is not only law according to these memos, but no law or constitutional right or treaty can restrict the president's authority.
What Yoo says is that the president's authority as commander in chief in the so-called war on terror is not bound by any law passed by Congress, any treaty, or the protections of free speech, due process and the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The First, Fourth and Fifth amendments -- gone.
What this actually means is that the president can order the military to operate in the U.S. and to operate without constitutional restrictions. They -- the military -- can pick you or me up in the U.S. for any reason and without any legal process. They would not have any restrictions on entering your house to search it, or to seize you. They can put you into a brig without any due process or going to court. (That's the Fourth and Fifth amendments.)
The military can disregard the Posse Comitatus law, which restricts the military from acting as police in the the United States. And the president can, in the name of wartime restrictions, limit free speech. There it is in black and white: we are looking at one-person rule without any checks and balances -- a lawless state. Law by fiat.
Who has suspended the law this way in the past? It is like a Caesar's law in Rome; a Mussolini's law in Italy; a Fuhrer's law in Germany; a Stalin's law in the Soviet Union. It is right down the line. It is enforcing the will of the dictator through the military.
NW: The mainstream media have virtually ignored these revelations, though it seems to me this is the biggest news since Pearl Harbor.
MR: I think that's right. We had a glimmering of the blueprint for some of this -- when they picked up Jose Padilla, the military went to a prison and snatched an American citizen as if they had a perfect right to do so.
Now we can see that these memos laid the legal groundwork for such actions. We knew the military could do this to an individual. We did not know the plan was to eliminate First Amendment constitutional rights for the entire population.
NW: If Bush only wanted these powers in order to prosecute a war on terror, why does he need to suspend the First Amendment? Isn't that the smoking gun of a larger intention toward the general population?
MR: Part of this plan was actually implemented: for instance, they tried to keep people like Padilla from getting to a magistrate. They engaged in the wiretapping, because according to these memos there was no Fourth Amendment.
They had to be planning some kind of a takeover of the United States to be saying they could simply abolish the First Amendment if the president believed it was necessary in the name of national security. It lays the groundwork for what could have been a massive military takeover of the United States.
Here they crept right up and actually implemented part of the plan, with Padilla, with the warrantless wiretapping. Yet they are saying in the White House and in Congress that it is looking backward to investigate the authors of these memos and those who instructed Yoo and others to write them.
But investigation and prosecutions are really looking forward -- to say we need the deterrence of prosecution so this does not happen again.
NW: What about the deployment of three brigades in the U.S.? How should we read that?'
MR: With terrorism as less of a concern to many, but now with the economy in tatters there is a lot more militant activism in U.S. -- the New School and NYU student takeovers, protests around the country and strikes are just the beginning. I think governments are now concerned over people's activism, and people's anger at their economic situation. I don't think those brigades can be detached from the idea that there might well be a huge amount of direct-action protest in the U.S.
There could have also been a closer election that could have been stolen easily and then a huge protest. Those troops would have been used to enforce the will of the cabal stealing the election.
NW: As a layperson, I don't fully understand what powers the memos actually manifest. Are they theoretical or not just theoretical? What power did the memos actually give Bush?
MR: They were probably, in fact almost for sure, written in cahoots with the administration -- [Karl] Rove, [Dick] Cheney -- to give them legal backing for what they planned or wanted to carry out.
What I assume happened here is people like Cheney or his aides go to the Office of Legal Counsel and say, "We are going to need legal backing, to give a face of legality to what we are doing and what we are planning." When the president then signs a piece of paper that says, "OK, military, go get Jose Padilla," these memos give that order a veneer of legality.
If you are familiar with the history of dictators, coups and fascism (as I know you are), they (the planners) prefer a veneer of legality. Hitler killed 6 million Jews with a veneer of legality -- getting his dictatorial powers through the Reichstag and the courts.
These memos gave the Bush administration's [lawless] practices the veneer of legality.
NW: So are you saying that these memos actually created a police state that we did not know about?
MR: If you look at police state as various strands of lawlessness, we knew about some of this lawlessness even before this latest set of memos.
But the memos revealed how massive the takeover of our democracy was to be -- that this wasn't just going to be a few individuals here or there who suffered the arrows of a police state.
These memos lay the groundwork for a massive military takeover of the United States in cahoots with the president. And if that's not a coup d'etat then, nothing is.
NW: Can I ask something? I keep thinking about the notion of treason. In America now, people tend to read the definition of treason in the Constitution as if they are thinking of a Tokyo Rose or an American citizen acting as an agent for an enemy state -- very much a World War II experience of the traitor to one's country.
But I've been reading a lot of 16th and 17th century history, and it seems to me that the founders were thinking more along the lines of English treason of that era -- small groups of Englishmen, usually nobility, who formed cabals and conspired with one another to buy or recruit militias to overthrow the crown or Parliament.
The notion that a group might conspire in secret to overthrow the government is not a wild, marginal concept, it is a substantial part of European, and especially British, Renaissance and Reformation-era history and would have been very much alive in the minds of the Enlightenment-era founders. (I just visited the Tower of London where this was so frequent a charge against groups of English subjects that there is a designated Traitor's Gate.)
So clearly you don't have to act on behalf of another state to commit treason. The Constitution defines it as levying war against the United States or giving aid and comfort to its enemies. It says nothing about the enemy having to be another state.
When the Constitution was drafted, the phrase "United States" barely referred to a singular country; it referred to a new federation of many united states. They imagined militias rising up against various states; it was not necessarily nation against nation.
Surely, when we have evidence Bush prepared the way to allow the military to imprison or shoot civilians in the various states and created law to put his own troops over the authority of the governors and the national guard of the various states, and when the military were sent to terrorize protesters in St. Paul, [Minn.], Bush was levying war in this sense against the united states?
Hasn't Bush actually levied war against Minnesota? And if our leaders and military are sworn to protect and defend the Constitution, and there is clear evidence now that Bush and his cabal intended to do away with it, are they not our enemies and giving aid and comfort to our enemies? Again, "enemy" does not seem to me to be defined in the Constitution as another sovereign state.
MR: You are right. Treason need not involve another state. Aaron Burr was tried for treason. I do think that a plan to control the military, use it in the United States contrary to law and the Constitution and employ it to levy a war or takeover that eliminates the democratic institutions of the country constitutes treason, even if done under the president of the United States.
The authority given by these memos that could be used to raid every congressional office, raid and search every home, detain tens of thousands, would certainly fit a definition of treason.
This would be the president making war against the institutions of the United States.
Naomi Wolf is the author of Give Me Liberty (Simon and Schuster, 2008), the sequel to the New York Times best-seller The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot (Chelsea Green, 2007).

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Do the Secret Bush Memos Amount to Treason? Top Constitutional Scholar Says Yes

Image via Wikipedia

AlterNet

Legal expert Michael Ratner calls the legal arguments made in the infamous Yoo memos, "Fuhrer's law."
In early March, more shocking details emerged about George W. Bush legal counsel John Yoo's memos outlining the destruction of the republic.
The memos lay the legal groundwork for the president to send the military to wage war against U.S. citizens; take them from their homes to Navy brigs without trial and keep them forever; close down the First Amendment; and invade whatever country he chooses without regard to any treaty or objection by Congress.
It was as if Milton's Satan had a law degree and was establishing within the borders of the United States the architecture of hell.
I thought this was -- and is -- certainly one of the biggest stories of our lifetime, making the petty burglary of Watergate -- which scandalized the nation -- seem like playground antics. It is newsworthy too with the groundswell of support for prosecutions of Bush/Cheney crimes and recent actions such as Canadian attorneys mobilizing to arrest Bush if he visits their country.
The memos are a confession. The memos could not be clearer: This was the legal groundwork of an attempted coup. I expected massive front page headlines from the revelation that these memos exited. Almost nothing. I was shocked.
As a non-lawyer, was I completely off base in my reading of what this meant, I wondered? Was I hallucinating?
Astonished, I sought a reality check -- and a formal legal read -- from one of the nation's top constitutional scholars (and most steadfast patriots), Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been at the forefront of defending the detainees and our own liberties.
Here is our conversation:
Naomi Wolf: Michael, can you explain to a layperson what the Yoo memos actually mean?'
Michael Ratner: What they mean is that your book looks moderate in respect to those issues now. This -- what is in the memos -- is law by fiat.
I call it "Fuhrer's law." What those memos lay out means the end of the system of checks and balances in this country. It means the end of the system in which the courts, legislature and executive each had a function and they could check each other.
What the memos set out is a system in which the president's word is law, and Yoo is very clear about that: the president's word is not only law according to these memos, but no law or constitutional right or treaty can restrict the president's authority.
What Yoo says is that the president's authority as commander in chief in the so-called war on terror is not bound by any law passed by Congress, any treaty, or the protections of free speech, due process and the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The First, Fourth and Fifth amendments -- gone.
What this actually means is that the president can order the military to operate in the U.S. and to operate without constitutional restrictions. They -- the military -- can pick you or me up in the U.S. for any reason and without any legal process. They would not have any restrictions on entering your house to search it, or to seize you. They can put you into a brig without any due process or going to court. (That's the Fourth and Fifth amendments.)
The military can disregard the Posse Comitatus law, which restricts the military from acting as police in the the United States. And the president can, in the name of wartime restrictions, limit free speech. There it is in black and white: we are looking at one-person rule without any checks and balances -- a lawless state. Law by fiat.
Who has suspended the law this way in the past? It is like a Caesar's law in Rome; a Mussolini's law in Italy; a Fuhrer's law in Germany; a Stalin's law in the Soviet Union. It is right down the line. It is enforcing the will of the dictator through the military.
NW: The mainstream media have virtually ignored these revelations, though it seems to me this is the biggest news since Pearl Harbor.
MR: I think that's right. We had a glimmering of the blueprint for some of this -- when they picked up Jose Padilla, the military went to a prison and snatched an American citizen as if they had a perfect right to do so.
Now we can see that these memos laid the legal groundwork for such actions. We knew the military could do this to an individual. We did not know the plan was to eliminate First Amendment constitutional rights for the entire population.
NW: If Bush only wanted these powers in order to prosecute a war on terror, why does he need to suspend the First Amendment? Isn't that the smoking gun of a larger intention toward the general population?
MR: Part of this plan was actually implemented: for instance, they tried to keep people like Padilla from getting to a magistrate. They engaged in the wiretapping, because according to these memos there was no Fourth Amendment.
They had to be planning some kind of a takeover of the United States to be saying they could simply abolish the First Amendment if the president believed it was necessary in the name of national security. It lays the groundwork for what could have been a massive military takeover of the United States.
Here they crept right up and actually implemented part of the plan, with Padilla, with the warrantless wiretapping. Yet they are saying in the White House and in Congress that it is looking backward to investigate the authors of these memos and those who instructed Yoo and others to write them.
But investigation and prosecutions are really looking forward -- to say we need the deterrence of prosecution so this does not happen again.
NW: What about the deployment of three brigades in the U.S.? How should we read that?'
MR: With terrorism as less of a concern to many, but now with the economy in tatters there is a lot more militant activism in U.S. -- the New School and NYU student takeovers, protests around the country and strikes are just the beginning. I think governments are now concerned over people's activism, and people's anger at their economic situation. I don't think those brigades can be detached from the idea that there might well be a huge amount of direct-action protest in the U.S.
There could have also been a closer election that could have been stolen easily and then a huge protest. Those troops would have been used to enforce the will of the cabal stealing the election.
NW: As a layperson, I don't fully understand what powers the memos actually manifest. Are they theoretical or not just theoretical? What power did the memos actually give Bush?
MR: They were probably, in fact almost for sure, written in cahoots with the administration -- [Karl] Rove, [Dick] Cheney -- to give them legal backing for what they planned or wanted to carry out.
What I assume happened here is people like Cheney or his aides go to the Office of Legal Counsel and say, "We are going to need legal backing, to give a face of legality to what we are doing and what we are planning." When the president then signs a piece of paper that says, "OK, military, go get Jose Padilla," these memos give that order a veneer of legality.
If you are familiar with the history of dictators, coups and fascism (as I know you are), they (the planners) prefer a veneer of legality. Hitler killed 6 million Jews with a veneer of legality -- getting his dictatorial powers through the Reichstag and the courts.
These memos gave the Bush administration's [lawless] practices the veneer of legality.
NW: So are you saying that these memos actually created a police state that we did not know about?
MR: If you look at police state as various strands of lawlessness, we knew about some of this lawlessness even before this latest set of memos.
But the memos revealed how massive the takeover of our democracy was to be -- that this wasn't just going to be a few individuals here or there who suffered the arrows of a police state.
These memos lay the groundwork for a massive military takeover of the United States in cahoots with the president. And if that's not a coup d'etat then, nothing is.
NW: Can I ask something? I keep thinking about the notion of treason. In America now, people tend to read the definition of treason in the Constitution as if they are thinking of a Tokyo Rose or an American citizen acting as an agent for an enemy state -- very much a World War II experience of the traitor to one's country.
But I've been reading a lot of 16th and 17th century history, and it seems to me that the founders were thinking more along the lines of English treason of that era -- small groups of Englishmen, usually nobility, who formed cabals and conspired with one another to buy or recruit militias to overthrow the crown or Parliament.
The notion that a group might conspire in secret to overthrow the government is not a wild, marginal concept, it is a substantial part of European, and especially British, Renaissance and Reformation-era history and would have been very much alive in the minds of the Enlightenment-era founders. (I just visited the Tower of London where this was so frequent a charge against groups of English subjects that there is a designated Traitor's Gate.)
So clearly you don't have to act on behalf of another state to commit treason. The Constitution defines it as levying war against the United States or giving aid and comfort to its enemies. It says nothing about the enemy having to be another state.
When the Constitution was drafted, the phrase "United States" barely referred to a singular country; it referred to a new federation of many united states. They imagined militias rising up against various states; it was not necessarily nation against nation.
Surely, when we have evidence Bush prepared the way to allow the military to imprison or shoot civilians in the various states and created law to put his own troops over the authority of the governors and the national guard of the various states, and when the military were sent to terrorize protesters in St. Paul, [Minn.], Bush was levying war in this sense against the united states?
Hasn't Bush actually levied war against Minnesota? And if our leaders and military are sworn to protect and defend the Constitution, and there is clear evidence now that Bush and his cabal intended to do away with it, are they not our enemies and giving aid and comfort to our enemies? Again, "enemy" does not seem to me to be defined in the Constitution as another sovereign state.
MR: You are right. Treason need not involve another state. Aaron Burr was tried for treason. I do think that a plan to control the military, use it in the United States contrary to law and the Constitution and employ it to levy a war or takeover that eliminates the democratic institutions of the country constitutes treason, even if done under the president of the United States.
The authority given by these memos that could be used to raid every congressional office, raid and search every home, detain tens of thousands, would certainly fit a definition of treason.
This would be the president making war against the institutions of the United States.
Naomi Wolf is the author of Give Me Liberty (Simon and Schuster, 2008), the sequel to the New York Times best-seller The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot (Chelsea Green, 2007).

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Judge Orders 17 Detainees at Guantánamo Freed

NYTimes.com

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Bush administration to release 17 detainees at Guantánamo Bay by the end of the week, the first such ruling in nearly seven years of legal disputes over the administration's detention policies.
The judge, Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court, ordered that the 17 men be brought to his courtroom on Friday from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where they have been held since 2002. He indicated that he would release the men, members of the restive Uighur Muslim minority in western China, into the care of supporters in the United States, initially in the Washington area.
"I think the moment has arrived for the court to shine the light of constitutionality on the reasons for detention," Judge Urbina said.
Saying the men had never fought the United States and were not a security threat, he tersely rejected Bush administration claims that he lacked the power to order the men set free in the United States and government requests that he stay his order to permit an immediate appeal.
The ruling was a sharp setback for the administration, which has waged a long legal battle to defend its policies of detention at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, arguing a broad executive power in waging war. Federal courts up to the Supreme Court have waded through detention questions and in several major cases the courts have rejected administration contentions.
The government recently conceded that it would no longer try to prove that the Uighurs were enemy combatants, the classification it uses to detain people at Guantánamo, where 255 men are now held. But it has fought efforts by lawyers for the men to have them released into the United States, saying the Uighurs admitted to receiving weapons training in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The White House press secretary, Dana Perino, said the administration was "deeply concerned by, and strongly disagrees with" the decision. She added that the ruling, "if allowed to stand, could be used as precedent for other detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, including sworn enemies of the United States suspected of planning the attacks of 9/11, who may also seek release into our country."
Justice Department lawyers said they were filing an emergency application on Tuesday night for a stay from the federal appeals court in Washington.
Judge Urbina's decision came in a habeas corpus lawsuit authorized by a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June that gave detainees the right to have federal judges review the reason for their detention. Speaking from the bench in a courtroom crowded with Uighur supporters of the detainees, Judge Urbina suggested that the government was seeking a stay as a tactic to keep the men imprisoned.
"All of this means more delay," he said with evident impatience, "and delay is the name of the game up until this point." The centuries-old doctrine of habeas corpus permits a judge to demand production of a prisoner, a power Judge Urbina sought to exercise with his order that the men be brought to him.
"I want to see the individuals," he said.
The Uighurs have long been at the center of contentious legal cases because they said they were swept into detention in Afghanistan in 2001 by mistake. They said they were in Afghanistan to seek refuge from China, where the Uighurs, Turkic Muslims, often bridle at Han Chinese rule.
The Bush administration has fought the Uighurs in court for years, contending that their encampment in Afghanistan had ties to a Uighur terror group. Last summer, a federal appeals court ridiculed as inadequate the government's secret evidence for holding one of the men. In the months since, the government has said that it would "serve no useful purpose" to continue to try to prove that any of these 17 men were enemy combatants.
Lawyers for the Uighurs said the men would be persecuted or killed if they were returned to China. The administration said that since transferring five Uighur detainees to Albania in 2006, it had been unable to persuade governments to accept the other 17. Diplomats say many governments fear reprisal by China, which considers Uighur separatist groups terrorists.
The administration insisted during arguments on Tuesday that the courts did not have the power to release the men into the United States.
Judge Urbina, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, underscored the significance of his ruling with repeated references to the constitutional separation of powers and the judiciary's role.
He rejected Justice Department arguments as assertions of executive power to detain people indefinitely without court review. He said that "is not in keeping with our system of government."
More than 40 Uighurs, a few in native dress that included sequined velvet caps, watched in anxious silence. Only when the judge rose to leave the bench did they break into applause.

Bush Administration Running Shadow Government?

Image via Wikipedia

GlobalResearch.ca

Plans for Continuity of Government [COG] 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."

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