World Affairs Brief

June 14, 2002

US HOMELAND SECURITY--THE MAKINGS OF AN AMERICAN GESTAPO?

The planning of this latest government department was kept so secret that even President Bush's top aids were kept in the dark. They were not briefed on the proposed massive reorganization of government until the day before it was publicly announced. What is worse, we now discover that this new department was being planned even before Bush took office. Most of the major elements were designed by the Clinton administration and were intended to be implemented by Al Gore when he ascended to the presidency. Naturally, conservative Congressmen would have killed such a bill had it actually been proposed during the Clinton-Gore tenure. Now, with a conservative pretender on the throne, there is, predictably, little opposition.

Bush has used his executive order powers 57 times already and created 47 new federal agencies. Homeland Security will bring most of these under one roof, including all military forces in the US under Northcom (Northern Command). Senate bill S. 735, section 908 (already passed) weakens the Posse Comitatus act to allow for use of military forces to intervene in domestic social disorder.

The department's initial budget proposal of $37 billion does little to assuage our fears that this new agency will become a behemoth. When Congress demanded that Homeland Security Czar Tom Ridge appear before them to explain how he intended to spend this money, he flat refused--even when the Congress agreed to hold the hearings in secret. The department clearly has something to hide.

The department is now saying they will cooperate with Congress--who must approve the reorganization and authorize the funding. But what Congress will see and vote upon will only be the benign portion of this new secret department. Publicly, the Bush administration is claiming that they will be merging all or portions of the following government agencies into Homeland Security:

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Coast Guard
Transportation Security Administration
Customs Service
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), including the Border Patrol
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
Secret Service

A couple of these are especially telling. FEMA controls the ongoing secret construction of detention centers being built as 'excess federal prison capacity' --some on decommissioned military bases. The Secret Service will form, I suspect, the basis for an expanded federal secret police.

There are also plans, yet unpublicized, to control the FAA and FCC (which regulate transportation and radio communications). In addition, in order to put teeth into the numerous executive orders the President has at his disposal to take control of private enterprise during a crisis, the new Homeland Security department also intends to control the following: Commerce Department's Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office; the National Domestic Preparedness Office and National Infrastructure Protection Center; and the General Services Administration's Federal Protective Service and Federal Computer Incident Response Capability . I also predict that they will include the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in order to manage the new policy of mandatory immunizations against perceived biological or chemical threats.

A large publicity campaign is being organized to downplay the growing dangers some people sense in this powerful new agency. Bush has put together a National Security Advisory Council, filled with predictable yes-men and establishment government players. It immediately held its first meetings with Bush last Wednesday at the White House. Among those named to the panel was Utah governor Mike Leavitt--the only state governor to be so honored. During his past three terms in Utah, conservatives have seen Leavitt transition from a states' rights conservative to a champion for bigger government and a cheerleader for increased federal and state roles in education and heath care. His latest State of the State address was a socialist Five Year Plan for Utah that would make Stalin proud. He has also turned hostile to owners of concealed weapons permits in Utah.

Besides Leavitt, Bush appointed a host of other former spooks and government yesmen: William Webster, former director of both the CIA and FBI; James Schlesinger, former secretary of Energy and Defense, former CIA director, and former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission; Lee Hamilton, former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Paul Bremer, former U.S. ambassador at large for counterterrorism; and Anthony Williams, mayor of Washington, D.C.--all predictable team players who will rubber stamp the Agency's secret plans. However, naive, ambitious pseudo-conservatives like Leavitt will be excluded from any of the darker secrets in Homeland security. His presence is merely to make conservatives feel like they have "one of their own" watching over the process.

Paul Craig Roberts said it best in a recent column: "After the FBI, CIA, Immigration Service and State Department fiascos that alone made the events of Sept. 11 possible, why does any sane person think a 'Homeland Security' department will provide any protection against terrorist acts? Why assume that putting all the fools under one roof will reduce the foolery?" Roberts doesn't really believe anymore that all this is due to the incompetence of fools. Without using the "C" word, he correctly acknowledges there is a very dark ulterior motive to the government's anti-terror agenda. I knew Roberts back in the 80's when I was in Washington. He was fairly optimistic then about the government under Republican leadership. Not anymore. You can depend on Paul Craig Roberts to put out some of the most critical public commentary today.

THE ONGOING "AIRPORT SECURITY" SHAM

The Roberts column I quoted above continues with some cogent remarks on the ongoing sham dubiously labeled "airport security." As any frequent flyer can attest, the new security procedures at airports are both an outrage and useless. Roberts comments, "Most air travelers regard 'airport security' as a bad joke. It is worse. It is an insult. The refusal to focus on the group to which Muslim terrorists are known to belong treats native-born citizens as the enemy and ensures the lack of security. Pointless searches of grandmothers, young children, US representatives, presidential appointees, pilots and Marine generals divert resources from security and send the message that the government has no idea whatsoever who terrorists might be.

"On my last air travel, eyes rolled and heads shook when a feeble, elderly couple was selected for search. Everyone knows that these mindless, insulting searches provide no security to anyone but terrorists. Yet, the president of the United States and his Cabinet lack the wits to fire the fools who have made air travel safe for terrorists by refusing to profile.

"Despite the terrible events of Sept. 11, the United States government continues to issue hundreds of thousands of visas to young Muslims [including those wishing to attend an Arab-speaking flight school in Fort Worth Texas]. We have no idea who these people are and are unable to track them once they arrive on our shores. The visa process is corrupt and replete with bribes. Osama bin Laden himself could enter the United States today on a visa.

"In the name of 'the war on terrorism,' the US government kills Muslims in Afghanistan who have never lifted a finger against the United States, but refuses to profile Muslims on its own territory who might be planning terrorist incidents. Faced with the incongruity, the US attorney general has proposed fingerprinting Middle Easterners who enter on visas. Opposition has risen to this politically incorrect proposal. But the unasked question is why the United States is allowing any visas to be issued to Muslims.

"If the threat of terrorism is so great that constitutional restraints must be removed from police and a new, expensive Cabinet position of 'Homeland Security' must be created, why are visas issued to potential terrorists?!

Why is President Bush creating an incipient Department of Secret Police when nothing is being done to curtail the inflow of potential terrorists? President Bush should not be surprised if millions of Americans come to the conclusion that the 'war on terror' is nothing but a propaganda cover for increasing the police powers of the government over native-born loyal citizens." [End of Roberts quote.] Indeed, all these security measures and newly imposed restrictions have nothing to do with controlling terrorism (an entity which is already highly--if not completely--controlled within the US) and everything to do with expanding government powers to the detriment of American citizens' constitutional rights. For yet another example of government running roughshod over the Constitution, read on.

STATE NULLIFICATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL RESTRAINTS ON SEARCH AND SEIZURE

Even states are now quickly following the government's lead. California, America's emerging anti-gun police state, is the first to pass a law exempting state law enforcement officers from the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution. According to the Oakland Press, all search warrants will now be classified secret so that officers breaking down doors and searching houses will not be required to show a search warrant. A person in California whose home is invaded and searched by police will not have access to the usual information justifying the search. Such records used to be available to the public unless a judge specifically sealed them (which has happened fairly often whenever the government wanted to cover up illegal acts). Now the secrecy is uniform and blatant. Judges who work in collusion with dark-side federal actions like it since they no longer have to risk exposure as a front for illegal government searches. The new law makes their actions both uniform among all judges and expected. Prosecutors also favor the change because it effectively denies defense counsel the paper trail that sometimes point to a defective warrant and/or lack of "probable cause."

Where are all the federal officers sworn to uphold US Constitution? The 4th Amendment states explicitly, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable search and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Yet as I have said before, I believe the Constitution is now dead. It is only enforced selectively for convenience and to continue to give the government the illusion of legitimacy.

THE DUBIOUS CASE OF JOSE PADILLA

The case of young punk gang member Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah al Muhajir, smells like a set-up. I'll begin by quoting from an article by Patrick Martin on www.wsws.org--one of the best and most complete commentaries written on the case, so far. My comments in [brackets].

"A New York-born man of Puerto Rican descent has been jailed indefinitely by the Bush administration in a military brig in South Carolina, in an unprecedented assertion of executive power. The case of Jose Padilla - or as he now calls himself, Abdullah al Muhajir - has the most ominous implications for democratic rights in the United States. The federal government has seized a US citizen and locked him up for an unlimited period of time on the say-so of the president, without the sanction of any court and in defiance of such elementary legal principles as the presumption of innocence and the right of habeas corpus.

"Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the arrest of Padilla/Muhajir June 10 at an extraordinary press conference held in Moscow, where he was engaged in a long-planned visit to meet with Russian police and security officials [to coordinate the future sharing of western technology on surveillance and other covert tactics against citizens]. Calling the arrest 'a significant step forward in the war on terrorism,' Ashcroft declared, 'We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or 'dirty bomb,' in the United States.'

"This statement combined gross distortions with outright lies. Muhajir was actually 'captured' nearly five weeks ago, on May 8, when he arrived at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, on his way back from an extended stay in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. While Muhajir apparently converted to a fundamentalist form of Islam several years ago, when he married an Egyptian woman [by the name of Sheila Stultz--a name which doesn't appear to be native Muslim either], the government has not yet presented any evidence that he was a supporter of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, let alone engaged in any terrorist activity [Padilla was caught with no bomb making equipment nor any plans on his person]. In fact, the Bush administration arranged his transfer from the Metropolitan Correctional Facility in New York City to the US Navy brig in South Carolina so that it would not be obliged to produce such evidence. All that has been made public are the unsupported assertions of Ashcroft and other government officials, parroted obediently by the American media.

"It may be that Muhajir became a political supporter of bin Laden and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, but the claims that the Bush administration has preempted a major terrorist attack on the United States are not only unproven, but thoroughly dubious. After Ashcroft's initial and highly sensationalized presentation of the case, other administration officials were compelled to qualify his remarks. · Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a news conference, 'There was not an actual plan. We stopped this man in the initial planning stages.' Government officials subsequently acknowledged that no materials for building a 'dirty bomb' had been assembled, and no actual target had been selected.

"In a heavy-handed effort to stampede public opinion, Ashcroft declared that Muhajir was a key operative in an Al Qaeda plan to detonate a radiological weapon -- a conventional explosive device with a wrapper of radioactive material -- which could cause 'mass death and injury.' This statement became the basis for sensationalized media coverage, although experts in the field told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that such a device could produce serious long-term contamination, but would actually cause relatively few casualties.

"Ashcroft said that Muhajir was in Pakistan 'researching radiological dispersion devices,' although how he could accomplish that with only a grade-school education and little knowledge of the local languages is unclear, to say the least. Previous US warnings about Al Qaeda access to nuclear technology have focused on former Soviet scientists and weapons technicians, not ex-members of city street gangs, as the likely conduits.

"Even more inexplicable is the decision to arrest Muhajir as soon as he arrived in the United States. According to Ashcroft and his aides, at the time they learned of Muhajir/Padilla's role as an Al Qaeda operative, he had been jailed in Pakistan for violating immigration laws. The Bush administration arranged for his release. US intelligence agencies then monitored his travel from Pakistan, through Zurich, Switzerland and Egypt to the United States. FBI agents were on board the plane during the last leg of the journey and arrested him as he was going through Customs at O'Hare.

"Ashcroft was not asked an obvious question. Why, if Muhajir could be tracked from continent to continent, was he arrested as soon as he set foot on US soil? If he was such a key figure in a plot to kill thousands of Americans, why didn't the authorities continue to follow him, in order to find his collaborators and co-conspirators inside the country? [The US had also obviously been surveilling his activities and his contacts for some time. Why have none of the foreign contacts been arrested as well? --assuming the US is really interesting in prosecuting a war on terror.]

"Rather than a terrorist mastermind, Muhajir is far more likely to be a low-level sympathizer of the Islamic fundamentalists -- if even that [I believe he was a patsy set up for this event--as are other Americans being discovered in Pakistan. Muhajir had only recently been released from prison prior to his travels to Europe and had little funds to be flying around the world. Someone was paying his way] -- whose arrest has been seized on to boost Bush's political standing and refurbish the image of the intelligence agencies [Clearly, the Bush administration needed a 'success story' after months of crying wolf about imminent terrorist attacks].

"The announcement is suspiciously convenient in its timing, coming as the Bush administration is staggering under the impact of revelations that the CIA and FBI ignored or suppressed warnings of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Ashcroft was at pains to point to the cooperation of the two US intelligence agencies in his statement in Moscow.

"Legal considerations were a major factor in Muhajir's transfer to military custody. He has not been charged with any crime. The government justified his arrest and incarceration by calling him a material witness in the federal investigation into September 11 - the legal ploy that has been used to detain hundreds of Muslim immigrants over the past nine months.

"A federal district judge in Manhattan had scheduled a secret hearing for June 11 and seemed prepared to order the government to charge Muhajir or release him. The alternative, devised by the Justice Department in consultation with the Pentagon, was to put him out of reach, at least temporarily, of the federal court system. [In another report, it is alleged that government attorneys tried but could not get an indictment out of a New York grand jury and, rather than let him go, handed Padilla off to the military.]

"This process was conducted in a secret and politically chilling fashion. President Bush issued an executive order, in his capacity as commander in chief, declaring Muhajir an 'enemy combatant' [without evidence] who poses a serious and continued threat to the American people and our national security. Muhajir's own lawyer, Donna Newman of New York City, was not informed of his transfer [to the South Carolina brig] and has been denied access to him [a violation of the Constitutional right of Habeas Corpus and years of legal precedent concerning the 'rights of the accused']." [End of Martin quote.] These proceedings make a mockery of the oath of office Bush and Ashroft have taken to 'uphold and defend' the Constitution of the US. It is also a blatant denial of the President's assurance given on November 13, 2001, as he explained his latest executive order creating military tribunals, that military tribunals were not intended for US citizens.

What is also both worrisome and suspicious is the unusual focus of the Bush administration on prosecutions of the few bizarre Americans that keep turning up supposedly in support of Al Qaeda. Instead of finding 'hundreds or thousands' of Muslim Al Qaeda cells within the borders of the US, the Bush administration has only succeeded in rounding up and prosecuting two warped American sympathizers. Apparently, US prison populations are breeding grounds for radical Islam. According to a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor, "Over the past 30 years, Islam has become a powerful force in America's correctional system. In New York State, it's estimated that between 17 and 20 percent of all inmates are Muslims ö a number that experts say holds nationally." Almost all of these are black or Latinos who convert to Islam because of its radical promises of revenge on the government. Even the two post 9/11 "wannabe" terrorists were American or British citizens who changed their names to something Arab sounding and pulled off amateurish 'acts in solidarity' with the Muslim cause--but showed no training or coordination with believable terrorist groups. It is almost as if the American administration has an urgent need to discover only "domestic terrorism" to justify its ongoing intrusion of Americans' rights.

As I've been reminding my readers for months, if this is a real war on terrorism, where are the real terrorists and terrorist attacks (normal, non-high-profile types) that should be going on weekly throughout the country, which is the norm in every other region subjected to real terrorism? I'm not buying the story that Al Qaeda is on the run. They are only being attacked in Afghanistan. I'm not buying the story that US security is tight. Security is a sham in this country--and so-called "security procedures" only serve to irritate Americans. We are still wide open and vulnerable to attack--and I think the government wants it that way. Vice President Cheney's dark warning last month about a guaranteed future terrorist attack may be all too true--and perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Powers That Be appear to be eager to facilitate high profile terrorist attacks from time to time to justify further intervention around the world and at home, targeting US Constitutional rights.

THE NEW BUSH 'PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE' DOCTRINE

Several subscribers have queried me on whether the new Bush 'first strike' doctrine targeting other nations who threaten to use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) represents a repudiation of Clinton's infamous PDD-60 instructing our military to absorb a military first strike and not 'launch on warning.' It does not.

In the first place, Bush has been very clear in both public and private talks with Russia and China--both of which maintain the only serious operational stockpiles of WMD--that his pre-emptive threat does NOT include them. Bush is making it clear to our two most formidable enemies that he still intends to keep America vulnerable to their lethal weapons. Second, the new pre-emptive strike doctrine does not technically contradict the existence of PDD-60. Both can exist simultaneously as long as Bush maintains this superficial exclusion of Russia and China from the current class of "US enemies." He will reserve the option to strike rogue states, while still leaving the US vulnerable to institutionalized evil states (Russia and China). Even the current ABM system is not intended to save us from a Russian or Chinese missile attack. Figure that one out!

On Thursday China announced its vehement opposition the new first strike military doctrine, but Russia was silent, having already been assured by Bush that the 'continuing Soviets' would not be targeted. I don't think the Russians trust or believe the US. If anything, this new first strike doctrine will make the Russians even more convinced of the necessity to strike first.

In essence, Bush is establishing a doctrinal rationale to allow for coming US attacks on one or more of the small junior nuclear/biological/chemical weapons powers (Iraq is the likely target) should they attempt to move against the West or Israel before the major powers are ready to promote a real third world war--what planners have long called 'conflict management.' Alternatively, Bush can use the doctrine to trigger WWIII, with an attack that serves as the straw that breaks the camel's back of world patience with US warmongering and intervention.

World Affairs Brief, June 14, 2002 Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief (http://www.JoelSkousen.com).