Green Zone Follies
August 7, 2007 - Baghdad

“Herewith a partial copy of a Pentagon guide that was prepared on I June, 2007 and disseminated to all military commands in areas from which counter-insurgency American troops are now serving. No target date for the implementation of these actions has been given but unofficially it will be implemented “immediately following any significant outbreak of domestic resistance.” It is also a subject of conversation here that it is fully expected that a faked ‘terrorist attack’ will take place inside the United States while Congress is on vacation this summer.” US Martial Law and Domestic Detention Camps With the growing possibility of civil insurrection or physical resistance to U.S. government policies, the official machinery is now in place for swift containment by U.S. military forces, to include the various State National Guards, Special Forces and Military Police units. It is to be stressed that while these plans, which have been maturing since the Reagan Administration and are now fully functional, are at present considered only contingency plans. It s requires only a Presidential Order to activate them. Under President Bush's "National Strategy For Homeland Security", FEMA will be placed under the Office of Homeland Security. Since 2001, both Homeland Security and the Department of Defense have been participating "in homeland security training that involves military and civilian emergency response", Earlier, President Bush has ensured there will be no current FBI/FEMA conflict, mandating that FEMA work closely with the DOJ (of which the FBI is part), creating what Bush calls a "seamlessly integrated" network. With this bond between FEMA and the DOJ, the Administration effectively voided the inter-departmental checks which stopped FEMA's earlier activities. According to the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA "will continue to change the emergency management culture from one that reacts to terrorism, to one that proactively helps communities and citizens avoid becoming victims". Paradoxically, FEMA's prior negative image problems was a direct outgrowth of its pursuit of proactive methods, its attempt to legitimize the assumption of extraordinary powers under the cloak of "counter terrorism". When president Ronald Reagan was considering invading Nicaragua he issued a series of executive orders that provided the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with broad powers in the event of a "crisis" such as "violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition against a US military invasion abroad". They were never used, but have since been rewritten to allow for “violent and widespread domestic opposition against a military invasion abroad.” FEMA, whose main role is disaster response, is also responsible for handling US domestic unrest. From 1982-84 Colonel Oliver North assisted FEMA in drafting its civil defense preparations. Details of these plans emerged during the 1987 Iran-Contra affair. They included executive orders providing for suspension of the constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the president and FEMA In April 2002, the Pentagon, acting on orders from the President created a Northern Command to aid Homeland defense. At that time, it was stated that this command was designed to “assume a supporting role vis a vis local loyalist authorities. “ At the present time the full import of Reagan's national plan has been kept from the public. In order to keep his planning secret, President Bush took the step of sealing the Reagan presidential papers. Which contained these directives and operational guides. The Director of Resource Management for the U.S. Army has reaffirmed on June 9, 2007, the official earlier memorandum relating to the establishment of a civilian inmate labor program under rapid current development by the Department of the Army. The document states, "Enclosed for your review and comment is the draft Army regulation on civilian inmate labor utilization" and the procedure to "establish civilian prison camps on installations." Civilian internment camps or prison camps, more commonly known in the liberal press as ‘concentration camps’, have been the subject of much rumor and speculation during the past few years in America. Several publications have devoted space to the topic and many talk radio programs have dealt with the issue. As of the present date, President Bush and Homeland Security have authorized preliminary studies for the rapid construction of a National Detention Center Program-controlled series of detention centers, to be added to the existing 600 units now in place The Department of Homeland Security has worked closely with an Israeli company, Israeli Prison Systems, Ltd. for the expedited construction of modular internment camps, to be generally located in rural and relatively uninhabited areas throughout the Continental United States and Alaska. . Of these projected three hundred camps, one hundred and ten were authorized by the president and as of June 1, 2007, sixty-five camps have been built and, in addition to the 600 units previously completed are now ready for immediate occupancy. The U.S. military Corps of Engineers has been responsible for the construction of adjoining quarters for guard and administration personnel. A Brief History of U.S. Civilian Internment Camps The concept of mass internment camps was implemented during the decade of the 1930's when the idea was either integrated into national security planning or put to actual use in the world's three socialistic experiments - the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and the United States under Roosevelt. On March 9, 1933, Adolf Hitler put his Dachau detention center into operation where thousands of his own countrymen were sent. Stalin exterminated 7 to 10 million in his rural collectivization program from 1931-1933 and another 10 million in the purges of 1934-1939. It was this decade that the Soviet Gulag proved its worth. On August 24, 1939, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover met with FDR to develop a detention plan for the United States. Five months after this meeting, Hitler opened the Auschwitz detention center in Poland. On August 3, 1948, J. Edgar Hoover met with Attorney General J. Howard McGrath to form a plan whereby President Truman could suspend constitutional liberties during a national emergency. The plan was code-named "Security Portfolio" and, when activated, it would authorize the FBI to summarily arrest up to 20,000 persons and place them in national security detention camps. Prisoners would not have the right to a court hearing or habeas corpus appeal. Meanwhile, "Security Portfolio" allowed the FBI to develop a watch list of those who would be detained, as well as detailed information on their physical appearance, family, place of work, etc Two years later Congress approved the Internal Security Act of 1950 which contained a provision authorizing an emergency detention plan. Hoover was unhappy with this law because it did not suspend the constitution and it guaranteed the right to a court hearing (habeas corpus). "For two years, while the FBI continued to secretly establish the detention camps and work out detailed seizure plans for thousands of individuals, Hoover kept badgering...[Attorney General McGrath for] official permission to ignore the 1950 law and carry on with the more ferocious 1948 program. On November 25, 1952, the attorney general...caved in to Hoover." Congress repealed the Emergency Detention Act of 1950 more than twenty years later in 1971. Seemingly the threat of civilian internment in the United States was over, but not in reality. The Senate held hearings in December, 1975, revealing the ongoing internment plan which had never been terminated. The report, entitled, "Intelligence Activities, Senate Resolution 21", disclosed the covert agenda. In a series of documents, memos and testimony by government informants, the picture emerged of the designs by the federal government to monitor, infiltrate, arrest and incarcerate a potentially large segment of American society. The Senate report also revealed the existence of the Master Search Warrant (MSW) and the Master Arrest Warrant (MAW) which are currently in force. The MAW document, authorized by the United States Attorney General, directs the head of the FBI to: "Arrest persons whom I deem dangerous to the public peace and safety. These persons are to be detained and confined until further order." The MSW also instructs the FBI Director to "search certain premises where it is believed that there may be found contraband, prohibited articles, or other materials in violation of the Proclamation of the President of the United States." It includes such items as firearms, short-wave radio receiving sets, cameras, propaganda materials, printing presses, mimeograph machines, membership and financial records of organizations or groups that have been declared subversive, or may be hereafter declared subversive by the Attorney General." Since the Senate hearings in 1975, the steady development of highly specialized surveillance capabilities, combined with the exploding computerized information technologies, have enabled a massive data base of personal information to be developed on millions of unsuspecting American citizens. It is all in place awaiting only a presidential declaration to be enforced by both military and civilian police. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan issued National Security Directive 58 which empowered Robert McFarlane and Oliver North to use the National Security Council to secretly retrofit FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) to manage the country during a national crisis. The 1984 "REX exercises" simulated civil unrest culminating in a national emergency with a contingency plan for the imprisonment of 400,000 people. REX 84 was considered so important that special metal security doors were installed on the FEMA building's fifth floor, and even long-term officials of the Civil Defense Office were prohibited entry. The ostensible purpose of this exercise was to handle an influx of refugees created by a war in Central America, but a more realistic scenario was the detention of American citizens. Under "REX" the President can declare a state of emergency, empowering the head of FEMA to take control of the internal infrastructure of the United States and suspend the constitution. The President can immediately invoke executive orders 11000 thru 11004 which would: 1- Draft all citizens into work forces under government supervision. 2- Empower the postmaster to register all men, women and children. 3- Seize all airports and private and commercial aircraft. 4- Seize all housing in areas deemed to be “in rebellion against lawful authority” and to establish the relocation by force of any inhabitant, or inhabitants, deemed to be in rebellion. 5- The rounding up and incarceration of all persons known to be in rebellion, based on both current and past lists kept and maintained by the FBI, the DHS and military authorities. 6- The complete shut -down of the domestic internet. 7- Establishment and supervision of officially approved and cooperative media outlets.