Commandos Get Duty on U.S. Soil

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012405F.shtml

 

Commandos Get Duty on U.S. Soil

By Eric Schmitt

The New York Times

 

Sunday 23 January 2005

 

Washington - Somewhere in the shadows of the White House and the

Capitol this week, a small group of super-secret commandos stood ready

with state-of-the-art weaponry to swing into action to protect the

presidency, a task that has never been fully revealed before.

 

 

William M. Arkin speaks of secret military plans in a new book.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

 

As part of the extraordinary army of 13,000 troops, police

officers and federal agents marshaled to secure the inauguration,

these elite forces were poised to act under a 1997 program that was

updated and enhanced after the Sept. 11 attacks, but nonetheless

departs from how the military has historically been used on American soil.

 

These commandos, operating under a secret counterterrorism program

code-named Power Geyser, were mentioned publicly for the first time

this week on a Web site for a new book, " Code Names: Deciphering U.S.

Military Plans, Programs and Operation in the 9/11 World, " (Steerforth

Press). The book was written by William M. Arkin, a former

intelligence analyst for the Army.

 

The precise number of these Special Operations forces in

Washington this week is highly classified, but military officials say

the number is very small. The special-missions units belong to the

Joint Special Operations Command, a secretive command based at Fort

Bragg, N.C., whose elements include the Army unit Delta Force.

 

In the past, the command has also provided support to domestic law

enforcement agencies during high-risk events like the Olympics and

political party conventions, according to the Web site of

GlobalSecurity.org, a research organization in Alexandria, Va.

 

The role of the armed forces in the United States has been a

contentious issue for more than a century. The Posse Comitatus Act of

1878, which restricts military forces from performing domestic law

enforcement duties, like policing, was enacted after the Civil War in

response to the perceived misuse of federal troops who were policing

in the South.

 

Over the years, the law has been amended to allow the military to

lend equipment to federal, state and local authorities; assist federal

agencies in drug interdiction; protect national parks; and execute

quarantine and certain health laws. About 5,000 federal troops

supported civilian agencies at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City

three years ago.

 

Since Sept. 11, however, military and law enforcement agencies

have worked much more closely not only to help detect and defeat any

possible attack, including from unconventional weapons, but also to

assure the continuity of the federal government in case of cataclysmic

disaster.

 

The commandos here this week were the same type of Special

Operations forces who are hunting top insurgents in Iraq and Osama bin

Laden in the mountainous wilds of Afghanistan and Pakistan. But under

the top-secret military plan, they are also conducting

counterterrorism missions in support of civilian agencies in the

United States.

 

" They bring unique military and technical capabilities that often

are centered around potential W.M.D. events, " said a senior military

official who has been briefed on the units' operations.

 

A civil liberties advocate who was told about the program by a

reporter said that he had no objections to the program as described to

him because its scope appeared to be limited to supporting the

counterterrorism efforts of civilian authorities.

 

Mr. Arkin, in the online supplement to his book, says the

contingency plan, called JCS Conplan 0300-97, calls for

" special-mission units in extra-legal missions to combat terrorism in

the United States " based on top-secret orders that are managed by the

military's Joint Staff and coordinated with the military's Special

Operations Command and Northern Command, which is the lead military

headquarters for domestic defense.

 

Mr. Arkin provided The New York Times with briefing slides

prepared by the Northern Command, detailing the plan and outlining the

military's preparations for the inauguration.

 

Three senior Defense Department and Bush administration officials

confirmed the existence of the plan and mission, but disputed Mr.

Arkin's characterization of the mission as " extra-legal. "

 

One of the officials said the units operated in the United States

under " special authority " from either the president or the secretary

of defense.

 

Civilian and uniformed military lawyers said provisions in several

federal statutes, including the Fiscal Year 2000 Defense Department

Authorization Act, Public Law 106-65, permits the secretary of defense

to authorize military forces to support civilian agencies, including

the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in the event of a national

emergency, especially any involving nuclear, chemical or biological

weapons.

 

In 1998, the Pentagon's top policy official, Walter B. Slocombe,

acknowledged that the military had covert-action teams.

 

" We have designated special-mission units that are specifically

manned, equipped and trained to deal with a wide variety of

transnational threats, " Mr. Slocombe told the Senate Armed Services

Committee. " These units, assigned to or under the operational control

of the U.S. Special Operations Command, are focused primarily on those

special operations and supporting functions that combat terrorism and

actively counter terrorist use of W.M.D. These units are on alert

every day of the year and have worked extensively with their

interagency counterparts. "

 

Spokesmen for the Northern Command in Colorado Springs and the

Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., the parent organization of

the Joint Special Operations Command, declined to comment on the plan,

the units involved and the mission.

 

" At any given time, there are a number of classified programs

across the government that, for national security reasons, it would be

inappropriate to discuss, " said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.

" It would be irresponsible for me to comment on any classified program

that may or may not exist. "

 

But the Northern Command document that mentions Power Geyser is

marked " unclassified. " The document states that the purpose of the

Department of Defense's contingency planning for the inauguration is

to provide " unity of D.O.D. effort to contribute to a safe and secure

environment for the 2005 inauguration. "

 

The Northern Command missions include deterring an attack or

mitigating its consequences, and coordinating with the Special

Operations Command.

 

In a telephone interview from his home in Vermont, Mr. Arkin said

the military's reaction to the disclosure of the counterterrorism plan

and its operating units reflected " the silliness of calling something

that's obvious, classified. "

 

" I'm not revealing what they're doing or the methods of their

contingency planning, " he said. " I don't compromise any sensitive

intelligence operations by revealing sources and methods. I don't

reveal ongoing operations in specific locales. "

 

Mr. Arkin's book is a glossary of more than 3,000 code names of

past and present operations, programs and weapons systems, with brief

descriptions of each. Most involved secret activities, and details of

many of the programs could not be immediately confirmed.

 

The book also describes American military operations and

assistance programs in scores of countries, from Afghanistan to

Zimbabwe. The murky world of " special access programs " and other

secret military and intelligence activities is covered in the book,

too. Some code names describe highly classified research programs,

like Thirsty Saber, a program that in the 1990's tried to develop a

sensor to replace human reasoning. Others describe military

installations in foreign countries, like Poker Bluff I, an

electronic-eavesdropping collection station in Honduras in the 1980's.

 

Many involve activities related to the survival of the president

and constitutional government. The book, for instance, describes Site

R, one of the undisclosed locations used by Vice President Dick Cheney

since the Sept. 11 attacks.

 

Site R is a granite mountain shelter just north of Sabillasville,

Md., near the Pennsylvania border. It was built in the early 1950's to

withstand a Soviet nuclear attack.

 

The book also describes a program called Treetop, the presidential

emergency successor support plan, which provides survivors of a

nuclear strike or other attack with war plans, regulations and

procedures to establish teams of military and civilian advisers to

presidential successors.

 

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the continuity of

government activities cited in the book.

 

People who advocate that the government declassify more of the

nation's official documents said the book would fuel the debate over

the balance between the public's right to know and the need to keep

more military and intelligence matters secret in the campaign against

terror.

 

" This is part of an ongoing tug of war to define the boundaries of

public information, " said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation

of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. " There has been

a steady withdrawal of information from the public domain in the

present administration, and a reluctance to disclose even the most

mundane of facts. "

 

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