Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'

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Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:38:56 -0800 (PST)

Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'

 

 

 

 

All Links:http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/022106a.html

Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle & code=%20SC20060206 & ar\

ticleId=1897

 

" Get With the Pogrom "

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

 

 

Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'

By Nat Parry

February 21, 2006

 

Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen.

Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

a new target for the administration's domestic operations -

 

- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans

who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.

" The administration has not only the right, but the duty,

in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements, " Graham, R-S.C.,

told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.

 

" I stand by this President's ability, inherent to being

Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements,

and I don't think you need a warrant to do that, "

Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration

to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.

 

" Senator, " a smiling Gonzales responded,

" the President already said

we'd be happy to listen to your ideas. "

 

In less paranoid times, Graham's comments might be viewed

by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways

– ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while

seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress

should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror.

 

But recent developments suggest that the Bush admin.

may already be Contemplating What To Do with Americans

who are deemed Insufficiently Loyal or who Disseminate

Information that may be considered Helpful to the Enemy.

(lets see, Where did this happen before?)

 

Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news

that undercuts Bush's actions as a key front

in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by " News Informers "

in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

[For details, see Consortiumnews.com " Upside-Down Media " or below.]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/021806.html

 

Detention Centers

Plus, there was that curious development in January

when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded

 

Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million

contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the U.S.,

to deal with " an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S.,

or to support the rapid development of new programs, "

KBR said. [Market Watch, Jan. 26, 2006]

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7B62C8724D%2DAE8A%2D4B5C%\

2D94C7%2D70171315C0A0%7D & dist=SignInArchive & param=archive & siteid=mktw & dateid=387\

41%2E5136277662%2D858254656

 

Later, the New York Times reported that " KBR would build the centers

for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx

of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for

new programs that require additional detention space. " [Feb. 4, 2006]

 

Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times

focused on concerns about Halliburton's reputation

for Bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services.

 

" It's hard to believe that the administration has decided

to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars, "

remarked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California.

 

Less attention centered on the phrase

" Rapid Development of new programs " and what kind of programs

would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable

of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate

on what these " new programs " might be.

 

Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott

and Maureen Farrell, have pursued what the Bush administration

might actually be thinking. Scott speculated that the

" detention centers could be used to detain American citizens

if the Bush administration were to declare Martial Law. "

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle & code=%20SC20060206 & ar\

ticleId=1897

 

He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security

Council aide Oliver North organized Rex-84 " readiness exercise, "

which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency

rounding up and detaining 400,000 " refugees, " in the event of

" uncontrolled population movements "

over the Mexican border into the United States.

 

Farrell pointed out that because

" another terror attack is all but certain, (by Bush agents)

it seems far more likely that the centers would be used

for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than

a sudden deluge " of immigrants flooding across the border.

 

Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said,

" Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11

for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They've already

done this on a smaller scale, with the `special registration' detentions

of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo. "

 

Labor Camps

 

There also was another little-noticed item posted at the

U.S. Army Web site, about the

Pentagon's Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This program provides

" Army policy and guidance for establishing Civilian Inmate

Labor Programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations. "

 

The Army document, first drafted in 1997, underwent a

" rapid action revision " on Jan. 14, 2005.

The revision provides a " template for developing agreements "

between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of

civilian inmate labor on Army installations.

 

On its face, the Army's labor program refers to inmates

housed in federal, state and local jails. The Army also cites

various federal laws that govern the use of civilian labor

and provide for the establishment of prison camps in the United States,

including a federal statute that authorizes the Attorney General to

" establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him "

and " make available … the services of United States prisoners "

to various government departments, including the Department of Defense.

 

Though the timing of the document's posting – within the past

few weeks – may just be a coincidence, the reference to a

" rapid action revision " and the KBR contract's contemplation

of " rapid development of new programs " have raised eyebrows

about why this sudden need for urgency.

 

These developments also are drawing more attention now

because of earlier Bush administration policies to involve the Pentagon

in " counter-terrorism " operations inside the United States.

 

Pentagon Surveillance

 

Despite the Posse Comitatus Act's prohibitions against U.S. military

personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon

has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries,

such as its role in domestic surveillance activities.The Wash.Post

has reported that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks,

the Defense Department has been creating new agencies

that gather and analyze intelligence within the United States.

[Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2005]

 

The White House also is moving to expand the power of the

Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA),

created 3 years ago to consolidate counterintelligence operations.

The White House proposal would transform CIFA into an office

that has authority to investigate crimes such as treason,

terrorist sabotage or economic espionage.

The Pentagon also has pushed legislation in Congress that would

create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI

and others to share information about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon,

CIA and other intelligence agencies. But some in the Pentagon

don't seem to think that new laws are even necessary.

 

In a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2006,

the U.S. Army's top intelligence officer wrote,

" Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military]

intelligence components collecting U.S. person information. "

 

Drawing a distinction between " collecting " information and

" receiving " information on U.S. citizens, the memo argued that " MI

[military intelligence] may receive information from anyone, anytime. "

[see CQ.com, Jan. 31, 2005]

This receipt of information presumably would include data from the

National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance

of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation

of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act.

Bush approved the program of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11.

 

There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program.

Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on

Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance program existed, but he said

he couldn't discuss the details without breaking classification laws.

Tice added that the " special access " surveillance program

may be violating the constitutional rights of millions of Americans.

[uPI, Feb. 14, 2006] With this expanded surveillance,

the government's list of terrorist suspects is rapidly swelling

..

The Washington Post reported on Feb. 15 that the National

Counterterrorism Center's central repository

— now holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects,

a four-fold increase since the fall of 2003.

Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through

the NSA's domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post,

 

" Our database includes names of known and

suspected international terrorists provided

by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA. "

 

Homeland Defense

 

As the administration scoops up more and more names,

members of Congress also have questioned the elasticity

of Bush's definitions for words like terrorist " affiliates, " used to

justify

wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.

 

During the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on the wiretap program,

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, complained that the House

and Senate Intelligence Committees

" have Not been briefed on the scope and nature of the program. "

Feinstein added that, therefore, the committees

" have not been able to explore what is a link or an affiliate

to al-Qaeda or what minimization procedures

(for purging the names of innocent people) are in place. "

 

The combination of the Bush administration's expansive reading

of its own power and its insistence on extraordinary secrecy

has raised the alarm of civil libertarians when contemplating

how far the Pentagon might go in involving itself in domestic matters.

A Defense Department document, entitled the

" Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support, "

has set out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions

an " active, layered defense " both inside and outside U.S. territory.

In the document, the Pentagon pledges to

 

" transform U.S. military forces to execute

homeland defense missions in the … U.S. homeland. "

 

The Pentagon strategy paper calls for increased military

reconnaissance and surveillance to

" defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States. "

 

The plan " maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from

those who would harm us. "

But there are concerns over how the Pentagon judges " threats "

and who falls under the category " those who would harm us. "

 

A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity's

TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.

In December 2005, NBC News revealed the existence of a secret

400-page Pentagon document listing 1,500 " suspicious incidents "

over a 10-month period, including dozens of small antiwar

demonstrations that were classified as a " threat. "

 

The Defense Department also might be moving toward legitimizing

the use of propaganda domestically, as part of its overall war strategy.

 

A secret Pentagon " Information Operations Roadmap, "

approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for " full spectrum "

information operations and notes that

" information intended for foreign audiences,

including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly

is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa. "

 

" PSYOPS messages will often be replayed by the news media

for much larger audiences, including the American public, "

the document states. The Pentagon argues, however, that

" the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences

becomes more a question of USG [u.S. government]

intent rather than information dissemination practices. "

 

It calls for " boundaries " between information operations abroad

and the news media at home, but does not outline

any corresponding limits on PSYOP campaigns.Similar to the

distinction the Pentagon draws between " collecting " and " receiving "

intelligence on U.S. citizens, the Information Operations Roadmap argues

that as long as the American public is not intentionally " targeted, " any

PSYOP propaganda consumed by the American public is acceptable.

 

The Pentagon plan also includes a strategy for taking over the Internet

and controlling the flow of information, viewing the Web as a potential

military adversary. The " roadmap " speaks of " fighting the net, "

and implies that the Internet is the equivalent of

" an enemy weapons system. "

 

In a speech on Feb. 17 to the Council on Foreign Relations,

Rumsfeld elaborated on the administration's perception

that the battle over information would be a crucial front

in the War on Terror, or as Rumsfeld calls it, the Long War.

 

" Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic

communication framework into place, the more we can be

certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and

by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate

picture of what is actually taking place, " Rumsfeld said.

 

The Department of Homeland Security also has demonstrated

a tendency to deploy military operatives to deal with domestic crises.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the department dispatched

" heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater

private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, (and had them)

openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans, " reported journalists

Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo on Sept. 10, 2005.

 

Noting the reputation of the Blackwater mercenaries as

" some of the most feared professional killers in the world, "

Scahill and Crespo said Blackwater's presence in New Orleans

" raises alarming questions about why the government

would allow men trained to kill with impunity

in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here. "

 

U.S. Battlefield

 

In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law

already exists in the United States and has been in place

since shortly after the 9/11 attacks when Bush issued

Military Order No. 1 which empowered him to detain

any non-citizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant.

 

" The President decided that he was no longer running the country

as a civilian President, " wrote civil rights attorney Michael Ratner

in the book Guantanamo: What the World Should Know.

" He issued a military order giving himself

the power to run the country as a general. "

 

For any American citizen suspected of collaborating with terrorists,

Bush also revealed what's in store. In May 2002, the FBI arrested

U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in Chicago on suspicion

that he might be an al-Qaeda operative planning an attack.

Rather than bring criminal charges, Bush designated Padilla an

" enemy combatant " and had him imprisoned indefinitely

without benefit of due process. After 3 years, the administration

finally brought charges against Padilla, in order to avoid

a Supreme Court showdown the White House might have lost.

 

But since the Court was not able to rule on the Padilla case,

the administration's arguments have not been formally repudiated.

Indeed, despite filing charges against Padilla, the White House still

asserts

the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants.

This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States

is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield.

 

" In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the Nation learned

all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part

of the battlefield, " Bush's lawyers argued in briefs to the federal

courts.

[Washington Post, July 19, 2005]

Given Bush's now open assertions that he is using his " plenary "

– or unlimited – powers as Commander in Chief for the duration

of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust

that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions.

 

As former Vice President Al Gore asked after recounting a litany

of sweeping powers that Bush has asserted to fight the War on Terror,

 

— " Can it be true that any President really has such

powers under our Constitution? If the answer is `Yes,'

then under the theory by which these acts are committed,

are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? "

 

In such extraordinary circumstances, the American people

might legitimately ask exactly what the Bush administration means

by the " rapid development of new programs, "

which might require the construction of a new network of detention camps.