-Caveat Lector- Forwarded E-Mail Message Sun, 24 Sep 2000 10:36:38 -0700 MN: US CO: Black Helicopter Invasion -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED] (MAPNews) posted: Newshawk: Colo. Hemp Init. Project http://www.levellers.org/cohip Pubdate: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 Source: Boulder Weekly (CO) Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Address: 690 South Lashley Lane Boulder, CO, 80303 Fax: (303) 494-2585 Website: http://www.boulderweekly.com/ Author: Wayne Laugesen BLACK HELICOPTER INVASION Two black helicopters hovered over Ward last week, terrorizing the townsfolk below. A mass hallucination? Too much ganja? Unfortunately, no. The unmarked helicopters were real and it was, in fact, a government mission to spy on the public. It was invasive and scary. Paranoid Patriots had it right all along: Government really does spy on the public from black helicopters. Only it's not the United Nations working toward a "new world order." Instead, it's your friendly neighborhood cops teaming up with Army troops to look for pot plants. Holly Hughes was at the park with two small children the afternoon of Tuesday, Aug. 29, when the helicopters came to town. "I was at the park and these things came up and started circling," Hughes says. "It made me want to duck for cover, essentially, and I didn't know if I was safe to be there with the children. It was a beautiful sunny day and I looked up at them and there were no markings. They're totally black just totally ominous looking. It really scared me. They were very low." Hughes tried to calm the frightened children and distract them from the helicopters. But they were too close, too loud and too scary for the fun to go on. She took the kids to the library for cover. "You're playing, you're having a good time, and every time they took a turn the blades did this loud 'thud, thud, thud, thud' noise, and it sounded like gunfire," Hughes says. "They just kept going in circles and circles for hours. It was a real invasion of privacy." Hovering Hueys The Bell "Huey" helicopters belong to the Colorado Army National Guard, stationed at Buckley Air National Guard Base in Denver. They arrived at the Boulder Airport the morning of Aug. 29 to pick up two sheriff's detectives from the Boulder County Drug Task Force. Detective Joe Burtness rode in a "black helicopter" and says it was actually a very dark brown. The helicopters, each carrying a detective, flew over Lafayette, the immediate Boulder Airport vicinity, Nederland and Ward a sleepy village of mountaineers who've left civilization for serenity and peace. Flying at low altitude, the detectives examined fields, private yards and even front and back porches for marijuana plants. It was Det. Burtness's first helicopter drug mission. He was merely following orders, and says it was fun. "I saw a black bear on the back side of one of the Flatirons," Burtness says. And he saw pot with his naked eye. He found plants growing in a field near Lafayette and in another field near the airport. Drug Task Force agents on the ground harvested and destroyed the plants. Authorities have no idea who was growing them. "The National Guard routinely does these fly-overs in cooperation with local law enforcement," says Det. Bob Whitson, supervisor of the Boulder County Drug Task Force. "In rural areas, particularly in eastern Colorado, it's fairly common to find that someone has gone into the middle of an irrigated corn field and cleared space to grow marijuana plants. The farmer usually doesn't know it's there, because you can only see it from the air." While hovering over Ward, Burtness spotted pot plants growing on a family's front porch. He doesn't know how closely the helicopter was to the house, but again he spotted plants without visual aids. Burtness radioed sheriff's deputies on the ground and the two choppers hovered while awaiting their arrival. "We hovered closely enough that we'd see it if someone tried to grab the plants before the ground crew arrived," Burtness says. Deputies pulled up in a van and approached the home to make contact with the occupant. They confiscated 19 plants from the front and back porches. "The owner was very cooperative with us, and he allowed us to go into the residence," Det. Burtness says. "We didn't have a warrant, and in those situations we always make sure the occupant knows it's voluntary to let us in." Inside the house, officers confiscated eight more plants, bringing the total to 27. Occupants of the home told officers the plants were strictly for personal use. "That's what they were claiming, and we have no information they were distributing or planning to distribute," says Whitson, adding that charges against the occupants are pending. "Can you believe they send up armed men in helicopters to go after someone's personal head stash?" said a Ward resident at the Glacier Gateway General Store. "It seems like a lot of taxpayer expense to confiscate a few marijuana plants." Un-American Mission Worse than that, it's yet another example of government agencies using military equipment and personnel against American citizens rather than foreign aggressors. The practice is exactly what the Posse Comitatus Act was intended to forbid. In the mid-1870s, in response to the military presence in southern States during the Reconstruction Era, Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act to prohibit the use of the Army in civilian law enforcement. The Act embodies the traditional American principle of separating civilian and military authority. "Since the writing of the Declaration of Independence, Americans have mistrusted standing armies and have seen them as instruments of oppression and tyranny," says an article in the law review of Washington University in St. Louis. "Over time, the military has increased its esteem among the populace, but it has always been held separate from civilian government and limited to its focused goal of military preparedness and national security... In the last 15 years, Congress has deliberately eroded this principle by involving the military in drug interdiction. This erosion will continue unless Congress renews the Posse Comitatus Act's principle to preserve the necessary and traditional separation of civilian and military authority." Some examples of the erosion that's turning our cops and military personnel into soldiers at war with the American public: In 1981 and 1989, Congressional amendments established a partial drug exception to the Posse Comitatus Act to facilitate the drug war, and more specifically the National Guard's marijuana eradication program. The Supreme Court Decision in Oliver v. United States (1984) allows law enforcement to trespass on "open fields" without probable cause or search warrants. As a result, rural America is barraged by low-level flights and landings of dark helicopters loaded with camouflaged men with machine guns. In 1987 President Reagan ordered the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General to provide local law enforcement with briefings about available Department of Defense assistance. A special office was established to provide military assistance to civilian law enforcement. In 1989 Congress designated the Department of Defense as the "single lead agency" in drug interdiction efforts. In 1993 Congress ordered the Department of Defense to sell military surplus to state and local law enforcement for use in counter-drug activities. Within one week of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, President Clinton proposed an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act to allow military aid to civilian authorities in investigations involving "weapons of mass destruction." In 1996 presidential candidate Bob Dole pledged to increase the role of the military in the drug war, and candidate Lamar Alexander proposed replacing the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol with a new branch of the armed forces. Show Of Force The political push to win a needless drug war and to protect Americans from domestic terrorism is clearly done at the cost of freedom. Are we safer and better off as a society because helicopter crews found some pot plants in Ward? "Having helicopters flying over, doing this scary thing and invading our privacy, is way worse than the thought of someone growing illegal plants on a front porch in my neighborhood," says Hughes. No one, including the cops, is terribly worried about pot plants on private property in Ward. The plants were merely an excuse for police and soldiers to send a message of zero tolerance with a show of force against citizens. Armies, such as the Colorado Army National Guard, are trained to kill enemies. They should have little in common with cops, who are paid to keep peace. Last week, Ward was at peace. Then black helicopters arrived, alarming the villagers. Right wing extremists were right all along. Black helicopters do spy on us. And governments as seen throughout history eventually turn on the public. __________________________________________________________________________ Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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