-Caveat Lector-
"Justice is incidental to law and order."
--J. Edgar Hoover
Iran-Contra hearings, 1987:
Sen. George Mitchell: "During your discussions with
Mr Casey, Mr McFarlane, and Mr Poindexter about
the plan, did the question ever arise among you
as to whether what was being proposed was legal?"
Oliver North: "Oh, no, I don't think so -- I mean,
first of all, we operated from the premise that
everything we do is legal."
"You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime.
That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a
crime, then he is not a suspect."
--Reagan's Attorney General Edwin Meese III
____________________________________________________
THE MINDSET OF FEMA
excerpt from "Fifty Greatest Conspiracies of All Time,"
by Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, Citadel Press, 1995
Copyright (c) 1995 by Jonathan Vankin & John Whalen
Most Americans had never even heard of this obscure
government agency before syndicated columnist Jack Anderson
reported in October 1984 that FEMA had prepared bizarre "standby
legislation" that would, in the event of a national crisis,
"suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, effectively
eliminate private property, abolish free enterprise, and
generally clamp Americans in a totalitarian vise."
In any self-respecting banana republic, such a document
might be called a blueprint for a coup d'etat. FEMA called it
"national security planning."
Cold War delirium only partly explains FEMA's preoccupation
with junta-minded plotting during the Reagan era. To understand
how a disaster relief agency came to think of itself as a "junior
CIA or FBI," as one critic put it, it's helpful to consider the
mindset that launched the Reagan Revolution.
In 1981, Ronald Reagan and his arch-conservative troops
marched into Washington determined to extinguish a conflagration
that had, in fact, long since burned itself out. In the eyes of
the president's aging posse, however, the flaming hippies,
militant minorities, and draft-dodging radicals of the Sixties
and early seventies continued to pose a clear and present danger.
Thus was born FEMA. Or, more accurately, thus was it born
again. Jimmy Carter had established the agency as a catchall for
natural disaster relief and civil defense planning. But under
Reagan, FEMA immediately went off the deep end, eyeing peaceful
demonstrators as potential bomb-throwing terrorists.
To head the agency, Reagan and presidential counsel Edwin
Meese III (later US attorney general) tapped their old friend
"General" Louis O. Guiffrida, a stealth-obsessed ex-California
National Guard officer who preferred to be addressed according to
his former rank in that organization. Giuffrida was eminently
qualified for what Reagan and Meese had in mind. Prepared for
all contingencies, he had himself deputized so he could pack a
sidearm at the office.
During the late sixties and early seventies, Giuffrida had
served as Governor Reagan's terrorism advisor and at Reagan's
request founded the California Specialized Training Institute
(CSTI), a school for police and military commandos.
To quote an early CSTI instruction manual: "Legitimate
violence is integral to our form of government, for it is from
this source that we can continue to purge our weaknesses."
Giuffrida and Meese (then Governor Reagan's chief assistant)
helped develop a plan to purge California of its militant AND
peaceful protestors. Operation Cable Splicer, a variation of the
army Garden Plot, a "domestic counterinsurgency" scheme, spied on
suspected radicals and marshaled maximum force to squash riots
and legitimate demonstrations alike.
But if the early seventies were heady days for military and
civil defense planners, the budding 1980s turned out to be a
veritable Renaissance for Cold Warriors. As Reagan warned
complacent Americans about the Evil Empire and the Communist
Horde (which was bivouacked just south of Texas, the Gipper
claimed), the Pentagon prepared plans for World War IV -- mere
World War II preparations being hazardously shortsighted.
Giuffrida, meanwhile, bateened the hatches at FEMA. Signs
were posted warning employees that SECURITY IS EVERYBODY'S
BUSINESS. A new phone system was installed to record each number
dialed, and memos were circulated reminding staffers that
personal phone calls were verboten: "Calling to say you will be
home late could result in a fine or separation from the job,"
advised one memorandum.
FEMA-sponsored conferences obsessed over the possibility of
"radical environmentalists" teaming up with terrorists and doing
unkind things to nuclear power plants. In fact, FEMA's R&D work
made the CIA's LSD dabbling look like a 4H project. According to
Donald Goldberg, who helped research Jack Anderson's column,
government scientists advised FEMA on mob control techniques such
as "injecting terrorists with stimulants and tranquilizers to
manipulate their actions in times of crisis, or zapping them with
microwaves to alter their perceptions."
Given the dense trench-coat atmospherics, it was probably
inevitable that one Lt Col Oliver North would find a home away
from home in Giuffrida's FEMA.
As White House National Security Council liaison to FEMA,
the Iran-Contra point man reportedly collaborated with Giuffrida
in drawing up secret wartime contingency plans, possibly
including the scheme to commandeer the Bill of Rights.
Although North denied helping draft such a plan,
Congessional Iran-Contra investigators never adequately grilled
him on the matter. When Texas representative Jack Brooks asked
North about his work for FEMA, Senate panel chairman Daniel
Inouye gavelled Brooks to silence, insisting that the question
dealt with classified material. Such was the persuasiveness of
FEMA's national security stamp.
FEMA's wartime crisis strategy was tested in a series of
simulated war games conducted in conjunction with Pentagon
maneuvers. In early 1984, FEMA, military and other government
officials met in portentous secrecy to plan a "readiness
exercise" code-named Rex-84. ["Rex," in Latin, meaning "King."]
FEMA cooordinated Rex-84 with the military's Night Train 84
operations, which deployed thousands of troops in Honduras near
Contra supply bases in April 1984. The FEMA portion of the
simulation involved an international crisis, presumably a US
invasion of Nicaragua, which supposedly would set off
"uncontrolled population movements" (as one declassified FEMA
document described it) with hordes of "refugees" swarming over
the Mexican border into the United States.
According to an August 1985 article in Penthouse magazine
co-authored by Goldberg, during the exercise FEMA would round up
some 400,000 fictional "aliens" in a six-hour period and detain
them (or rather, SIMULATE rounding up and detaining them) in
military camps throughout the United States. FEMA apparently
justified the concentration camps by presuming that terrorist
moles would be peppered among the refugees.
But as Goldberg noted, the Mexican border's daunting terrain
made an influx of gate crashers on the order of hundreds of
thousands highly unlikely. In fact, more than one critic has
suggested that Rex-84 was really a drill to practice rounding up
crowds of AMERICAN citizens. It would have been a game plan not
unlike Cable Splicer or Garden Plot, designed to quash public
protests in the event of a controversial government deed -- an
invasion of Central America, for example.
Indeed, Giuffrida had once considered tossing Americans into
concentration camps. In a 1970 paper written as an army student,
Giuffrida devised a hypothetical plan for incarcerating black
radicals, describing how to build and run detention camps.
That Rex-84 dealt with more than merely apprehending illegal
immigrants is certain. A heavily censored FEMA memo obtained by
the Miami Herald described the Alpha Two phase of the exercise as
a test of "emergency legislation, assumption of emergency powers
... etc." In other words: martial law.
The joint FEMA-military martial law plan was more than a
simulation. Shortly before the Rex-84 drill, the Pentagon Joint
Chiefs of Staff had prepared an internal document itemizing the
military's purported authority to proclaim martial law in times
of crisis, take over local policing, and even run the courts. It
was a dubious claim at best. The Posse Comitatus Act forbids the
military from operating in the United States, a prohibition
backed by Supreme Court precedent.
But Giuffrida was already on record as a martial law
booster. In a 1972 CSTI course manual on civil disorder,
Giuffrida described martial law as "the legal means available to
control people during a civil disorder," including "replacement
of ALL civil government by the military."
The "standby" emergency legislation that columnist Anderson
exposed prescribed nothing less than an American police state.
Called the Defense Resources Act, the draft plan would presumably
gather dust on the shelf until a time of crisis, when it would be
presented to a preoccupied Congress for speedy approval. In
fact, the benevolently titled legislation granted the president
near-dictatorial powers, including the authority to censor
communications, ban anti-government strikes, nationalize
industry, seize private property for "the national defense," and
authorize loyalty oaths to the state.
To augment the Defense Resources Act, FEMA prepared a draft
presidential executive order to be invoked by the commander in
chief during an "emergency." The order would put FEMA in charge
of all government agencies. According to the Miami Herald, the
executive order activated the aforementioned legislation, thereby
removing Congress and constitutional democracy from the equation
entirely.
Alas, FEMA's ambitious plans were truncated shortly after
the Rex-84 games, when Attorney General William French Smith
complained about the agency's attempted power grab. In a letter
addressed to North's boss (and fellow Iran-Contra player) Robert
McFarlane, Smith warned that FEMA was trying to anoint itself
"emergency czar." And, as Smith demurred, FEMA's over-generous
definition of crisis encompassed even "ROUTINE domestic law
emergencies." Smith's objections apparently killed the draft
executive order.
Though the full scope of the Rex-84 games remains obscure,
the Ollie North connection is particularly interesting, given
that North was simultaneously working with the Pentagon and the
CIA on plans for combat forces in Central America. Was FEMA
plugged into the Iran-Contra scandal coordinated by North?
Because Congress chose not to pursue that avenue of Contragate,
we don't know for certain. However, allegations have been made.
Daniel Sheehan, crusading (perhaps recklessly so) attorney with
the Christic Institute law firm, suspected that Rex-84 served as
cover for illegal arms shipments to the Nicaraguan Contras.
Citing unnamed sources (including one described as a member of
FEMA's legal division), Sheehan claimed that FEMA distributed
"hundreds of tons of small arms and ammunition" to civilian
militiamen in "state defense forces" in the United States.
From the early days of the Reagan administration, FEMA had
prodded state legislatures to form state defense forces, which
would act as paramilitary police in the event of a national
crisis. Militia in several states were recruited by placing ads
in "Soldier of Fortune"-style magazines. In several instances
those state defense forces subsequently had to be purged of neo-
Nazis, white supremacists, and other unsavory characters.
According to Sheehan, FEMA's plan was to distribute the guns
and ammo to state defense forces as part of the Rex-84 war games.
The militiamen would return only half of the artillery and would
smuggle the remainder to the Contras, thereby circumventing the
congressional ban on lethal aid to the Nicaraguan guerrillas.
Though the scheme certainly sounds like a "neat idea" worthy
of the North brain trust, it's hard to imagine how even FEMA
could justify parceling out guns and LIVE ammo for the sake of a
war SIMULATION. Because Sheehan never got a chance to argue his
case in court (a judge threw out the Christic Institute's
sweeping lawsuit, calling it "frivolous"), his theory has to be
filed under the category of "interesting speculation."
Other speculation about FEMA having its fingers in the Iran-
Contra cookie jar revolves around a tip to Senate investigators
in 1983 that C-130 and C-141 cargo planes were bound for Texas.
Because the planes were rigged with troop seats, Senate staffers
suspected that they were secretly ferrying troops to Central
America. FEMA inisted the flights were part of its super-secret
"continuity of government" (COG) program, and utterly refused to
discuss the matter further with Congress.
FEMA made COG another of its obsessions. Under COG, FEMA
has the last word in national eschatology. While mundane natural
disaster plans gathered dust during the 1980s, FEMA beefed up its
rather fanciful strategies for surviving a nuclear war, with
emphasis on survival of the federal government. And the rest of
us? Well, as Reagan's deputy undersecretary of defense put it:
"Dig a hole, cover it with a couple of doors, and then throw
three feet of dirt on top ... If there are enough shovels to go
around, everyone is going to make it."
Under the aegis of FEMA, top government brass have the
benefit of rather more lavish excavations, with the crown jewel
being a top-secret underground fortress built during the early
1950s (and predating the elaborate James Bond movie sets) at a
cost of more than $1 billion.
The Facility, as it is known, is a sort of nuclear winter
White House situated beneath the solid granite of Mount Weather
in Bluemont, Virginia, 45 miles west of Washington DC. It has
been described as an "underground city," complete with roads and
a battery-powered subway. It boasts office buildings and
hospitals, private apartments and dormitories, and a power plant
and artificial lake illuminated by fluorescent light. Rounding
out the science fiction furnishings are a color video phone
system and one of the world's most powerful supercomputers.
In the event of a major nuclear or OTHER catastrophe,
surviving feds would run the country from The Facility as well as
from FEMA's underground command center in Olney, Maryland, and up
to fifty regional bunkers salted throughout the nation. There's
even an underground Pentagon more than 600 feet below solid
granite just north of Camp David.
Unfortunately, during a national catastrophe the feds
administering the FORMER United States might not be familiar
names to you. FEMA's COG scheme involves about three thousand
unelected, unaccountable people recruited and trained by FEMA "to
serve in executive positions in the federal government in time of
national security emergency."
FEMA under Giuffrida never had a chance to retreat to its
mole-man cities, govern by remote control, or even demonstrate
the uses of "legitimate violence." Giuffrida resigned in 1985,
reportedly under pressure from Pentagon and FBI officials who saw
in the ambitious "general" a more imminent emergency: their
endangered fiefdoms.
MAJOR SOURCES:
Chardy, Alfonso. "North Helped Revise Wartime Plans,"
Miami Herald, 9 July 1987.
Emerson, Steven. "America's Doomsday Project,"
US News & World Report, 7 August 1989.
Goldberg, Donald, and Indy Badhwar. Penthouse, August 1985.
Peck, Keenen. "The Take-Charge Gang,"
The Progressive, May 1985.
Poundstone, William. "Bigger Secrets,"
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.
Sheehan, Daniel. "Affidavit of Daniel P. Sheehan,"
12 December 1986.
Copyright (c) 1995 by Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections 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, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
