The Creeping Militarization Of The U.S.

John Glaser writes:

The US military will be on call to respond and use force in case of unrest at this year’s Democratic and Republican Party National Conventions in Tampa, Florida and Charlotte, North Carolina.

The National Guard aiding the Chicago police at the 1968 Democratic Convention

In a disturbing illustration of the creeping militarization of the day, US Northern Command has admitted that the Army will aid domestic law enforcement if called upon by the Secretary of Defense.

“During the Democratic/Republican National Conventions, Department of Defense personnel will support the U.S. Secret Service,” a Northern Command spokesman said in an email.

“For operational security reasons we do not discuss the numbers of military personnel and resources that are involved,” U.S. Navy Lt. Cdr. William G. Lewis said. “Additionally, we do not share our operational plans.”

Laws and traditions in this country going back hundreds of years have tried to restrict the government’s ability to use its military force on its own people, as a vital safeguard against outright militaristic rule here at home.The Bush administration’s post 9/11 attempts to cripple those safeguards still linger.

Northern Command took over responsibility for homeland security when Bush and the Department of Defense created the agency after the 9/11 attacks.

The practice harks back to the 1968 Democratic convention where a US Army and National Guard plan called Operation Garden Plot authorized an infantry brigade armed with riot control equipment and snipers to quell protesters if called upon.

“My job was to shoot to kill as directed,” said former US Army Cmd. Sgt. Maj. Gary Huber, who was assigned as a sniper in the Garden Plot. “I’m surprised we were issued ammunition because that normally wasn’t the case except when I was assigned along the East German border.”

At a time when the US military is peppered across the world, occupying foreigners in several countries, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the federal government and their professional militias also view American citizens as potential enemies to be dealt with by force.

Imaging, Spy-Cams and Drones

The New Hi Tech Homeland Security State

By Tom Burghardt
Source: "Anti-Fascist Calling"
June 18, 2010
Courtesy Of "Global Research"

As "gee-whiz" high-tech wonders seamlessly morph into "your papers, please!," more often than not in "new normal" America science and technological innovation are little more than deranged handmaids serving corporate crime and political power.

In the interest of "keeping us safe," the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unveiled a spiffy new surveillance cam "that puts others to shame," CNET breezily reported last week.

The Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance (ISIS) is a hemispherical group of cameras roughly the size of a basketball that, if one believes giddy accolades by enthusiasts touting the system, will lovingly wrap us in a "high-res video quilt," a DHS press release gushes.

The ultra-wide camera undergoing field-tests since December at Boston's Logan International Airport, streams distortion free, real-time stitched video and has a resolution capacity of approximately 100 megapixels which our guardians say is "as detailed as 50 full-HDTV movies playing at once, with optical detail to spare. You can zoom in close...and closer...without losing clarity."

But with an abundance of acronyms, and a decided lack of imagination from a gaggle of secret state agencies, one shouldn't confuse Homeland Security's ISIS with one incubating beneath the dark wings of the Pentagon's "blue sky" office, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

That program, Integrated Sensor Is Structure, also known as ISIS, is being shepherded along by Lockheed Martin, America's No. 1 defense corp. DARPA's ISIS promises to build an autonomous airship powered by solar fuel cells for American warfighters, one capable of staying aloft for a decade above 70,000 feet, well out of the way of an adversary's surface to air missiles.

According to the description on the Strategic Technology Office's web site, their ISIS "will develop the technologies that enable extremely large lightweight phased-array radar antennas to be integrated into an airship platform." This would enable ground commanders "to track the most advanced cruise missiles at 600 km and dismounted enemy combatants at 300 km."

Pentagon gurus and the corporations they so lovingly serve, recently awarded Lockheed Martin and subcontracting Raytheon Corporation, a $400 million dollar contract for Phase III work on the radar system, Defense Systems reported in April. DARPAcrats claim the high-flying airship will provide "theatre-wide, persistent area surveillance and tracking capabilities" to America's Borg Army of resource grabbers.

And with The New York Times reporting June 14 that the "United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself," it doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that sometime soon the corrupt Karzai regime, the Taliban, their ISI paymasters and their American overlords will cozy up and play "let's make a deal"!

Nor should either project be confused with the failed "secure border" scheme known as the Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System or ISIS (there it is again!) or its successor, America's Shield Initiative. No, that corporatist boondoggle which cost taxpayers some $439 million between 1997 and 2006, eventually morphed into the equally useless Secure Border Initiative or SBInet.

Fully in keeping with the tenor of the times, to wit, that government should get "out of the way" and let business work its magic, DHS's own Inspector General described the troubled history of the project in critical testimony to Congress. The IG criticized lax practices that led the Department to allow the contractors, led by Boeing Corporation, decide what the system would look like and what technology would be used to build it.

Needless to say, that didn't work out well! Just this week Washington Technology reported that Boeing "could see its lucrative, but troubled Secure Border Initiative contract scaled back as Homeland Security Department officials consider stopping future construction of the 'virtual-fence' security systems along the U.S.-Mexico border."

Like predecessor ISIS, the $800 million program has suffered from delays, technical glitches and "changes" in direction. In March, Home Sec Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the program was "being re-evaluated as part of an ongoing reassessment." No matter, with cash in hand Boeing, and a string of disappointed subcontractors, can afford to "move on."

But I digress...

No dear readers, the Heimat Security project I'm describing is close to earth, perhaps only a few feet above the congested street where you trod, oblivious to the legion of minders busily stripping you of your rights; above all, the right to be left alone. Ah, but there's the rub. Why should any of Oceania's proud citizens have anything to fear? After all, only evil-doers have something to hide, don't they? Why wouldn't you leap with joy at the prospect of being enwrapped in a vid-quilt cocoon lovingly designed by America's finest minds?

"Traditional surveillance cameras can be of great assistance to law enforcement officers for a range of scenarios," DHS flacks croon. "Canvassing a crowd for criminal activity during a Fourth of July celebration, searching for who left a suitcase bomb beneath a bench, or trying to pick out a terrorist who has fled the scene and blended into a teeming throng in the subway."

Who'd oppose that?

But why stop there? Surely there are other applications for the privacy-killing gizmo. Where did that political malcontent go after handing out "subversive" leaflets at the mall? And that flash mob of miscreants protesting an oil firm's board meeting or, heavens forbid!, bum-rushing grifting merchants of death at an industry trade show; where'd they scram to? Multitasking is the name of the game and DHS has got it covered!

A joint project of the Science and Technology Directorate's Infrastructure and Geophysical Division, MIT's Lincoln Laboratory and the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, ISIS was built with off-the-shelf cameras, image processors and readily-available commercial software. No need to reinvent the wheel here in these tough economic times!

The innocent-looking array points in all directions and captured images are "stitched" together, creating a creepy "god's eye" view that allow CCTV operators to easily track people back and forth through the HD "quilt" files without losing a single suspect, I mean American, as they pass from one field to the next.

"Other neat tricks" enthusiasts effervesce, "will be provided by a suite of software applications called video analytics. One app can define a sacrosanct 'exclusion zone,' for which ISIS provides an alert the moment it's breached. Another lets the operator pick a target--a person, a package, or a pickup truck--and the detailed viewing window will tag it and follow it, automatically panning and tilting as needed." (emphasis in original)

We're told that "video analytics at high resolution across a 360-degree field of view, coupled with the ability to follow objects against a cluttered background, will provide"--wait!--"enhanced situational awareness as an incident unfolds."

"We've seen that terrorists are determined to do us harm," Dr. John Fortune, the I&G's head honcho told contractors lining up to get a slice of the vid-quilt pie. "ISIS is a great example of one way we can improve our security by leveraging our strengths."

And should things, pardon the pun, pan out, "ISIS creators already have their eyes on a new and improved second generation model, complete with custom sensors and video boards, longer range cameras, higher resolution, a more efficient video format."

"Eventually," we're told, "the Department plans to develop a version of ISIS that will use infrared cameras to detect events that occur at night."

South Of The Border ... Bring On The Drones!

Meanwhile, as Homeland Security unveiled their chic new spy-cam and exiled SBINet to the Isle of Lost Corporatist Dreams, The Hill reported that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began flying "Predator B aerial drones, which have proved successful fighting insurgents in Afghanistan, were deployed this week along the border between Texas and Mexico."

CBP, a DHS satrapy plagued by endemic corruption engendered by deep state management of the multibillion dollar drug trade, was accused last week of murdering an unarmed 15-year-old who had the temerity to throw rocks at border agents from the Mexican side of the border.

Democracy Now! disclosed June 10, that U.S. authorities said that "Sergio Adrian Hernandez Güereca was part of a group of boys throwing rocks at Border Patrol agents who were trying to detain two people at the border crossing."

While intrepid agents claimed they feared for their lives, "a cell-phone video obtained by the Spanish language network Univision shows otherwise," Amy Goodman reports. "The grainy footage shows the Border Patrol agent detaining one man at gunpoint. While he has the man on the ground, he points his gun toward a second person on the Mexican side of the border. The video shows that person running away as the agent fires several shots. The video then shows a body next to a column under the bridge."

In other words, there's nothing to see here, move along!

This latest border killing follows closely on the heels of "change" President Obama's pledge to station 1,200 National Guard troops along the border to stem the flow of economic migrants hammered by continued depredations resulting from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the highly-lucrative drugs trade.

According to Narco News, "a special operations task force under the command of the Pentagon is currently in place south of the border providing advice and training to the Mexican Army in gathering intelligence, infiltrating and, as needed, taking direct action against narco-trafficking organizations," investigative journalist Bill Conroy reported June 12.

The deployment of deep cover Special Forces assets are part of the Obama regime's Mérida Initiative, a "security arrangement" between the U.S. secret state and their Mexican and Central American counterparts.

The alleged aim of the initiative is to stamp out national security threats posed by drug traffickers, transnational criminal syndicates and money laundering by "dirty" banks. To aid the venture, Congress generously allocated some $1.6 billion for training, equipment and intelligence to regional security forces. Undoubtedly, such operations would be greatly enhanced by flying unmanned drones over suspected drug smuggling routes as an assist to our allies.

Last Saturday however, the National Post reported that "an investigation conducted by The Montreal Gazette, CBC Radio and the U.S.'s National Public Radio (NPR) has found powerful elements within the Mexican government and army have no intention of ending the narcotics trade."

But wait, hasn't a Special Forces contingent dubbed Task Force 7 by Conroy's source, been providing expertise for more than a year to the Mexican Army to root out corruption and slay evil-doers, the same Army that has "no intention" of ending the grisly trade responsible for deaths of thousands?

The National Post disclosed that "senior government and military officials are helping the Sinaloa cartel and its leader become the dominant drug-trafficking organization in Mexico. This means the cartel will likely become the most powerful organized crime group on the continent."

True enough as far as it goes, but I'd offer one slight edit: the Sinaloa cartel would perhaps "become the most powerful organized crime group on the continent," only were we to ignore the key role played by North American, specifically U.S. banks, in laundering billions of dollars in blood money, a minor, though pertinent detail, omitted by the National Post, the Gazette, NPR and the CBC.

After all as Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime told The Observer in December, "the proceeds of organised crime were 'the only liquid investment capital' available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year." Indeed, Costa claimed that "drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the [2008] global crisis."

All the more reason then, to bring on the drones!

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX), a close political ally of former President George W. Bush (no slouch when it came to protecting Afghan drug rackets), praised Obama's move to fly Predators along the border. The good Senator told The Hill, "the beginning of UAV flights over the west-Texas portion of our border with Mexico marks an important advancement for border security in our state."

The Bushist crony continued: "We are working hard to make round-the-clock aerial surveillance the standard for all 2,000 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, and I hope this development is the first of many steps to bring our border detection and security efforts into the 21st century."

Not to be outdone by a political "rival" across the aisle, Rep. Henry Cuellar, a south Texas Democrat, praised CBP's drone deployment and said, "By putting eyes in the sky along the Rio Grande, we will gather real-time intelligence on the ground to augment the good work of federal, state and local law enforcement on the border."

Or provide those shipping multi-ton loads of cocaine and other illicit drugs northward adequate warning! Indeed, Narco News disclosed in May that "a law enforcement task force in New Mexico that is supposed to target drug-trafficking criminals is instead awash in charges that it is using its nearly $600,000 taxpayer-subsidized budget to fund its own corrupt practices."

Although an investigation by an internal affairs unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revealed "a disturbing trail of bookkeeping irregularities and multiple mysterious bank accounts," the indefatigable Bill Conroy revealed that "nothing of consequence happened to the task force or its operations, and it continues to operate under the same leadership to this day."

A minor detail perhaps, but then who cares! Certainly not our intrepid "watchdog" Washington press corps led by CNN's White House correspondent Ed Henry, The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder and others, who recently cavorted with the Vice President at a "beach party" at Joe Biden's mansion, Salon's Glenn Greenwald disclosed!

For the "people who matter" however, unleashing a drone fleet along the border will be music to the ears of General Atomics, the manufacturer of the Predator B. What, with saturation coverage of the Iraq and "Afpak" theatres by the CIA and Pentagon's armada of killer robots, the $10-12 million dollar price tag per drone is a surefire win-win all around.

Is this a great country or what!

Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Global Research Articles by Tom Burghardt

Can The Government Keep Us Safe?

By Andrew P. Napolitano
Courtesy Of Lew Rockwell

What a week we have all just endured! While the Democrats were re-writing the federal takeover of healthcare behind closed doors, the public face of the federal government was fixated on denying and then explaining all the gaps in its intelligence gathering. The Obama administration has been finger-pointing over who in the government let a murderous thug on a plane in Amsterdam that he tried to explode over Detroit. First, the government said that the system worked. Then the President said it didn’t. Then he announced that the intelligence communities and security people would start to talk to each other so the bad guys could be kept out. Weren’t they supposed to be doing this all along?

At Newark Liberty Airport last Sunday, a TSA agent left his post, and a young man walked past it to kiss his girlfriend good-bye. Then the young man turned and left the secured area and left the airport. So far no harm, no foul. But because the government’s surveillance cameras in the airport didn’t work, the feds panicked and ordered over 10,000 passengers to leave the terminal, go out into the 15-degree Newark, NJ cold at night, and then re-enter the airport. Flights were delayed and missed, kids did not get to school on Monday morning, and soldiers were listed as AWOL. All because the government overreacted to a kiss. This humiliated the feds: New Jersey's 86-year-old senior Senator Frank Lautenberg demanded that the guy who kissed his gal be hunted down and prosecuted because of the chaos he caused. He caused? Let’s see; the government has cameras that watch us every time we scratch our noses, and when those cameras don’t work, the government blames the person whose picture it was supposed to be taking? Come on.

All this, of course, brings out the false argument of liberty versus security. And we hear it from the Progressives that the government must take our freedoms in order to keep us safe. That’s hogwash. Freedom is our birthright. It doesn’t come from the government; it is part of our humanity. America is the only country in the history of the world dedicated to the truism that we are endowed by our Creator, as Jefferson wrote, with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The government has forgotten basic civics: "Endowed by our Creator" means that our rights come from God and not from the feds. "Inalienable" means that we and our freedoms cannot be separated, unless and until we are convicted by a jury of violating someone else’s rights. What is the value of being safe if we are not free? Did our forefathers flee the kings and despots of Europe and come here to be safe? Did Patrick Henry say "Give me safety or give me death?" Here is the mistake that the Big Government crowd wants to thrust upon us: They want to balance liberty and safety. There is no such thing as balance when it comes to freedom. We will not trade freedom for anything, or balance it against anything, and we certainly won't give it up to the TSA.

Can the government keep us safe? I don’t think so. Airline travel is safer today because pilots have guns, cockpit doors are like bank vaults, and the passengers have become courageous. All this was done by individuals in the private sector, not by the government. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if the feds had not stripped us of our natural rights to keep ourselves safe – by keeping and bearing arms – 9/11 would never have happened. How about letting the airlines decide who gets on the planes, rather than a TSA worker who leaves his post? When industry competes for your business, you fly where you want to go, you get there in comfort and safety, and you do all this at a competitive cost. When the government runs the show, you stand in the cold night air for six hours because of a kiss. The government can’t deliver the mail, it can’t operate surveillance cameras at an airport; it can't pay back its debts; it can't tell the truth. That would be the same government that wants to manage your healthcare.

America, do you see what happens when we rely on the government too much? It gets authoritarian and we get weak. Our children grow to expect from the government what we once did for ourselves. Government is a fearful master. It is not faithful to us; it is not truthful to us; it can’t produce for us. It doesn’t obey its own laws; it doesn’t keep us safe; and it won’t leave us alone. It is mortgaging our futures, raising our taxes, and treating us all like children.

What to do? Challenge it at every turn. Expose it to friend and foe. Educate all you know about what you see and hear every day on this show. And return no one to the government who has stolen your freedom.

And one other thing: The God who gave us life also gave us liberty. He loves us. Praise Him from the roof tops, and ask Him to save us from a government that is out of control.

January 11, 2010

Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. His next book is Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History, (Nelson, 2010).

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

America’s 'Israelification’ Of Airports

By Craig Nelson, Associate Editor
Last Updated: January 14. 2010 10:43PM UAE
January 14. 2010 6:43PM GMT
Courtesy Of The National

The Obama administration’s measures to toughen airport and airline security following last month’s failed bombing attempt of an American airliner by a 23-year-old Nigerian man are rushing ahead.

Some 450 body-scanning machines have been ordered for airline terminals, more than 10 times the number now in use. Airline passengers coming to the United States from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and nine other nations are to undergo extra screening.

Amid the growing clamour to ratchet up airline security comes the call for one more step: the “Israelification” of US airports.

“We could all do a lot worse than to learn from the Israeli model,” wrote David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, in The Huffington Post, a widely-read online news magazine.

The enthusiasm has not stopped there. Israel’s airline and airport security practices, which combine technical detection with a heavy emphasis on profiling and personal interaction between security personnel and passengers, drew the praise of retired army Lt Gen Thomas McInerney.

“Let’s use the same procedures that the Israelis use on [the Israeli airline] El Al,” Mr McInerney told Fox News, in urging more ethnic, national and behavioural profiling of travellers. All Muslim men between the ages of 18 and 28, he added, should be strip searched at US airports.

It is true that Israel has been successful in preventing attacks on airports and civilian airliners. No plane departing Ben Gurion International Airport has ever been hijacked or attacked in flight. There has been no assault on the airport itself since 1972, when three Japanese Red Army militants stormed the former main terminal, killing 24 people.

Still, Israel owes this success to conditions few nations share and methods few nations can impose without legal recrimination or public backlash.

For one thing, Israel has only one international airport, and it serves some 11.5 million travellers a year. In contrast, London’s Heathrow Airport serves 67 million passengers annually and New York’s John F Kennedy Airport, nearly 50 million. Use of Israeli techniques on such a large scale, with their stress on profiling and questioning, would be a logistical challenge and enormously expensive.

Furthermore, the effectiveness of any airport security system must be weighed against its costs. In the case of the Israeli model, that means the denial of human rights to the 3.9 million Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, who have no freedom of movement and no hope of using Ben Gurion, even though their own airports have been destroyed by Israeli military forces.

Most questions about the ability to transplant the Israeli model, however, centre on ethnic and behavioural profiling, a key feature of the scheme.

While posing questions, Israeli security personnel, most in their early 20s, zero in on body language and vocal tone, looking for signs of nervousness, which may itself, they say, betray ill intent. (Never mind that there are many reasons other than deceit why passengers might be anxious at an airport.)

Frustration, anger or an Arabic accent usually prompt more questioning and examination of luggage, even though the bags have already passed through metal detectors and an X-ray machine.

Any Israeli Jew or person identified as Jewish usually passes easily through the process. Others – Israeli Arabs, Palestinians with special authorisation to use the airport, foreign reporters and academics, non-Jewish visitors, non-Jewish residents of Israel – are almost guaranteed additional investigation, including demands for friends’ names, the identity of people whom the traveller intends to see at their destination and the right to examine the contents of a laptop. Some are strip searched.

Not surprisingly, most Israelis accept or welcome this procedure, while others consider it highly discriminatory. “This is the most offensive and humiliating experience I have ever had. I was immediately suspect just because I am Arab,” said Saleh Yaaqubi, whose account of his experience with Israeli airport security is included in a report three years ago by the Arab Association for Human Rights in Nazareth.As calls for the “Israelification” of airport security have intensified, even Israeli security officials concede that their profiling is selective.

“We rely on racial profiling in many of the security checks at Ben Gurion, something which, for political reasons, many governments can’t do,” Lt Col Eran Tuval of the Israel Defence Forces told the London-based Jewish Chronicle last week.

Although a wholesale transfer of Israeli security methods to the US and Europe is unlikely because of practical and legal obstacles, changes in airport security on both continents seem inevitable, given political pressures.

In urging more profiling, Newt Gingrich, one of America’s most influential Republicans, accused the Obama administration of being overly constrained by “cultural sensitivities” and sacrificing its obligation to protect American lives on the altar of “political correctness”.

Although it insists it does not conduct ethnic or religious profiling, the US Transportation Security Administration already has a modestly funded, five-year-old programme of behavioural detection methods called SPOT – “Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques.”

Thus, for airline passengers – especially Muslims, Arabs or any citizen of one of the 14 countries – the better-of-two-evils conundrum is likely to become even more acute: what is a greater invasion of privacy? A full-body scan – a technical means of detecting weapons that minimises human discretion and the bias and racism that inevitably accompany it? Or Israeli-style behavioural detection methods, which expand that discretion?

cnelson@thenational.ae

"How To" for Terrorists to Get Through Airport Security

Massive TSA Security Breach As Agency Gives Away Its Secrets

By BRIAN ROSS and MATT HOSFORD
Dec. 8, 2009
Courtesy Of ABC News

In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inadvertently posted online its airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most closely guarded secrets regarding special rules for diplomats and CIA and law enforcement officers.

Share

Document mistakenly posted online reveals agency's top screening secrets.

More Photos

The most sensitive parts of the 93-page Standard Operating Procedures manual were apparently redacted in a way that computer savvy individuals easily overcame.

The document shows sample CIA, Congressional and law enforcement credentials which experts say would make it easy for terrorists to duplicate.

The improperly redacted areas indicate that only 20 percent of checked bags are to be hand searched for explosives and reveal in detail the limitations of x-ray screening machines.

Related

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More from Brian Ross and the Investigative Team

CLICK HERE TO READ THE SCREENING MANUAL and HERE TO SEE THE SAMPLE CIA CREDENTIAL

"This is an appalling and astounding breach of security that terrorists could easily exploit," said Clark Kent Ervin, the former inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security. "The TSA should immediately convene an internal investigation and discipline those responsible."

"This shocking breach undercuts the public's confidence in the security procedures at our airports," said Senator Susan Collins, R-Me., ranking Republican member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "On the day before the Senate Homeland Security Committee's hearing on terrorist travel, it is alarming to learn that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inadvertently posted its own security manual on the Internet."

"This manual provides a road map to those who would do us harm," said Collins. "The detailed information could help terrorists evade airport security measures." Collins said she intended to ask the Department of Homeland Security how the breach happened, and "how it will remedy the damage that has already been done."

In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) inadvertently posted online...

In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) inadvertently posted online its entire airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most closely guarded secrets regarding special rules for diplomats and CIA and law enforcement officers.

(Transportation Security Agency)
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TSA Document Leaked Online

A TSA spokesperson says the document posted online is an outdated version "improperly posted by the agency to the Federal Business Opportunities Web site wherein redacted material was not properly protected."

The TSA requested the document be taken offline, but by then it had spread around the Internet and is still available today.

The document contains a list of items for which screening is not required including wheelchairs, footwear of disabled individuals, casts and orthopedic shoes.

The redacted portions also indicate which law enforcement personnel are specially screened or exempt from some screening procedures, and indicate what requirements they must meet to be eligible for special screening.

TSA screeners are also told to require extra screening for any passenger whose passport was issued by Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen or Algeria.

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The document also reveals that during peak travel times, TSA screeners who check identification can reduce from 100 percent to 25 percent the times they use black lights to authenticate documents.

"Screening is like a big puzzle and this SOP gives you directions on putting the puzzle together," said Robert MacLean, a former Federal Air Marshal who was fired for revealing holes in TSA's security after the 9/11 attacks. MacLean added that TSA's assertion that the documents posted are old holds no merit. "How much in screening procedure changes in 17 months?" asked MacLean. "It's a one-dimensional process."

The TSA says it is taking the release of the sensitive information "seriously" and is conducting a full review.

"TSA has many layers of security to keep the traveling public safe and to constantly adapt to evolving threats," the agency said in a statement. "TSA is confident that screening procedures currently in place remain strong." The document also provides a glimpse of the special treatment available for governors, lieutenant governors and the mayor of Washington, D.C., as well as their spouses and family and staff.

"Emergency Preparedness" Or Martial Law?

Vigilant Shield 09: A Cover for Illegal Domestic Operations?

By Tom Burghardt
Author`s Website: Antifascist Calling...
November 23, 2008
Courtesy Of Global Research

On November 17, U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) concluded Vigilant Shield 09 (VS09), described in a press release as a training exercise focused on "homeland defense and civil support."

Launched by President Bush in 2002 in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, NORTHCOM has been mired in controversy since its creation. Among its more dubious accomplishments were illegal domestic spying operations in conjunction with the Pentagon's shadowy Counter Intelligence Field Activity unit (CIFA) that targeted antiwar activists.

Despite CIFA's shut-down and the alleged dismantling of its TALON database (now incorporated into the FBI's Guardian Threat Tracking System), SourceWatch revealed that "in accordance with intelligence oversight requirements, the DoD will maintain a record copy of the collected data." One can't help but wonder whether that "record copy" of TALON somehow migrated into a NORTHCOM database.

But the NORTHCOM-CIFA liaison wasn't the only episode of illegal military spying on Americans to come to light. In May, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Marines, including a Colonel and the co-founder of the Los Angeles County Terrorist Early Warning Center, stole top secret intelligence files from Camp Pendleton's Strategic Technical Operations Center.

Among the documents filched by the intelligence privateers were those marked "Top Secret, Special Compartmentalized Information," the highest U.S. Government classification. The files included surveillance dossiers on the Muslim community and antiwar activists in Southern California.

Before being run to ground by investigators, the spy ring regularly received and disseminated secret files and surveillance reports transmitted by Lauren Martin, a Navy reservist who worked as an outsourced intelligence analyst at NORTHCOM headquarters in Colorado Springs. Martin was responsible for the region that included Southern California.

Details on VS09 are few and far-between. However, according to U.S. Northern Command News, VS09 "included scenarios to achieve exercise objectives within the maritime, aerospace, ballistic missile defense, cyber, consequence management, and counter terrorism situations."

The training exercise ran concurrently with "other Department of Defense-sponsored and international exercises to more realistically test the synchronized response of federal, state, local and international mission partners in preparation for homeland defense, homeland security and civil support missions in the United States and abroad."

A November 5 press release described that the concurrent exercises included "U.S. Strategic Command GLOBAL LIGHTNING 09 and BULWARK DEFENDER 09; Canada Command DETERMINED DRAGON; California National Guard VIGILANT GUARD; and the State of California GOLDEN GUARDIAN."

Global Lightning 09 is a plan to use nuclear weapons in the event of a surprise attack while Bulwark Defender was described by Matthew Rothschild in The Progressive as the Pentagon's "cyberspace protection outfit."

California's Vigilant Guard and Golden Guardian were state-wide training exercises that concluded November 18 around planning for a catastrophic 7.8 magnitude earthquake along the San Andreas fault. If so, this would be an appropriate training venue for the California National Guard. Why then, fold disaster preparations into a planning scenario for the use of nuclear weapons in the event of a "surprise attack"?

Described as a "Command Post Exercise (CPX)," many of the forces involved were "notional," in other words, real units and their equipment "were not deployed from their home bases."

However, the rapidly expanding role of the U.S. military in "domestic civil-support operations" and the breadth and scope of NORTHCOM "training exercises" are troubling, to say the least.

In September, Army Times revealed that the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) was deployed October 1, under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, "the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks."

As Army Times noted, the BCT's "new mission" is the first time "an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities."

Perhaps a disturbing harbinger of things to come, "military support" of "civil authorities" arises precisely during a period of extreme systemic crisis not seen since the Great Depression and points to the rapid expansion of an "emergency preparedness complex" as a discrete operational division of the U.S. National Security State.

National Exercise Program: "Emergency Preparedness" or Martial Law?

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a 46-page report November 10, 2008 on the National Exercise Program (NEP). Entitled, "Homeland Emergency Preparedness and the National Exercise Program: Background, Policy Implications, and Issues for Congress," the document outlines, among other concerns, the domestic implications of military participation in national emergency preparedness drills such as VS09.

As CRS researchers point out, the Reagan-era Executive Order 12656 (E.O. 12656), "directs FEMA to coordinate the planning, conduct, and evaluation of national security emergency exercises." E.O. 12656 defines a national security emergency as "as any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States." (CRS-4)

Additionally, Homeland Security Presidential Directive 8 (HSPD-8) requires the Secretary of Homeland Security, "in coordination with other appropriate federal departments and agencies" to "establish a national program and a multi-year planning system to conduct homeland security preparedness-related exercises that reinforces identified training standards, provides for evaluation of readiness, and supports the national preparedness goal." CRS avers, "The program is to be carried out in collaboration with state and local governments and private sector entities."

Indeed, Washington Technology reported November 10, that the defense giant Northrop Grumman "will conduct a national preparedness drill for the Federal Emergency Management Agency next year under a two-year, $12 million contract."

While $12 million is chump change in Washington, the Project on Government Oversight's Federal Contractor Misconduct Database lists Northrop Grumman at No. 3. With violations running the gamut, from procurement fraud, false claims, installation of substandard parts, violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, cost overruns, environmental damage--from illegal dumping of toxic waste to air pollution--the company has paid the federal government and private claimants some $465.4 million in fines and levies.

But that hasn't stopped the federal government from doing a brisk business with Northrop Grumman!

The defense giant and their partners, security heavy-hitters ICF International, Battelle Memorial Institute, Alutiiq LLC, L-3 Communications, Unitech and Interface Media Group "will conduct and evaluate the 2009 Tier 1 National Level Exercise, which is the largest and most complex national disaster drill conducted by FEMA's National Exercise Division," the high-tech insider publication reported.

As CRS points out, "NLEs examine the preparation of the government and its officers and other officials to prevent, respond to, or recover from threatened or actual terrorist attacks, particularly those involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD), major disasters, and other emergencies. NLEs address strategic- and policy- level objectives intended to challenge the national preparedness of the United States." (CRS-12)

"Preparedness Guidance" materials and processes for these exercises are overseen by DHS and include the National Response Framework (NRF), the National Incident Management System (NIMS), and the National Preparedness Guidelines (NPG).

One of the first NEPs was the 1999 Top Officials (TOPOFF) simulation exercises "to assess the nation's crisis and consequence management capacity under extraordinary conditions." TOPOFF exercises enabled high-level federal officials and relevant participants to "practice different courses of action, gain and maintain situational awareness, and assemble appropriate resources." (CRS-7) Between May 2000 and October 2007, four TOPOFF exercises have been run in various locales simulating chemical, biological, pneumonic plague outbreak, as well as the detonation of an radiological dispersal device ("dirty bomb") adjacent to a power plant.

As CRS reports, many aspects of federal executive branch planning for prevention and response to "terrorist attacks" are highly classified and that classified exercises "should be a logical component of the exercise scenario and aligned with exercise objectives." What such "alignment" actually means is not specified by CRS.

As I noted in the examples cited above, VS09 and Golden Guardian, many NEPs run simultaneously, thus rendering the more dubious aspects of such "emergency planning exercises" opaque to citizen scrutiny, let alone democratic decision-making control over their breadth and scope.

For example, NLE 1-08 ran simultaneously with TOPOFF 4 as well as with DoD and Health and Human Services-based exercises. Under cover of NLE 2-08, as CRS documents, "two FEMA exercises, Eagle Horizon 08, designed to exercise the continuity of operations (COOP) capabilities of federal agencies in the National Capital Region (NCR), and Hurricane Prep 08, designed to test FEMA response to a hurricane, exercised under the same scenario. Both exercises incorporated some of the simulated intelligence materials established for three DOD conducted exercises held during NLE 2-08: Positive Response 08-2; Ardent Sentry 08; and Ultimate Caduceus 08." (CRS-14)

Ardent Sentry, Positive Response and Ultimate Caduceus were training scenarios for a terrorist-related nuclear attack as were Global Lightning and Able Warrior. What pray tell, do such exercises have to do with preparations for hurricane relief? If the federal response to Hurricane Katrina are any indication, not much. What then are such exercises designed to simulate?

CRS reports that "During the NLE 2-08 planning process, DOD and DHS held joint planning conferences. Further, DOD provided some logistical support to the DHS Eagle Horizon continuity exercise, which based its exercise control cell and some evaluation components at DOD's Joint Warfighting Center (JWFC). Both agencies anticipate future NLEs will be carried out according to timing specified in the NEP implementation plan, based on common exercise scenarios and coordinated response activities." (CRS-14)

CRS investigators state there are "two principal areas where DOD would play a significant role in the overall response: Homeland defense operations and civil support operations." The Department of Defense defines homeland defense as "The protection of United States sovereignty, territory, domestic population, and critical defense infrastructure against external threats and aggression or other threats as directed by the President." (CRS-15)

On the other hand, civil support is defined as "Department of Defense support to US civil authorities for domestic emergencies, and for designated law enforcement and other activities." While CRS claims that civil support is strictly limited to supporting civil authorities "in their response to manmade and natural disasters" or "supporting public health," the last clause, "maintaining civil order" should set alarm bells ringing.

DoD's role during such emergencies are intended to focus "principally on domestic incident management, either for terrorism or non terrorist catastrophic events." DoD would play a "significant role" in the overall response. Such definitions cover a lot of ground and are ripe with potential for abuse by unscrupulous securocrats and their corporatist partners in crime.

As Antifascist Calling has reported in numerous articles, Continuity of Operations (COOP) planning scenarios are intimately linked to top-secret Continuity of Government (COG) programs to be triggered by a "catastrophic event." Such plans include contingencies for the implementation of martial law and the suspension of the Constitution by Executive Branch fiat.

The primary DoD entity responsible for "civil support," as numerous researchers have averred is NORTHCOM and its active combat component, U.S. Army North. CRS asserts that NORTHCOM is prohibited by The Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. 1385) from executing civilian laws and a police function. But as I wrote in early October, "exercising sweeping emergency powers buried within Presidential Decision Directives (PDDs), unelected officials could suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and create an Executive Branch dictatorship that rests solely on the power of the U.S. military."

This power will transfer automatically when Barack Obama is sworn in as President and Commander-in-Chief on January 20, 2009. Indeed, it would be a profound error if activists and concerned citizens fell into the trap of assuming that the potential for grave Executive Branch abuses were the exclusive domain of the outgoing Bush administration.

While the Oval Office décor may change, unaccountable Executive Branch power will remain an enduring feature of the repressive capitalist state.

DHS and NORTHCOM: Best Friends Forever

Earlier this year, NORAD and NORTHCOM participated in training exercises across the country, also in support of "civil authorities" in the event of a catastrophic attack or "natural disaster."

Vibrant Response, another CPX, was conducted at Ft. Stewart, Georgia September 18 and included elements of the Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF ("sea-smurfs"). The CCMRF would respond in the event of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive (CBRNE) incidents.

As I reported in October, "two combat units from the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Army Division and the elite 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade participated in mock drills designed to 'coordinate with local governments and interagency organizations such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Emergency Management Agency,' according to a report on U.S. Northern Command News."

As a "subordinate command" under the control of U.S. Army North, the Joint Task Force Civil Support (JTF-CS) provides command and control for the CCMRF unit.

In May, NORAD and NORTHCOM participated in National Level Exercise 2-08 (NLE 2-08) under the overall command of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to a report by U.S. Northern Command News. NLE 2-08's main focus "was to provide realistic training" for CCMRF personnel in response "to a simulated chemical attack on the Seattle waterfront followed by a similar simulated attack in Whatcom County, Wash." Some 1,200 CCMRF personnel were deployed during the exercise.

But planning and consequence management in the event of a catastrophic terrorist attack or natural disaster isn't all that NORTHCOM's up to. Indeed, back in April, U.S. Northern Command News reported that both DHS and NORTHCOM are planning

...to refine their existing intelligence relationship, said the top DHS intelligence official during a recent visit to USNORTHCOM headquarters.

"We have a number of areas where we've already agreed that we will begin new initiatives together, where we will do joint projects together, where we will do intelligence analysis together, where we will work to understand what NORTHCOM is doing in exercises and training," said Charles Allen, the DHS undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis.

The intelligence divisions of DHS and USNORTHCOM are "extraordinarily compatible," Allen said, and the organizations have the same goals. (Sgt. 1st Class Gail Braymen, NORAD and USNORTHCOM Public Affairs, "USNORTHCOM, DHS refine relationship," U.S. Northern Command News, April 10, 2008)

As I reported last week, citing a leaked planning document published by the global whistleblowing group Wikileaks, intelligence and security agencies across the federal spectrum including the FBI, DHS, USSS, NGA and NORTHCOM conspired to squelch dissent during the Republican National Convention.

Apparently, this is what DHS Undersecretary Allen meant when he described how the intelligence arms of both organizations were "extraordinarily compatible."

Allen told U.S. Northern Command News that strengthening the relationship between DHS and NORTHCOM intelligence "will promote more efficient and effective information sharing," and that "the American public benefits because the intelligence community at the federal level is working together in new and different ways."

As if the militarization of society and the destruction of our civil liberties were something we should embrace! How's that for an Orwellian twist on the phrase "public benefit"? But as the philosopher Voltaire once quipped, "the history of the great events of this world are scarcely more than the history of crime."

And so it is as America breathlessly awaits the dawning of the new "change" regime.

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily and Pacific Free Press. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.

Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Global Research Articles by Tom Burghardt