You'll feel better. :)
Posted on 01/24/2005 11:57:43 AM PST by watchout
Commandos Get Duty on U.S. Soil By ERIC SCHMITT
ASHINGTON, Jan. 22 - Somewhere in the shadows of the White House and the Capitol this week, a small group of super-secret commandos stood ready with state-of-the-art weaponry to swing into action to protect the presidency, a task that has never been fully revealed before.
As part of the extraordinary army of 13,000 troops, police officers and federal agents marshaled to secure the inauguration, these elite forces were poised to act under a 1997 program that was updated and enhanced after the Sept. 11 attacks, but nonetheless departs from how the military has historically been used on American soil.
These commandos, operating under a secret counterterrorism program code-named Power Geyser, were mentioned publicly for the first time this week on a Web site for a new book, "Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operation in the 9/11 World," (Steerforth Press). The book was written by William M. Arkin, a former intelligence analyst for the Army.
The precise number of these Special Operations forces in Washington this week is highly classified, but military officials say the number is very small. The special-missions units belong to the Joint Special Operations Command, a secretive command based at Fort Bragg, N.C., whose elements include the Army unit Delta Force.
In the past, the command has also provided support to domestic law enforcement agencies during high-risk events like the Olympics and political party conventions, according to the Web site of GlobalSecurity.org, a research organization in Alexandria, Va.
The role of the armed forces in the United States has been a contentious issue for more than a century. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which restricts military forces from performing domestic law enforcement duties, like policing, was enacted after the Civil War in response to the perceived misuse of federal troops who were policing in the South.
Over the years, the law has been amended to allow the military to lend equipment to federal, state and local authorities; assist federal agencies in drug interdiction; protect national parks; and execute quarantine and certain health laws. About 5,000 federal troops supported civilian agencies at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City three years ago.
Since Sept. 11, however, military and law enforcement agencies have worked much more closely not only to help detect and defeat any possible attack, including from unconventional weapons, but also to assure the continuity of the federal government in case of cataclysmic disaster.
The commandos here this week were the same type of Special Operations forces who are hunting top insurgents in Iraq and Osama bin Laden in the mountainous wilds of Afghanistan and Pakistan. But under the top-secret military plan, they are also conducting counterterrorism missions in support of civilian agencies in the United States.
"They bring unique military and technical capabilities that often are centered around potential W.M.D. events," said a senior military official who has been briefed on the units' operations.
A civil liberties advocate who was told about the program by a reporter said that he had no objections to the program as described to him because its scope appeared to be limited to supporting the counterterrorism efforts of civilian authorities.
Mr. Arkin, in the online supplement to his book (codenames.org/documents.html), says the contingency plan, called JCS Conplan 0300-97, calls for "special-mission units in extra-legal missions to combat terrorism in the United States" based on top-secret orders that are managed by the military's Joint Staff and coordinated with the military's Special Operations Command and Northern Command, which is the lead military headquarters for domestic defense.
Mr. Arkin provided The New York Times with briefing slides prepared by the Northern Command, detailing the plan and outlining the military's preparations for the inauguration.
Three senior Defense Department and Bush administration officials confirmed the existence of the plan and mission, but disputed Mr. Arkin's characterization of the mission as "extra-legal."
One of the officials said the units operated in the United States under "special authority" from either the president or the secretary of defense.
Civilian and uniformed military lawyers said provisions in several federal statutes, including the Fiscal Year 2000 Defense Department Authorization Act, Public Law 106-65, permits the secretary of defense to authorize military forces to support civilian agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in the event of a national emergency, especially any involving nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
In 1998, the Pentagon's top policy official, Walter B. Slocombe, acknowledged that the military had covert-action teams.
"We have designated special-mission units that are specifically manned, equipped and trained to deal with a wide variety of transnational threats," Mr. Slocombe told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "These units, assigned to or under the operational control of the U.S. Special Operations Command, are focused primarily on those special operations and supporting functions that combat terrorism and actively counter terrorist use of W.M.D. These units are on alert every day of the year and have worked extensively with their interagency counterparts."
Spokesmen for the Northern Command in Colorado Springs and the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., the parent organization of the Joint Special Operations Command, declined to comment on the plan, the units involved and the mission.
"At any given time, there are a number of classified programs across the government that, for national security reasons, it would be inappropriate to discuss," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. "It would be irresponsible for me to comment on any classified program that may or may not exist."
But the Northern Command document that mentions Power Geyser is marked "unclassified." The document states that the purpose of the Department of Defense's contingency planning for the inauguration is to provide "unity of D.O.D. effort to contribute to a safe and secure environment for the 2005 inauguration."
The Northern Command missions include deterring an attack or mitigating its consequences, and coordinating with the Special Operations Command.
In a telephone interview from his home in Vermont, Mr. Arkin said the military's reaction to the disclosure of the counterterrorism plan and its operating units reflected "the silliness of calling something that's obvious, classified."
"I'm not revealing what they're doing or the methods of their contingency planning," he said. "I don't compromise any sensitive intelligence operations by revealing sources and methods. I don't reveal ongoing operations in specific locales."
Mr. Arkin's book is a glossary of more than 3,000 code names of past and present operations, programs and weapons systems, with brief descriptions of each. Most involved secret activities, and details of many of the programs could not be immediately confirmed.
The book also describes American military operations and assistance programs in scores of countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The murky world of "special access programs" and other secret military and intelligence activities is covered in the book, too. Some code names describe highly classified research programs, like Thirsty Saber, a program that in the 1990's tried to develop a sensor to replace human reasoning. Others describe military installations in foreign countries, like Poker Bluff I, an electronic-eavesdropping collection station in Honduras in the 1980's.
Many involve activities related to the survival of the president and constitutional government. The book, for instance, describes Site R, one of the undisclosed locations used by Vice President Dick Cheney since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Site R is a granite mountain shelter just north of Sabillasville, Md., near the Pennsylvania border. It was built in the early 1950's to withstand a Soviet nuclear attack.
The book also describes a program called Treetop, the presidential emergency successor support plan, which provides survivors of a nuclear strike or other attack with war plans, regulations and procedures to establish teams of military and civilian advisers to presidential successors.
A White House spokesman declined to comment on the continuity of government activities cited in the book.
People who advocate that the government declassify more of the nation's official documents said the book would fuel the debate over the balance between the public's right to know and the need to keep more military and intelligence matters secret in the campaign against terror.
"This is part of an ongoing tug of war to define the boundaries of public information," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy. "There has been a steady withdrawal of information from the public domain in the present administration, and a reluctance to disclose even the most mundane of facts."
Global Security | January 24, 2005
Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is officially described as a "joint headquarters designed to study special operations requirements and techniques; ensure interoperability and equipment standardization; plan and conduct joint special operations exercises and training; and develop joint special operations tactics" but this description is economical with the truth. Joint Special Operations Command serves as a standing Joint Special Operations Task Force responsible for unique special missions: execution, planning, training, tactics, and equipment development.
Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was established in 1980 and is located at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina and at nearby Fort Bragg, NC. JSOC is a joint headquarters designed to study special operations requirements and techniques; ensure interoperability and equipment standardization; plan and conduct joint special operations exercises and training; and develop joint special operations tactics.
Although JSOC's stated purpose is to provide a unified command structure for conducting joint special operations and exercises, it is widely reported that JSOC is actually the command responsible for conducting US counter-terrorism (CT) operations. JSOC is reported to command the US military's Special Missions Units (SMUs). These SMUs are tasked with conducting CT operations, strike operations, reconnaissance in denied areas, and special intelligence missions.
Much of the hunting for senior Taliban and al Qaeda members in Afghanistan is being conducted by a unit called Task Force 11, composed mostly of Delta Force soldiers and SEALs.
In 1998 the US Department of Defense’s top policy official acknowledged that the military has covert action teams to combat terrorism and to counter potential terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). "We have designated Special Mission Units [SMUs] that are specifically manned, equipped and trained to deal with a wide variety of transnational threats," said Walter Slocombe, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.
JSOC units have reportedly been involved in a number of covert military operations over the last two decades. Some of these operations include providing assistance to Italian authorities during their search for kidnapped US Army Gen. James Dozier, participating in Operation Urgent Fury; the US invasion of Grenada, planning a rescue attempt of US hostages being held in Lebanon, rescuing hostages being held aboard the cruise liner Achille Lauro, participating in Operation Just Cause; the US intervention in Panama, directing US Scud hunting efforts during Operation Desert Storm, conducting operations in support of UN mandates in Somalia, and searching for suspected war criminals in the former Republic of Yugoslavia.
JSOC units regularly conduct training with similar units from around the world, and provide training to nations that request US support. JSOC has also provide support to domestic law enforcement agencies during high profile, or high risk events such as the Olympics, the World Cup, political party conventions; and Presidential inaugurations.
The full text of PDD-25 is reported to exempt the Joint Special Operations Command from the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 18USC Sec.1385, PL86-70, Sec. 17[d]. which makes it illegal for military and law enforcement to exercise jointly.
In 2002 a major disagreement delaying creation of the new Department of Homeland Security was over giving the President the flexibility to make national security related jobs non-union. In the early 1990s President George H.W. Bush made such a determination for workers at the Defense Mapping Agency under the operational control of the Joint Special Operations Command.
The 1st Special Forces Detachment-Delta [SFOD-D] and Hostage Rescue Team [HRT] of FBI train together at the $80 million upgraded Range 19 in Ft. Bragg, NC. HRT also maintains an office at JSOC HQ at Pope AFB adjacent to Ft. Bragg. Both SFOD-D and HRT train together at Quantico, VA where they have exclusive use of a new airstrip with enlarged C-141 capability. 160 SOAR out of Ft. Campbell, KY flies SFOD-D/HRT to their city urban assault assignments.
The Casualty Care System (CCS), developed in 2000 under a CBIAC Technical Area Task (TAT), protects both patients and health care personnel from CB contamination. The biological protective material in the CCS is laminated with the biocidal resin, Triosyn®, while the charged melt-blown filter traps aerosolized biological particulates. The chemical protection of the CCS passed the Aerosol Vapor Liquid Assessment Group (AVLAG) liquid/vapor permeation test method in Test Operating Procedure (TOP) 8-2-501. Blowers provide filtered air both to the CCS and to the patient's mask. The CCS contains glove ports, sterile interfaces for fluids and oxygen, and an equipment pass-through, and is compatible with fielded litter systems. The Army and the Joint Special Operations Command guided the CCS development effort.
The DARPA Active Templates program, working in close collaboration with the Joint Special Operations Command, developed the software tools-of-choice for special operations command and control. These tools allow military planners to sketch out plans against a time-line or with a map or image in the background, merge plans from other teams that are connected to the network, de-conflict and coordinate changes as plans solidify, and then use these same tools to track the progress of the battle during mission execution. Time-and-motion studies show that these tools speed planning by a factor of four, buying time for rehearsal and critical decision-making. These prototype tools were advocated for use following several successful special operations exercises in FY 2001. In October 2001, they were deployed and have been used continually to support combat operations in Operation Enduring Freedom.
The Marine Corps is exploring new ways to organize forces and maximize their usefulness to joint force commanders. The expansion of the Marine CorpsÕ relationship with the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) highlights a commitment to this process, and to transformation. To that end, in 2003 the Commandant and the Commander of the US Special Operations Command reestablished the USSOCOM-Marine Corps Board. The board is a forum for the exchange of ideas between the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and deploying Marine Expeditionary Unit staffs, to establish and continue a dialogue between Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOC) and deploying MEU staffs, and to coordinate USSOCOM and USMC warfighting developments.
An interesting illustration of JSOC concept development activities was provided by a letter dated February 2, 2004, in which Ltc. Douglas P. Weitzel petitioned the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on behalf of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for an exemption from §§ 105.17, and 105.19(a) and (b), Title 14, Code of Federal Regulations (14 CFR). The proposed exemption, if granted, would permit the JSOC forces to conduct night parachute operations using parachutes with no illumination, through clouds, outside of the special use airspace, at and below 1,500 feet above ground level (AGL). These operations would be conducted in Class B, C, D, or E airspace at airports closed to nonparticipating air traffic.
The petitioner stated that US Military forces are required to train and exercise the capability to seize airfields in support of national objectives. A combination of military, joint-use and civilian airfields are used in this training. This training includes parachute and equipment drops which may occur in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) to meet training objectives. Additionally, the training includes drops, which must occur at night in ‘blacked out’ conditions to enhance realism and to meet training requirements. Placing lights on individual jumpers does not enable required training for night vision goggle operations. The petitioner stated that currently Military forces are exempted from many parts of § 105, if the training is accomplished in a restricted area or in uncontrolled airspace. Few potential training airfields are covered by the military forces exemption. Therefore, an exemption would allow JSOC forces to train for mission essential tasks critical to maintaining national defense.
JSOC would provide advance notice to surrounding airports of its plan to conduct the operations and coordinate the planned operations with other sister agencies on a need to know basis. Also, the aircraft would be operated with lights-on throughout the operation. JSOC does not propose to operate the aircraft under lights-out conditions during the flight and only requests that the parachutists be allowed to jump without illumination. As such, the aircraft would be highly visible to any aircraft operating in the vicinity.
The proposed concept of allowing unlighted parachute operations to be conducted through cloud cover with reported ceilings as low as 300 feet AGL is unique. The FAA believes that the JSOC must operate in hazardous conditions during combat and must therefore train under simulated combat conditions to be fully prepared for the assigned mission. The likelihood that a non-participating aircraft or a person would be near the drop zones or in the affected airspace, given the level of available and proposed security, is virtually nonexistent. The FAA therefore believes that no hazard exists to anyone, other than the participants in the training exercise who are under the direct control of the military.
PoliceState
CONGRESS SNEAKS NEW DOMESTIC-TERRORISM BILL THUR
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a397fa1e06ab0.htm
Paranoid bump. :~)
This isn't the end of Posse Comitatus, but they're starting to chip away at it. They are also developing big brother type systems instead of finding pragmatic solutions to security.
You must be new here. This isn't a step towards a police state, it's a necessary defensive measure in wartime. In previous wars we did a lot more than that and we still didn't turn into a police state.
The engines of the police state - the IRS and DEA/BATF - are nothing new, and if you care about liberty then you should redirect your ire where it belongs.
Ooo-rah! Special ops rock!
Certainly makes it more plausible there was Delta Force at Waco.
the FBI "Carnivore" system was just scrapped.
You'll feel better. :)
How about a little special ops on the border to protect citizens. If its good enough for Bush.......
Wouldn't get any objection from me.
The Infamous handling of the Bonus Army of 1932
"Many of the Marchers left Washington after Congress adjourned, but there were still over 10,000 angry, restless veterans in the streets. On July 28, 1932, two veterans were shot and killed by panicked policemen in a riot at the bottom of Capitol Hill. This provided the final stimulus. Hoover told Ralph Furley, the Secretary of War, to tell General Douglas Macarthur, then the Army Chief of Staff, that he wished the Bonus Army Marchers evicted from Washington. Troops from nearby Forts Myer and Washington were ordered in to remove the Bonus Army Marchers from the streets by force.
One battalion from the 12th Infantry Regiment and two squadrons of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment (under the command of Major George S. Patton, who had taken over as second in command of the Regiment less than three weeks earlier) concentrated at the Ellipse just west of the White House. At 4:00 p.m. the infantrymen donned gas masks and fixed bayonets, the cavalry drew sabres, and the whole force (followed by several light tanks) moved down Pennsylvania Avenue to clear it of people.
Against the advice of his assistant, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, Macarthur had taken personal command of the operation. President Hoover had ordered Macarthur to clear Pennsylvania Avenue only, but Macarthur immediately began to clear all of downtown Washington, herding the Marchers out and torching their huts and tents. Tear gas was used liberally and many bricks were thrown, but no shots were fired during the entire operation. By 8:00 p.m. the downtown area had been cleared and the bridge across the Anacostia River, leading to the Hooverville where most of the Marchers lived, was blocked by several tanks.
That evening Hoover sent duplicate orders via two officers to Macarthur forbidding him to cross the Anacostia to clear the Marchers' camp, but Macarthur flatly ignored the President's orders, saying that he was 'too busy' and could not be bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders.' Macarthur crossed the Anacostia at 11:00 p.m., routed the marchers along with 600 of their wives and children out of the camp, and burned it to the ground.
"....militia units and veterans of the Army of the Potomac, who were dispatched by General Meade after Gettysburg, arrived to combine efforts with city police to restore order. Tuesday consisted of a see-saw battle between the mob and troops with just as much damage done as the day before. By Wednesday the mob still controlled scattered portions of the city. Finally, as members of the 7th New York Infantry arrived early Thursday morning to increase the troop presence to nearly 4,000, the riot subsided.
"The four days of violence resulted in the death of 119 people and the injury of 306 more. The damage to property was roughly $1.5 million. "As calm was restored, New York resembled an occupied city. When the draft resumed a month later, 43 regiments were stationed in the vicinity. The drawing was completed without further disturbance"
If they were protecting the NYSlimes building, they'd be all for it.
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