I just read somewhere the opposite information. (Don't remember where.)
CIVILIAN INTERNMENT CAMPS UP FOR REVIEW
In a revealing admission the Director of Resource Management for the U.S. Army confirmed the validity of a memorandum relating to the establishment of a civilian inmate labor program under development by the Department of the Army. The document states, "Enclosed for your review and comment is the draft Army regulation on civilian inmate labor utilization" and the procedure to "establish civilian prison camps on installations." Cherith Chronicle, June 1997.
Civilian internment camps or prison camps, more commonly known as concentration camps, have been the subject of much rumor and speculation during the past few years in America. Several publications have devoted space to the topic and many talk radio programs have dealt with the issue.
However, Congressman Henry Gonzales (D, Texas) clarified the question of the existence of civilian detention camps. In an interview the congressman stated, "the truth is yes - you do have these stand by provisions, and the plans are here...whereby you could, in the name of stopping terrorism...evoke the military and arrest Americans and put them in detention camps."
HISTORY OF CIVILIAN INTERNMENT CAMPS
The concept of mass internment camps was implemented during the decade of the 1930's when the idea was either integrated into national security planning or put to actual use in the world's three socialistic experiments - the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and the United States under Roosevelt.
On March 9, 1933, Adolph Hitler put his Dachau detention center into operation where thousands of his own countrymen were sent. (Source: Martin Gilber,The Holocaust). Stalin exterminated 7 to 10 million in his rural collectivization program from 1931-1933 and another 10 million in the purges of 1934-1939. It was this decade that the Soviet Gulag proved its worth. On August 24, 1939, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover met with FDR to develop a detention plan for the United States. Five months after this meeting, Hitler opened the Auschwitz detention center in Poland.
On August 3, 1948, J. Edgar Hoover met with Attorney General J. Howard McGrath to form a plan whereby President Truman could suspend constitutional liberties during a national emergency. The plan was code-named "Security Portfolio" and, when activated, it would authorize the FBI to summarily arrest up to 20,000 persons and place them in national security detention camps. Prisoners would not have the right to a court hearing or habeas corpus appeal. Meanwhile, "Security Portfolio" allowed the FBI to develop a watch list of those who would be detained, as well as detailed information on their physical appearance, family, place of work, etc. (David Burnham, Above the Law).
Two years later Congress approved the Internal Security Act of 1950 which contained a provision authorizing an emergency detention plan. Hoover was unhappy with this law because it did not suspend the constitution and it guaranteed the right to a court hearing (habeas corpus). "For two years, while the FBI continued to secretly establish the detention camps and work out detailed seizure plans for thousands of individuals, Hoover kept badgering...[Attorney General McGrath for] official permission to ignore the 1950 law and carry on with the more ferocious 1948 program. On November 25, 1952, the attorney general...caved in to Hoover." ibid.
Congress repealed the Emergency Detention Act of 1950 more than twenty years later in 1971. Seemingly the threat of civilian internment in the United States was over, but not in reality. The Senate held hearings in December, 1975, revealing the ongoing internment plan which had never been terminated. The report, entitled, "Intelligence Activities, Senate Resolution 21", disclosed the covert agenda. In a series of documents, memos and testimony by government informants, the picture emerged of the designs by the federal government to monitor, infiltrate, arrest and incarcerate a potentially large segment of American society.
The Senate report also revealed the existence of the Master Search Warrant (MSW) and the Master Arrest Warrant (MAW) which are currently in force. The MAW document, authorized by the United States Attorney General, directs the head of the FBI to: "Arrest persons whom I deem dangerous to the public peace and safety. These persons are to be detained and confined until further order." The MSW also instructs the FBI Director to "search certain premises where it is believed that there may be found contraband, prohibited articles, or other materials in violation of the Proclamation of the President of the United States." It includes such items as firearms, shortwave radio receiving sets, cameras, propaganda materials, printing presses, mimeograph machines, membership and financial records of organizations or groups that have been declared subversive, or may be hereafter declared subversive by the Attorney General."
Since the Senate hearings in 1975, the steady development of highly specialized surveillance capabilities, combined with the exploding computerized information technologies, have enabled a massive data base of personal information to be developed on millions of unsuspecting American citizens. It is all in place awaiting only a presidential declaration to be enforced by both military and civilian police.
In 1982, President Ronald Reagan issued National Security Directive 58 which empowered Robert McFarlane and Oliver North to use the National Security Council to secretly retrofit FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) to manage the country during a national crisis. The 1984 "REX exercises" simulated civil unrest culminating in a national emergency with a contingency plan for the imprisonment of 400,000 people. REX 84 was so secretive that special metal security doors were installed on the FEMA building's fifth floor, and even long-term officials of the Civil Defense Office were prohibited entry. The ostensible purpose of this exercise was to handle an influx of refugees created by a war in Central America, but a more realistic scenario was the detention of American citizens.
STATE OF EMERGENCY
Under "REX" the President could declare a state of emergency, empowering the head of FEMA to take control of the internal infrastructure of the United States and suspend the constitution. The President could invoke executive orders 11000 thru 11004 which would: 1- Draft all citizens into work forces under government supervision. 2- Empower the postmaster to register all men, women and children. 3- Seize all airports and aircraft. 4- Seize all housing and establish forced relocation of citizens.
FEMA, whose black budget comes from the Department of Defense, has worked closely with the Pentagon in an effort to avoid the legal restrictions of Posse Comitatus. While FEMA may not have been directly responsible for these precedent-setting cases, the principle of federal control was seen during the Los Angeles riots in 1992 with the federalization of the National Guard and during the siege at Waco, where Army tanks equipped with flame throwers were involved in the final conflagration.
GOVERNMENT VIOLENCE IS "LEGITIMATE"?
The Deputy Attorney General of California commented at a conference that anyone who attacks the State, even verbally, becomes a revolutionary and an enemy by definition. Louis Guiffreda, who was head of FEMA, stated that "legitimate violence is integral to our form of government, for it is from this source that we can continue to purge our weaknesses."
U.S. concentration camp?
It is significant to note that the dictionary definition of terrorism - "the calculated use of violence" - corresponds precisely to the government's stated policy of "the use of legitimate violence." One might ask, who are the real terrorists? Guiffreda's remark gives a revealing insight into the thinking of those who have been charged with oversight of the welfare of the citizens in this country. If one's convictions or philosophy does not correspond with the government's agenda, that individual may find himself on the government's enemy list. This makes him a "target" to be "purged" by the use of "legitimate violence."
If one forgets the past, he will not be prepared for the future.
Written 9/8/97
Bonfire for the Constitution
On June 3, 1994, President Clinton signed Executive Order #12919 gathering together into a single document all the power and authority of a multitude of Executive Orders issued by preceding presidents from John Kennedy on. Recent examination of this Executive Order has brought to light that the consolidation of previous presidential orders deliver unprecedented authority into the hands of the Chief Executive that exceed those powers granted him under the U.S. Constitution.
Incorporated under the aegis of President Clinton's EO #12919 are powers originally claimed by President Kennedy in a series of Executive Orders signed into "law" in February of 1962 which, if invoked, would virtually suspend the greater portion of liberties guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
In Section 3 of Kennedy's original EO #10995 entitled, "ASSIGNING TELECOMMUNICATIONS MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS" there is the vague statement, "Such authority shall include the power to amend modify, or revoke frequency assignments." Innocuous as this sounds, it embodies the power of the Chief Executive, in time of "national emergency", to seize control of all radio and other telecommunications.
On the same day that President Kennedy signed EO #10995, he also gave birth to four successive Orders that Clinton included in his EO containing provisions to disable constitutional rights. Executive Order #10997 empowers the Secretary of the Interior to seize all energy production facilities--specifically, "electrical power", "petroleum", "gas", "solid fuels", and "minerals". Section 3, subsection (d) of that order, entitled "Claimancy" states:
Prepare plans to claim materials, manpower, equipment, supplies and services needed in support of assigned responsibilities and other essential functions of the Department...to insure availability of such resources in an emergency. [emphasis and supplied]
Note the word "claim" in reference to "materials, manpower, equipment, supplies and services". The legal definition, as supplied by Black's Law Dictionary is, "To demand as one's own or as one's right...means by or through which claimant obtains possession or enjoyment of a privilege or thing. Demand for money or property as of a right...." This means that the government may, upon declaration of a state of local or national emergency, seize any of the above, private or otherwise, including "manpower".
As to what constitutes a national emergency again Black's definition is quite revealing:
"A state of national crisis; a situation demanding immediate and extraordinary national or federal action. Congress has made little or no distinction between a "state of national emergency" and a "state of war." Brown v. Bernstein, D.C.Pa., 49 F.Supp. 728, 732. [emphasis supplied]
EO #10998 places all food resources under authority of the Secretary of Agriculture.
EO #10999 invests the Secretary of Commerce with control over all means of transportation, public and private.
EO #11000 provides for the establishment of manpower resources at the discretion of the Secretary of Labor, with the authority to "claim" services (labor) and involuntary relocation of workers. Collateral authority for this conscription of labor is given in Title 50 app. United States Code, Section 2153 "WAR AND NATIONAL DEFENCE" under the section addressing civilian disposition entitled, "DEFENSE PRODUCTION ACT OF 1950" in which is set forth that civilian personnel may be assigned work without regard to payment or reimbursement.
It is important to note that according to the "War and Emergency Powers Act" the United States has legally been under a state of national emergency since its enactment in 1933. It has never been repealed, thus leaving the president with instant powers to suspend the constitution. Most legal scholars and legislators who have studied the matter concur that the War and Emergency Powers Act has, in reality, already suspended the Constitution since the moment the act was signed into law by President Roosevelt. The actual suspension of those consitutional rights awaits only the impetus of a national emergency requiring it.
In 1933 a U.S. Congressman entered the following statement into the Congressional Record:
"I think of all the damnable heresies that have ever been suggested in connection with the Constitution, the doctrine of emergency is the worst. It means that when Congress declares an emergency, there is no Constitution. This means its death. It is the very doctrine that the German chancellor is invoking today in the dying hours of the parliamentary body of the German republic, namely, that because of an emergency, it should grant to the German chancellor absolute power to pass any law, even though the law contradicts the Constitution of the German republic. Chancellor Hitler is at least frank about it. We pay the Constitution lipservice, but the result is the same....the Constitution of the United States, as a restraining influence in keeping the federal government within the carefully prescribed channels of power, is moribund, if not dead."
The introduction to Senate Report 93-549, entered into the Congressional Record forty years later in 1973 states:
"A majority of the people of the United States have lived all their lives under emergency rule....For 40 years, freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency....And, in the United States, actions taken by the government in times of great crisis have from, at least, the Civil War, in important ways shaped the present phenomenon of a permanent state of national emergency."
Following the introduction the report's opening statement goes on to say:
"Since March the 9th, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency....This vast range of powers, taken together, confer enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal constitutional processes. Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize property; organize and control the means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communication; regulate the operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens."
Not overlooked by those drafting the Constitution was the possible need to address national emergencies. The document contains certain provisions indicating that its signatories conceived of the possibility that some guarantees of personal liberties may, in the national interest, require suspension.
Article 1, Section 9 states: The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion [an internal occurrence] or invasion [external] the public safety require it." This grants the citizen the freedom from imprisonment or detention without due process. The proviso "unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety require it" indicates the necessity to provide for some contingencies that may also carry with them the possibility for abuse. No document of liberty, however, could possibly proscribe all potential for misuse of those liberties without actually eliminating them in the process. It has been said that communism is nothing more than democracy with all potential for abuse legislated out.
As a result of the Executive Orders listed above, in concert with the War and Emergency Powers Act, there exists within the United States a government within a government. It is hidden, semi-covert in nature, and does not recognize the U.S. Constitution or its constraints. It functions autonomously as a form of totalitarian regime in suspended animation, awaiting its time of activation. It is a government driven by presidential Executive Orders to be executed by federal agencies run by non-elected officials.
Executive Orders amount to ready-wired buttons by which the president can suspend constitutional rights at any moment he determines that a "national emergency" exists. The great problem inherent is that no binding legal definition exists as to what constitutes a "national emergency". That definition lies entirely with the Chief Executive. When he declares a state of emergency, the aforementioned documents can be used to activate whatever federal agency is most suited to address the emergency. Those agencies include, but are not limited to, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), the FBI and the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA)(Homeland Security).
Because this nation is under a continual state of emergency due to the War and Emergency Powers Act, and the Constitution granting somewhat elastic powers of emergency in "cases of rebellion or invasion", the president can circumvent such fundamental protections as the Posse Comatatus Act which forbids the use of the military against U.S. citizens.
This slow motion decay of constitutional rights was not unforeseen by the Founding Fathers. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison once wrote, I believe there are more instances of abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations...."
The Constitution of the United States of America, once the hub of American law and freedoms, has been moved to the position of the hubcap. It has become merely an ornamental relic that serves no real function other than that of making the American people feel as if the document still matters to those who govern.
It appears that the modern electorate chooses their leaders for the same purpose that they attend a magic show. Their actual desire seems to be that the performer deceive them.
"The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their money; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?" Jer 5:31
Written 6/24/97