When the New York Times first disclosed President Bush’s warrantless wiretap program, Bush addressed the nation, assuring the populace that the program was reviewed every 45 days as part of a threat assessment to government continuity.
That last bit — government continuity — flew beneath the radar for quite some time with good reason. The administration’s continuity of government (COG) programs were established under a presidential directive. Note that the text of the directive, PDD-NSC-67, has never been released; only a White House media release. Congress — and the public — never saw it; let alone voted on it. What’s more, the sections surrounding security, referred to as Annexes in the directive, are classified.
According to Christopher Ketcham, writing for Radar, continuity of government programs reside “in a nebulous legal realm, encompassing national emergency plans that would trigger the takeover of the country by extra-constitutional forces — and effectively suspend the republic. In short, it’s a road map for martial law.”
In March 2004 then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and his top aide, James Comey, were trying to decide if an unspecified Bush domestic surveillance program was legal. A short time later Ashcroft was hospitalized and Comey decided not to certify the legality of the program. In response, Bush sent Chief of Staff Andrew Card and then-White House lawyer Alberto Gonzales to talk Ashcroft into certifying the program. Ashcroft refused, and the next day, “the classified domestic spying program that Comey found so disturbing went forward at the demand of the White House,” Ketcham writes. “Without a signature from the Department of Justice attesting as to its legality,” Comey testified before the Senate judiciary committee.
But just what was it that so upset Comey? Ketcham reports that a hint came from the New York Times. The program involved computer searches of databases. But why that would cause such concern was left unanswered. Until now. Ketcham reports that “a number of former government employees and intelligence sources with independent knowledge of domestic surveillance operations,” none of which are identified, claim the program was related to “a database of Americans who might be considered potential threats in the event of a national emergency.” A senior unnamed source told Ketcham, “There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.”
Another source told Ketcham that eight million US citizens are listed as suspects in the database, known as “Main Core.”
If the US government is keeping a database of its citizens who might, possibly, pose a threat during a national emergency, the second logical question — the first being, simply, why and under what authority — is what constitutes a national emergency. I guess that’s the third logical question. US law is vague, probably intentionally so, on what, exactly constitutes a national emergency. Ketcham writes that 30 years of executive orders define it as a “natural disaster, military attack, [or] technological or other emergency.” The Defense Department, on the other hand, adds “riots, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions or assemblages, [and] disorder prejudicial to public law and order” to the laundry list. Predictable, if disturbing.
But what happens in the event of a national emergency is keep-you-up-all-night-time-to-move-to-Norway horrifying. Ketcham writes that a parallel government takes over with power in the hands of “secretly preselected officials.” As far back as the 1980s, such officials included Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. With friends like these… Oh, but it gets worse. The executive branch holds absolute power, with the legislative and judiciary branches serving as mere advisors. Faster than you can leave, the US becomes a police state.
Ketcham points out that ruling authority passes to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, the same FEMA who couldn’t manage to deliver water to hurricane victims. The underlying reason being that FEMA is designed to ensure survival of the federal government, not the citizenry. And then, it gets really frightening. Ketcham:
“Under law, during a national emergency, FEMA and its parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security, would be empowered to seize private and public property, all forms of transport, and all food supplies. The agency could dispatch military commanders to run state and local governments, and it could order the arrest of citizens without a warrant, holding them without trial for as long as the acting government deems necessary.”
All of this, remember, is possible because of executive branch secrecy and the lack of legislative or judicial oversight. Bruce Fein, Ronald Reagan’s associate deputy attorney general, tells Ketcham that it’s incumbent upon Congress to explicitly prohibit these activities: “when there are no criminal prosecutions and [there is] no notice to persons on the president’s ‘enemies list.’ That means if Congress remains invertebrate, the law will be whatever the president says it is — even in secret. He will be the judge on his own powers and invariably rule in his own favor.” The time for Congress to act was, of course, three decades ago. Now — right now — will have to do.
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Merely a COG in Main Core was originally published by ARTS & FARCES internet on Friday, 23 May 2008 at 1:53 AM CDT. Copyright © ARTS & FARCES LLC. All rights reserved. | ISSN: 1535-8119 | OCLC: 48219498 | Digital fingerprint: 974a89ee1284e6e92dd256bbfbef3751 (64.237.45.114)