The Oklahoma City Bombing And The Politics Of Terror Part 34

Further evidence of the concern that the ruling elite have for this popular and growing phenomenon lie in the slanderous comments of President Clinton, the huge wave of media propaganda, and the increase in undercover sting operations aimed at destroying this largely popular movement.

While the so-called Justice Department was busy covering up evidence of the bombing, Clinton ardently sought to smear those on the far-Right - the "purveyors of hatred and division, the promoters of paranoia," as he put it. "They do practice and they do preach violence against those who are of a different color, a different background, or who wors.h.i.+p a different G.o.d. They do feed on fear and uncertainty. They do promote paranoia...."

Challenging the American people to follow him in a campaign of divide and conquer, Clinton charged: "These people attack our government and the citizens who work for it who actually guarantee the freedoms they abuse.... They can certainly snuff out innocent lives and sow fear in our hearts. They are indifferent to the slaughter of children. They threaten our freedoms and our way of life, and we must stop them."[1211]

Echoing and amplifying Clinton's defamations were the mainstream media, which, all but ignoring the relevant evidence, launched unceasing, vitriolic attacks against the Patriot/Militia community. Leading the charge were the ADL and the SPLC, whose connections to the Mossad, U.S. law-enforcement, and infiltration of the Patriot/Militia community have been well doc.u.mented. The ADL's ties to the FBI, in fact, had been forged long ago.[1212]*

At the same time, all legitimate expressions and concerns are ignored. Militia members are portrayed as mostly gun-crazed racists with overly conspiratorial views. As Relevance magazine notes: If anyone dares to make a suggestion that serious crimes by high-ranking federal officials or an agency of government have been committed, that suggestion instantly becomes, almost by definition, a conspiracy theory, which is itself (almost by definition) beyond the pale of responsible discussion.[1213]

Any attempts by the Left and Right to join together are explained away by establishment intellectuals as a sort of strange symbiotic aberration. In a June 19, 1995 New Yorker article ent.i.tled "The Road to Paranoia," author Michael Kelly describes "views that have long been shared by both the far Right and the far Left, and that in recent years have come together, in a weird meeting of the minds, to become one, and to permeate the mainstream of American politics and popular culture. You could call it fusion paranoia."[1214]

Yet in spite of the continual barrage of government and media-orchestrated propaganda, the movement has grown. This is because the actions of the Plutocracy and its intelligence/law-enforcement minions have become so bold, so brazen, so outrageous in recent years that it is hard for the average person not to take notice. Increasing political scandals, one following on the heals of the other, catastrophic financial debacles, and the murderous actions of the Federal Government in places such as Waco and Ruby Ridge, have pushed the average American out of the sonombulic comfort of their easy chair.

Now the average citizen watches the FBI march into Waco with tanks and burn women and children, while President Clinton and the ma.s.s-media dismiss them as "just a bunch of whackos." At the same time he turns around and watches his neighbor's door kicked in by goon squads to seize piddling amounts of contraband, while his home and a.s.sets are seized without ever being charged with a crime, then given to law-enforcement agencies who divide up the bounty amongst themselves.

Compelled to take a closer look at the Patriot/Militia movement, he begins to understand that the Federal Reserve is a sham. He realizes that the politics of the nation were corporatized long ago, that his vote has no meaning.

He begins to understand that the country is actually controlled by corporate concerns who use the military and intelligence apparatus to do its bidding.

He learns how the CIA has illegally intervened and destroyed the sovereignty of dozens of nations around the world, and a.s.sisted in the murder of countless millions.

He watches with alarm as new laws are being added every day to restrict his Const.i.tutional rights.

While his pay check is no longer enough to support his family, he wonders what happened to the Savings and Loans, and to those wealthy few who were never prosecuted.

While he sees his job being sent overseas to take advantage of some poor peasant who slaves for pennies a day, his own country is slowly being sold off piecemeal.

Unlike the ma.s.s of dumbed-down, TVed-out, pa.s.sive citizens, he finally decides to join a group of people who are willing to do something about it.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Patriot/Militia Movement is more than just a fringe element of Right-wing conspiracy nuts. While it still contains individuals who are somewhat myopic concerning social welfare issues and environmental concerns, younger people are coming into the movement every day.

Increasingly, this group represents a broad spectrum of Americans concerned about governmental corruption and the loss of their Const.i.tutional rights. Far from being impotent, as Louis Freeh a.s.serts, the Patriot/Militia Movement represents a threat to an establishment seeking to maintain corrupt control over its citizenry at all costs.[1215]

While it cannot be said for certain that the Alfred P. Murrah Building was destroyed as part of a preconceived plan to create the illusion of a domestic terrorist threat within America - as a foundation for destroying political dissent - it is clear that the investigation was politically crafted for just that purpose.

In March of 1994, there began an extensive media campaign to portray the militias as Right-wing terrorists. Numerous sensationalistic stories appeared in the media, largely orchestrated by the ADL, Political Research a.s.sociates (PRA), and the SPLC.

Then in March of 1995, Congressman Steve Stockman (R-TX) learned that a nation-wide, early-morning paramilitary raid against militia groups was planned for March 25. It seemed that a couple of concerned ATF agents had informed the National Rifle a.s.sociation (NRA) about the plan, code-named Operation ROLLING THUNDER. Stockman immediately fired off a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno: It has come to my attention through a number of reliable sources that an impending raid, by several Federal agencies, against the "citizen's militias" groups, is scheduled for March 25 or 26 at 4:00 a.m. A paramilitary style attack against Americans who pose no risk to others, even if violations of criminal law might be imputed to them, would run the risk of an irreparable breach between the Federal Government and the public, especially if it turned out to be an ill considered, poorly planned, but b.l.o.o.d.y fiasco like Waco....[1216]

Stockman's letter went unanswered, and two Senators who confronted the a.s.sistant Secretary of Defense were thrown out of his office.

What is interesting to note, however, is that the raid was scheduled just one month prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, that launched the largest anti-militia media campaign ever witnessed.[1217]

Yet the tension surrounding the Militia Movement wasn't the only pressure beginning to boil the political pot. Even more interesting events were to occur just prior to the bombing.

On Monday, April 17, a Special Federal Grand Jury in Little Rock, AK handed down a sealed indictment charging Hillary Clinton with bank fraud - misappropriating or embezzling some $47 million dollars from a federally insured S&L, and benefiting from secret offsh.o.r.e accounts payable to Vincent Foster, Jr., her former law partner, as purported payment for "handling" Jonathan Pollard.[1218]

That same evening, April 17, a military C-21 Lear Jet carrying several high-ranking military officials, including a supervisor to the NSA, crashed near Alexander City, Alabama. The disaster, which occured on a clear day, appeared to be more than a simple accident. The highly experienced crew reported "fuel management" problems, a cla.s.sic sabatogue technique. Witnesses Miranda Wyckoff and Jimmy Keel claim they heard multiple explosions while the plane was airborne.[1219]

One story has the pa.s.sengers as part of a military coup, to arrest, under the military code, their Commander-in-Chief, William Jefferson Clinton, for various acts of treason, including the cover-up of Foster's murder. Another story has an American POW from Laos...o...b..ard. Like Major Charles McKee, they planned to bring him to the attention of the public.

The plane crashed not far from a secret Delta Force base in Alabama. It has been rumored that elements of the 20th Special Operations Group (SOG) guarded Mena airport during the Iran-Contra drug-running. A Special Federal Grand Jury in Alabama was blocked from investigating the crash.[1220]*

The Mena drug-running, intimately connected with the activities of the Iran-Contra Octopus, was also on the Congressional investigative agenda, as were the activities of the ATF and FBI at Waco. The investigations were scheduled to start in May.

Yet on April 19, two days after the crash, the Oklahoma City Federal Building was bombed. The bombing conveniently s.h.i.+fted the attention from Clinton's activities at Whitewater, the ATF and FBI's murderous actions at Waco, and the Octopus' drug-running at Mena... onto Oklahoma City, and "the new enemy in our midst."

Were these occurrances coincidences? And was it a coincidence that two weeks after the bombing, a group of anonymous, black-hooded, machinegun-toting federal agents began loading files removed from the Murrah Building onto two unmarked trucks?

What were in the files that a over dozen heavily-armed agents were so anxious to hide? Given the timing of the aforementioned events, it is likely the files were either records incriminating the Octopus for its drug-running at Mena, or records incriminating the ATF for their actions at Waco.

It may be more than a coincidence that the ATF agents who raided Waco... wore black uniforms with no identifying badges.[1221]

Interestingly, on the May 14, 1995 edition of "Face the Nation," White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta denounced those chairing the Waco hearings, claiming that they "wanted to take attention away from the tragedy of Oklahoma City."

Panetta also called them "despicable." Curiously, Republican legislators complained bitterly about the Executive Branch's tardy and disorganized production of doc.u.ments. For instance, Representatives could not find in their 48,000 doc.u.ments a copy of any April 19 Waco operation plan.[1222] [1223]*

It has also been suggested that the files removed were records implicating George Bush and company for their role in selling Iraq biological weapons that have infected large numbers of American troops and their families. Peter Kawaja, who served as Louis Champon's chief of security at his Product Ingredient Technologies in Boca Raton, FL - which was secretly being used by his business partner Ishan Barbouti, an Iraqi arms dealer, to produce Cyanide s.h.i.+pped to Iraq - claims that doc.u.ments implicating Bush, Secretary of State James Baker, and others involved in the "Iraqgate" scandal were moved to the Alfred P. Murrah Building.[1224]

Whatever the case, someone was obviously very uptight about some files in the Federal Building - uptight enough to send a team of hooded, heavily-armed agents to wisk them away.

Several days after the bombing, President Clinton sent his much fabled Anti-Terrorism Bill to Congress. The legislation, originally introduced after the World Trade Center bombing, had been languis.h.i.+ng on the Congressional shelf. On June 7, the Senate pa.s.sed the sweeping measure by a vote of 91 to 8.[1225]

Concurrent with the new legislation was a ma.s.sive smear campaign against the militias, trumpeted by President Clinton. As the Sunday Telegraph's Was.h.i.+ngton correspondent, Ambrose Evans Pritchard, noted: The momentum of Republican "revolution" drained away overnight, as people drew back from the anti-government rhetoric of the Right, unleas.h.i.+ng the startling decline in its fortunes. President Clinton told reporters that he owed his political comeback to that bomb. "It broke the spell," he said.[1226]

13.

The Politics of Terror "Power concedes nothing without a demand... it never did, and it never will. Find out just what the people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them...."

- Frederick Dougla.s.s, August 4, 1857

[Yet the FBI wasn't [and isn't] the only agency practicing counter-insurgency techniques to discredit and eliminate its political opponents.] Ten years after Report from Iron Mountain was published, Theodore Shackley published The Third Option: An Expert's Provocative Report on an American View of Counterinsurgency Operations.

Shackley was one of the original proponents of "low intensity conflict," which manifested itself as the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, and as death squads in South and Central America. Shackley euphemistically describes this concept as "the third option."

Senior intelligence officers like myself, who had experience in paramilitary operations, have always insisted that the United States should also consider the third option: the use of guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency techniques and covert action to achieve policy goals.... Political warfare is very often the st.i.tch in time that eliminates bloodier and more costly alternatives. [1227]

Gene Wheaton calls Shackley's Third Option the "operational manual" for the covert intelligence "lunatic fringe." This same lunatic intelligence crowd, states Wheaton, "as far back as the early 1980s, wanted to create a domestic terrorist threat in America so the people would become so frightened that they would give up some civil liberties and Const.i.tutional rights, and give the CIA and Pentagon covert operators major domestic counter-terrorism powers."

As Wheaton writes: The Third Option is not to have peace in the world, and not to have a full-scale world war. Instead, they wanted to cause worldwide instability, chaos and civil unrest in order to manipulate and control people and governments, including the United States; thus the creation of the domestic terrorist threat.[1228]

Notice that Wheaton calls this the creation of the domestic terrorist threat. Wheaton states what has been known for centuries by the so-called "enlightened ones" - the Illuminati, the Masons, the Rhodes Round Table, and their successors: the CFR, the Bilderbergers, and the Trilateral Commission - that out of chaos will come order (Ordo Ab Chao. )[1229]

Otherwise known as the "Hegelian Principle," this is the technique by which a normally repugnant idea (in this case a totalitarian police-state) is offered as the only viable solution to a intractable problem (in this case domestic terrorism), deliberately engineered by the state itself. As New American editor William Jasper notes: ...history is replete with examples of ruthless and corrupt politicians who have shamelessly exploited and manipulated tragic events and the criminal acts of a few to advance their own l.u.s.t for power. In cases too numerous to mention, tyrants and aspiring despots have gone even further, engaging agents provocateurs to carry out a.s.sa.s.sinations, foment riots and rebellion, precipitate financial panics, attempt palace coups, feign foreign invasion, initiate acts of terrorism, and perform other infamous acts - all for the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng a ma.s.s psychology of fear, a sense of "crisis," of imminent danger requiring the government to suspend normal liberties and seize vast new powers to deal with the "emergency."

Hitler came to power in precisely this manner, by burning down the German Parliament, the Reichstag, then blaming it on his enemies - in this case, the Communists. He then pa.s.sed the Enabling Act (a form of anti-terrorism bill) for the "protection of the people and the state."

History is now repeating itself. As Adam Parfrey writes in Cult Rapture: By definition, a terrorist must take credit for his violence, or else there is no compelling reason to commit a crime. The specific purpose of terrorism is gaining leverage on a specific political objective through the ability of threatening future terrorist acts. No one has claimed credit for the Oklahoma City bombing. Militia groups produced particularly vehement public statements condemning the crime.

"If the bombing was not terrorism," asks Portland Free Press editor Ace Hayes, "then what was it? It was pseudo-terrorism, perpetrated by compartmentalized covert operators for the purposes of state police power."[1230]

The Portland Free Press editor has studied the secret state for decades and can say that the OKC crime has all the characteristics of state-planned and-executed propaganda. It is not different from the bogus Viet Cong units that were sent out to rape and murder Vietnamese to discredit the National Liberation Front. It is not different from the bogus "finds" of Commie weapons in El Salvador. It is not different from the bogus Symbionese Liberation Army created by the CIA/FBI to discredit the real revolutionaries.

Probably the most well-known case was the Reichstag fire, which led to the rise of n.a.z.i Germany through the implementation of sweeping legislative powers. On February 27, 1933, a fire tore through the German parliament building, the Reichstag. The n.a.z.is immediately accused a Dutch Communist named Marinus van der Lubbe of the crime, and subsequently executed him.

The parallels between the Reichstag fire and the Oklahoma City bombing are eerily similar, both in the likeness of the crime, and in their political ramifications. As author William s.h.i.+rer writes in his epic, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: The idea for the fire almost certainly originated with Goebbels and Goering. Hans Gisevius, an official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior at the time, testified at Nuremberg that "it was Goebbels who first thought of setting the Reichstag on fire," and Rudolf Diels, the Gestapo chief, added in an affidavit that "Goering knew exactly how the fire was to be started" and had ordered him "to prepare, prior to the fire, a list of people who were to be arrested immediately after it." General Franz Haider, Chief of the German General Staff during the early part of World War II, recalled at Nuremberg how on one occasion Goering had boasted of his deed: "At a luncheon on the birthday of the Fuehrer in 1942 the conversation turned to the topic of the Reichstag building and its artistic value. I heard with my own ears when Goering interrupted the conversation and shouted: 'The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!' With that he slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand."

[Marinus] Van der Lubbe, it seems clear, was a dupe of the n.a.z.is. He was encouraged to try to set the Reichstag on fire. But the main job was to be done - without his knowledge, of course - by the storm troopers. Indeed, it was established at the subsequent trial at Leipzig that the Dutch half-wit did not possess the means to set so vast a building on fire so quickly. Two and a half minutes after he entered, the great central hall was fiercely burning. He had only his s.h.i.+rt for tinder.

The main fires, according to the testimony of experts at the trial, had been set with considerable quant.i.ties of chemicals and gasoline. It was obvious that one man could not have carried them into the building, nor would it have been possible for him to start so many fires in so many scattered places in so short a time. Van der Lubbe was arrested on the spot and Goering, as he afterward told the court, wanted to hang him at once.[1231]

s.h.i.+rer may just as well have been describing the bombing in Oklahoma City. Timothy McVeigh appears as a modern-day Van der Lubbe - a dupe who could have not possibly destroyed the Murrah Building with his crude homemade fertilizer bomb. Yet he was set up in exactly the same manner as the Dutch Communist, arrested instantly, and proclaimed the ultimate societal enemy - representing a group that threatened the continuity of the state - just as Clinton did with the militias in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Although Goering didn't admit at Nuremberg that his agents set the fire, the n.a.z.is seized on the event, claiming Lubbe's act was the precursor of a Communist invasion. Chancellor Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to sign an emergency decree - Article 48 of the Weimar Const.i.tution, "for the Protection of the People and the State" - which immediately abrogated most of the German peoples' const.i.tutional protections.

A supplemental decree created the SA (Storm Troops) and SS (Special Security) federal police agencies. These decrees (similar to executive orders of the President of the United States), gave Hitler and his goons the ability to ruthlessly suppress all opposition in the upcoming elections. As a result, the n.a.z.is gained a 44 percent plurality in the Parliament, and [soon-to-be] Luftwaffe General Herman Goering declared that there was no further need for state governments.

The n.a.z.is were successful in eliminating the states' authority in the same manner - instigating disorder, then quelling it by replacing local governments with n.a.z.i-appointed Reich Commissioners.

This precedent was officially established on March 23 when the "Enabling Act" transferred the power of the states to the central n.a.z.i-run government - making the federal government responsible for all law-enforcement, and conferring on Hitler the legal status of dictator.

Hitler immediately appointed Joseph Goebbels as Minster of Propaganda, and as Interior Minister - the top police post - Hitler appointed Herman Goering. Goering immediately filled the ranks of the Prussian police with loyal SA and SS members. As Suzanne Harris of the The Law Loft notes: All of the key strategic moves were made by Goering in setting the stage for a take-over. Why? Because in order to take over a government, you have to eliminate your political enemies before they strike, not after. This means that you have to transform the police from a crime-detecting and punis.h.i.+ng apparatus to a crime preventing apparatus. You have to expand the definition of key crimes so that you can identify and incarcerate your enemies before they strike. You have to transform the att.i.tudes of the police so that they view the public as the enemy and not as citizens with rights. You have to have tactical police units in place that will execute your orders rapidly without question.[1232]

Soon n.a.z.i storm troopers were roaring through the streets at all hours, rounding up suspected dissidents, including politicians, who were then hauled off to makes.h.i.+ft concentration camps and tortured or killed. As William s.h.i.+rer writes: Just to make sure the job would be ruthlessly done, Goering on February 22 established an auxiliary police force of 50,000 men, of whom 40,000 were drawn from the ranks of the S.A. and the S.S.... Police power in Prussia was thus largely carried out by n.a.z.i thugs. It was a rash German who appealed to such a "police" for protection against the n.a.z.i terrorists.[1233]

Hitler's promises that "the government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures" were belied by the ruthless tally of history.[1234]

In a manner faintly reminiscent of Hitler's a.s.surances concerning the 1933 "Enabling laws," FBI Director Louis Freeh recently sought, and won, tentative agreement on a package of anti-terrorism measures that would expand wiretapping authority. Freeh a.s.sured legislators that the proposals would not give the government "expansive powers."[1235]

Like the CIA's announcement to investigate itself for it's own drug-running, the wolf now seeks to rea.s.sure the public that it has no intention of invading the hen house.

One year to the day after the Oklahoma City bombing, President [K]linton signed the Anti-Terrorism Bill, "for the protection of the people and the state." Clinton railroaded Congress into pa.s.sing the draconian legislation in the same manner that Hitler stampeded the German people into pa.s.sing the Enabling Act.

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans," Clinton was quoted in USA TODAY in March of 1993.[1236]

"...a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom," Clinton stated on MTV in March of 1994. "When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it."[1237]

Clinton's Anti-Terrorism Bill includes plans to establish a new FBI counterterrorism center with 1,000 new "anti-terrorist" agents. One proposal, harking back to the days of COINTELPRO, would add 25 intelligence a.n.a.lysts, 190 surveillance specialists with 143 support personnel, 31 engineers and mathematicians for intercepting digital communications, and various other experts and a.n.a.lysts. The Bill also includes a $66 million windfall for the ATF for "anti-terrorism" efforts.[1238]

Now the FBI has now unveiled its "Critical Incident Response Group." Divided into five units, the "Undercover Safeguard Unit" selects recruits for [even more] undercover agents to be sent amongst the American people; the "Aviation and Special Operations Unit" which creates an FBI Air Force for both logistics and spying; the "Investigative Support Unit," which permits the FBI's flawless crime lab to become available for every law-enforcement agency in the country; and the "Crisis Management Unit" which helps the Bureau cover up such incidents as Ruby Ridge and Waco while lying to the press.

Then there is the "SWAT Training Unit," and the "Tactical Support" Division, which includes the infamous "Hostage Rescue Team," which "rescued" a nursing mother by shooting her in the face, and "rescued" 86 men, women, and children by ga.s.sing, shooting, and burning them alive.

Finally, there is the "Abducted Children and Serial Killers Unit," which should provide a measure of relief to those concerned about out-of-control criminals who gas and incinerate children while committing ma.s.s-murder.[1239]

One recent manifestation of America's drift toward a national police force is the final report of the National Performance Review (NPR) headed by Vice President Al Gore. Said to be a blueprint for "reinventing government," this report recommends "the designation of the Attorney General as the Director of Law Enforcement to coordinate federal law enforcement efforts."

This was the same Attorney General who, along with Deputy Attorney General Webster Hubbell and President Bill Clinton, gave the "final solution" order at Waco. The FBI was the agency that carried it out, ga.s.sing and incinerating 86 men, women and children.

Now, under H.R. 97 (the "Rapid Deployment Strike Force Act"), Clinton, Reno and Freeh are calling for a 2,500-man "Rapid-Deployment" force composed of FBI and other federal agents, all under the supervision of the Attorney General.[1240] The bill states: On application of the Governor of a State and the chief executive officer of the affected local government or governments...and upon finding that the occurrence of criminal activity in a particular jurisdiction is being exacerbated by the interstate flow of drugs, guns, and criminals, the Deputy a.s.sistant Director may deploy on a temporary basis a unit of the Rapid Deployment Force.

Judiciary Committee spokesmen interviewed by Relevance Magazine said the Rapid-Deployment Strike Force "would also serve as a model unit for local officers to emulate." A comforting thought, considering the "exemplary" actions of federal "law enforcement" at Ruby Ridge and Waco. Such a Goering-inspired national police force has the potential to become an American Gestapo.

Joe Hendricks, Chief of Police of Windsor, Missouri, expressed his concern over this trend in the June, 1997 issue of the Idaho Observer: Unfortunately, at the present time, an agent of the FBI could walk into my office and commandeer this police department. If you don't believe that, read the Crime Bill that Clinton signed into law in 1995. There is talk of the feds taking over the Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. Police Department. To me this sets a dangerous precedent.[1241][1242]

Said Joseph McNamara, former police chief in San Jose and Kansas City, now at the Hoover Inst.i.tute at Stanford University: "Despite the conventional wisdom that community policing is sweeping the nation, the exact opposite is happening,"[1243]

Charles "Bud" Meeks, executive director of the National Sheriff's a.s.sociation, adds, "By pa.s.sing statutes in an effort to make [the crime situation] better," he observed, "we're getting closer to a federal police state."[1244]

"In SWAT units formed since 1980, their use has increased by 538 percent," said police researcher Peter Kraska. Originally designed to control armed, barricaded suspects, SWAT teams are now being routinely used in the so-called "War on Drugs," and in places like Fresno, are being deployed full-time as roaming patrols.

"The drug war created the atmosphere for this kind of pro-active policing," Kraska said. "We have never seen this kind of policing, where SWAT teams routinely break through a door, subdue all the occupants and search the premises for drugs, cash and weapons."

While the average citizen has to pay a several hundred dollar fine or serve jail time for possessing a small amount of marijuana, the biggest drug dealers in the country - the CIA - have been pumping tons of heroin and cocaine into this country for decades. Now the "War on Drugs," which even many in the law-enforcement community admit is a sham, is being used to wage war on the American people.

"It's a very dangerous thing, when you're telling cops they're soldiers and there's an enemy out there," adds McNamara. "I don't like it all."[1245]

Yet maybe the cops won't have to worry about looking like soldiers. On October 5th, 1994, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Criminal Justice held hearings on the Justice Department's proposed "Use of the National Guard in Domestic Law Enforcement."[1246]

One increasing manifestation of this trend are Multi-Jurisdictional Task Forces (MJTF) training for urban guerrilla warfare (UGW). As numerous newspaper articles have noted over the past few years, sweeps by Army helicopters in towns and cities across America in conjunction with paramilitary police raids and training exercises have been increasing. The following incident was reported by Jim Keith and verified by the author: During the Summer of 1993, residents of Midtown, Atlanta, Georgia were shocked in the early hours of the morning as three military helicopters came churning through their high-rise condo canyons as part of military Special Operations Command practice raids. In the same area in July of 1994, automatic weapons fire and explosions echoed off an abandoned state office building on Peachtree Street. Employees of a Kinko's copy center at 793 Peachtree Street saw men in battle gear atop the building. An employees remember a bullet shattering the store's window during the exercise.

During January of 1994, troops from the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, which includes the Green Berets, Rangers, and psychological warfare specialists, were seen rappelling off the empty 11-story St Moritz Hotel in Miami, firing paint pellets in mock a.s.sault exercises.[1247] In Fort Lauderdale during November of 1996, troops from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, along with Special Forces, Rangers, Navy SEALSs, and psychological warfare specialists, practiced "night urban navigation training."

In Houston, the crash of an Army helicopter alerted citizens to troops practicing UGW exercises with helicopters, small arms fire and explosives in vacant buildings.[1248]

Similar exercises were practiced near Detroit during the Summer of 1994. In Van Buren towns.h.i.+p, citizens were treated to the sound of explosions and automatic gunfire. When residents complained, they were told by police, "Don't worry about it. The MJTF and Van Buren PD SWAT teams were practicing."

Resident Bridget Tuohey wasn't rea.s.sured. "I have two little kids here who are semi-hysterical," Tuohey told the Detroit News. When Van Buren resident Mark Spencer went to investigate, he saw men in Ninja-style black uniforms with no markings practicing mock a.s.saults on abandoned houses.

Although the live ordnance found at the scene had already been photographed by local Detroit television crews, Wayne County Police spokesman claimed that it did not exist.[1249]

As Spencer recalls, "Never in 25 years of living in this area have I ever heard automatic weapons fire. Never have I heard explosives training being done here. Never have I seen men dressed in black battle dress roaming the wooded areas of my home."[1250]

On June 6, 1996, the Was.h.i.+ngton Times reported: Nine Army helicopters swooped into Pittsburgh in the middle of the night this week and turned parts of the city into war zones, complete with sounds of explosions and gunfire that frightened residents and sent one pregnant woman into labor.

What are these troops training for? According to a report in the March, 1995 issue of Soldier of Fortune, about 40 Army and Air Force legal and other personnel attended a secret "research symposium" at XVIII Airborne Corps between December 6th and 8th, 1994, to strategize and study for the deployment of U.S. personnel and resources to aid civilian authorities in "the suppression of domestic civil unrest." Army lawyers repeatedly brushed aside Airborne officers concerns that such deployment would violate the Posse Comitatus Act. One lawyer, responding somewhat cryptically said, "Not anymore, it doesn't."[1251]

Then, in early March of 1966, dozens of defense industry leaders, government policy makers, and military a.n.a.lysts met with federal law enforcement officials at the Ritz-Carlton in McLean, Virginia. Their purpose was to strategize for the "Operations Other Than War/Law Enforcement" (OOTW/LE) initiative, designed to increase coordination between law-enforcement and the military - a trend which has been accelerating in recent years. As Sources EJournal reported: In hearings on the joint Pentagon/law enforcement OOTW program in June, 1994, Dr. Anita K. Jones, director of defense research and engineering, told the House Armed Services Committee that she foresees the military increasingly being called upon to respond to "rising violence on our city streets" and to deal with the "widespread availability of increasingly powerful weapons."[1252]

One particularly frightening aspect of this trend is the transfer of new Orwellian-style weapons and surveillance gear to domestic law enforcement. The Orange County Register of March 19, 1993 reported that Camp Pendleton Marine base in southern California recently added an $8.4 million facility to train for urban warfare.[1253]