Government in Shadow

It’s election day and growing civil unrest has erupted into riots in major cities across the United States. The local police are overwhelmed and governors are dispatching the national guard. Soon, the President declares a state of emergency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) deputizes U.S. military and national guard units so they can legally be used for domestic law enforcement. The military moves against American citizens and men, women and children (mostly Hispanics and Blacks) are rounded-up and placed into internment camps.

To restore order, FEMA assumes control of all communication media, public utilities, hospitals, airports, highways and seaports (all modes of transportation, public and private). Control is established over production and distribution mechanisms, food resources, wages, salaries, and other cash flow.

To maintain order, FEMA forms citizens into work parties to repair damage caused by the riots. Schools are temporarily closed and are guarded by conscripted citizens under government supervision, as are entry and exit to towns and cities.

And a year goes by, then two…

Sounds like something out of the “X-Files” doesn’t it? Unfortunately, there’s more truth to this scenario than most people think. But this is the United States, right? We would never allow something like this to happen! Really? Have we forgotten that in 1942 Franklin D Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, sending more than 110,000 people to relocation camps. Most of the internees were U.S. citizens and their crime? They were of Japanese descent. Don’t think for a minute that something like this couldn’t happen today!

A bit of history…

Shortly after the original internment camps closed, J. Edgar Hoover conceived a plan called “Security Portfolio,” which would have enabled the President to declare a national emergency, suspend the Constitution, and put thousands of people into prison with no trials and no habeas corpus rights.

Two years later, Congress approved the Internal Security Act of 1950 (a.k.a McCarran Act), which also contained an emergency detention plan (concentration camps for use during “emergency situations”). The Internal Security Act remained in force for more than 20 years. G. Gordon Liddy reminisces openly about the days when his job in the FBI included keeping tabs on potential internees. Once every three months, Liddy checked the whereabouts of the political agitators on his list so the government could round them up reliably if need be.

During the unrest of the 1960s the federal government again made contingency plans for possible mass roundups of “militants.”

Enter FEMA. Established entirely by presidential executive order (EO) (an unconstitutional process itself), and congress offered no advice, consent, or objection. Although FEMA wasn’t established until 1979, the concept flowed from the minds of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

Kennedy signed a series of orders granting the federal government the power to seize a variety of private or local functions in event of emergency.

Nixon consolidated and enlarged these powers in 1969 with EO 11490. This order consolidated other EOs allowing the president to put them into effect after the declaration of a national emergency:

• Seizing control of all electric power, fuels and minerals (EO 10997)
• Mobilization of all civilians into work brigades under government supervision (EO 11000)
• Seizing control of all institutions related to health, education, and welfare (EO 11001)
• Grants authority to the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons (EO 11002)
• Seizing control of all airports and aircraft (EO 11003)
• Allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate any population (by housing authority) (EO 11004)
• Seizing control of all railroads, waterways and public storage facilities (EO 11005)

Gerald Ford later signed EO 11921 which, in the words of Dr. Henry Kliemann, political scientist at Boston University, “…was understood by FEMA to mean that one day they would be in charge of the country. As these bureaucrats saw it, FEMA’s real mission was to wait, prepare, and then take over when some ’situation’ seemed serious enough to turn the United States into a police state.”

In 1979, Jimmy Carter signed EO 12148 and created the Federal Emergency Management Agency that is to interface with the Department of Defense for civil defense planning and funding. An “emergency czar” was appointed.

Once Carter made FEMA official, Ronald Reagan gave the agency a distinctly paranoid, military slant by appointing as its head General Louis Guiffrida (a man who had a penchant for population control).

Among other qualifications, Guiffrida had written a paper advocating the declaration of martial law in response to black militancy, a plan that could have sent millions of blacks to relocation camps. He also wrote:

“Martial rule comes into existence upon a determination (not a declaration) by the senior military commander that civil government must be replaced because it is no longer functioning, anyway.”

Nevertheless, in the public and media mind, FEMA is simply a helpful service organization. It shows up after earthquakes and floods to assist the population and parcels out money so communities can rebuild. But FEMA isn’t, and never has been, an agency to aid average Americans.

FEMA’s chief (but largely secret) mission has always been “continuity of government.” Its job is to make sure that federal control continues at all costs. This has led to construction of dozens of secret underground bunkers, capable of sustaining life for the select few allowed into them. It has led to FEMA budgets in which millions are allocated to disaster relief while billions go to unspecified “other purposes.” And that’s not to mention the unknown sums in black-budget appropriations the agency receives via the Defense Department.

For many years, FEMA denied the existence of its primary bunker, Mount Weather in West Virginia. Even after admitting it was there, they would never disclose its purpose (even to their ostensible bosses in Congress). At 1975 hearings, retired Air Force General Leslie W. Bray, director of FEMA’s predecessor, the Federal Preparedness Agency, stonewalled a U.S. Senate subcommittee, insisting, “I am not at liberty to describe precisely what is the role and the mission and the capability that we have at Mount Weather, or at any other precise location.”

However, it’s an open secret that an entire parallel (and unelected) government is headquartered at Mount Weather, ready to take over the country in an emergency.

Disturbing as this may be to some, most Americans would probably take comfort in the belief that government (any government) would continue in an emergency.

But what is an “emergency”? According to Carter’s order, it is

“…any accidental, natural, man-caused, or wartime emergency or threat thereof, which causes or may cause substantial injury or harm to the population or substantial damage to orloss of property.”

In other words, an emergency is anything the president or the director of FEMA declares it to be. Because to the professionally paranoid, anything (even civil disagreement) can be a threat.

It’s worth noting that, in the same 1975 hearings at which the Senate failed to learn the purpose of Mount Weather, Senators did learn that:

…the facility held dossiers on at least 100,000 Americans. [Senator] John Tunney later alleged that the Mount Weather computers can obtain millions of pieces of additional information on the personal lives of American citizens simply by tapping the data stored at any of the other ninety-six Federal Relocation Centers.”

The subcommittee concluded that Mount Weather’s databases “operate with few, if any, safeguards or guidelines.”

During his presidency, Bill Clinton “modernized” FEMA and elevated it to a cabinet-level department. Under his appointee, James Lee Witt, FEMA has increasingly insinuated itself into the doings of local governments, pushing them to pass zoning ordinances and even conducting a SWAT-style raid on a county office when agency officials suspected misuse of flood control funds. Odd roles for a federal emergency management agency, doncha think?

So, its important to understand that under emergency plans already in place, the power exists to suspend the Constitution and turn over the reigns of government to FEMA and appoint military commanders to run state and local governments. FEMA then would have the right to order the detention of anyone whom there is reasonable ground to believe will engage in, or probably conspire with others to engage in acts of espionage or sabotage.

And if all this wasn’t enough, here are just a few more Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights:

• EO 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.
• EO 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
• EO 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.
• EO 10998 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.
• EO 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.
• EO 11310 grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.
• EO 11049 assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period.
• EO 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months.
• EO 12656 appointed the National Security Council as the principal body that should consider emergency powers. This allows the government to increase domestic intelligence and surveillance of U.S. citizens and would restrict the freedom of movement within the United States and grant the government the right to isolate large groups of civilians. The National Guard could be federalized to seal all borders and take control of U.S. air space and all ports of entry.

And a final thought…something really scary: There are several scenarios that would trigger FEMA into action, but under the FEMA plan, there seems to be no contingency by which Constitutional power is restored!