Paramilitary Police State & Private Prisons

Homeland Security for Whom?

July 21, 2010

Douglas Valentine - The Washington Post has published a splashy exposé about the mammoth "homeland security" intelligence empire that now burdens the United States, financially and ideologically. As usual, however, there is no real historical context. And that lack of context is part of the story –- not just the current dimensions of the empire.

I wrote the following article for Penthouse in the summer of 2003. It was reprinted by CounterPunch later that summer. At the time I said:

This homeland security boondoggle is the biggest reorganization of the U.S. government in 50 years. It might even bankrupt the country and, perhaps intentionally, throw it into a Depression. That remains to be seen. What is certain is that at a cost of $50 billion in taxpayer's money, the homeland security infrastructure will provide Bush with 170,000 political cadres, and the internal security he needs to assure the continuity of his political power indefinitely. Except for providing Bush with political internal security, there is no need for the Department of Homeland Security; it is a Trojan Horse through which Bush will unleash his ideological storm troopers and exploit his ill-gotten power to achieve permanent political dominance.

And he is creating this police state through terror. As the Homeland Security web site assures us, the threat of terrorism "is a permanent condition" that "requires our country to design a new homeland security structure."

The underlying principle of homeland security (and the war on terror) is that terror is an organizing principle of society. This includes every type of terror, from the shock and awe bombs that liberated Baghdad, to the collective punishments Israel used to crush the Palestinian soul. It's armed propaganda in the form of National Guardsmen eye-balling us at airports, and it's the greatest psywar campaign ever waged, in the form of red white and blue color-coded warnings of terror attacks that never occur, and unsubstantiated reports brought to you by government stenographers at network news ...

On the basis of a false accusation made by an anonymous homeland informant, counter-terror teams will arrest a terrorist surrogate and detain the person indefinitely under administrative detention laws in an interrogation center until he or she dies or defects or is sent to a military tribunal for disposition. Disposition means permanent detention in some perverse torture chambers like the ones in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ultimately, the Domestic Security Enhancement Act will allow Ashcroft to secretly incarcerate and deport U.S. citizens without any thought of ensuring them due process of law.

Check out what happened to José Padilla.

To summarize so far: Blanket surveillance, blacklists, arrests on the word of anonymous informants, the absence of due process through extralegal administrative detention procedures, military tribunals, incarceration, and deportation are the instruments of the homeland security infrastructure, which will coordinate all existing U.S. intelligence, police, and military units in the attack on terrorists and their surrogates ...

With the latest electronic surveillance gadgets available to them, they will reach into every corner of society, including our homes, workplaces, public facilities and computers, to sniff out terrorist surrogates and launch preemptive attacks to neutralize them before they activate ...

This is the maximum danger of homeland security, and what it boils down to mandatory self-censorship. Already we passively permit hooded paramilitary policemen with automatic rifles to search our cars, without probable cause, for Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. These policemen are helping us, right? They would never turn their guns on us, right?

As stated in a CIA terrorist training manual that came to light almost 20 years ago, "Implicit terror always accompanies weapons, since the people are internally "aware" that they can be used against them."

This is what William Colby was talking about when he was quoted in the prologue to this article as saying, "The implication or latent threat of terror was sufficient to insure that the people would comply" ...

Information management is key in creating the "new people" who will organize the new criminal homeland social structure, and make it appear legal, moral and most importantly, popular. The first step in manufacturing these robots is through motivational indoctrination, which is based on the principle that people will do anything you ask of them if you make them feel special. In return for adopting the right attitude, a successful career is offered ...

CIA psywar experts will motivationally indoctrinate the 170,000 some odd homeland security personnel to wage political warfare. A training manual on the subject was reprinted in the early 1980s by a former Phoenix officer who got caught up in the Reagan Regime's illegal Contra War. Titled Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, it states that "the human being should be considered the priority objective in a political war. And conceived as the military target of guerrilla war, the human being has his most critical point in his mind. Once his mind has been reached, the 'political animal' has been defeated, without necessarily receiving bullets."

Having been politically and motivationally indoctrinated, Critical Infrastructure and other homeland personnel will spy on colleagues who may inadvertently or maliciously serve as terrorist surrogates by publicly or privately revealing information about homeland infrastructure vulnerabilities, such as power grids or computer systems. These cadre will covertly identify and watch terrorist surrogates until it becomes necessary to expose the surrogates in the media. No one will want to be identified, even falsely, as an inadvertent or malicious terrorist surrogate, knowing that they are subject to being "stamped out," as Michael Ledeen suggests. In this way the Bush Regime is organizing its political cadre – Ledeen's "new people" who have been psychologically defeated by the implicit terror around them and, having reverted to the same infantile state of mind occupied by President George W. Bush, have embraced the Fascist principles they've been subliminally indoctrinated with for years through the corporate propaganda machine.

These "new people" are fast joining front organizations like the Freedom Corps, the Citizen Corps, Community Emergency Response Teams (which will train kids at school to prepare for the disasters the Bush Regime will surely visit upon America); the Neighborhood Watch Program that will allow the Bush Regime to detain its drunk and disorderly political opponents as terrorist surrogates; and the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC), through which enfranchised doctors will monitor patients within the faltering health care system.

Within these front groups are cadres trained "in techniques of persuasion over control of target groups" to support the Bush Regime. In the forthcoming national emergency, these cadres will be mobilized, will attend mass meetings, carry placards, shout slogans as part of a Popular Information Program, appeal to our cultural beliefs through Michael Savage-style radio shows, teach classes on correct thinking, organize subtle but massive screening operations designed to generate defectors, who will in turn to denounce former comrades who spoke ill of the Bush Regime. They will intervene with "problem individuals," and everywhere encourage their neighbors to report the activities of terrorist surrogates by dropping a note addressed to the police in local mailboxes. It's not hard to imagine a few of the most highly motivated cadres getting carried away, grabbing ropes, and forming lynch mobs.

Only five percent of the people need to be organized in this fashion for Bush to wield control over the indifferent ninety percent, and defeat the five percent that form the political resistance. This is why psychological operations are the Bush Regime's No. 1 priority. Case in point: when Bush publicly announced the Department of Homeland Security on 6 June 2002, he stated that the organization's primary mission was to "mobilize and focus... the American people "to accomplish the mission of attacking the enemy where he hides and plans." By which he means his political opponents.

Psywar experts prize "compromise and discreditation" operations like the one the FBI used against Martin Luther King before he was assassinated. Information about his extramarital affairs was leaked, and he was sent a message with the suggestion that he should commit suicide. "There is only one way out for you," the forged document read. "You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation." Forged documents like the one used against King are an important facet of political blackmail, and are also used to justify false arrests or conceal illegal operations. We have already seen Network News broadcast "edited" videotapes of Osama bin Laden and, in the Afghanistan war, captured (perhaps forged) documents were routinely used as a form of black propaganda to justify military actions that resulted in "collateral" damage.

The greatest example, of course, is Bush's criminal and impeachable use of forged documents to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. This was an act of treason by the President of the United States, and yet within the new legally criminal homeland security structure, it is business as usual.

We can expect a slew of false rumors from low-level homeland cadre, designed to ruin the reputations of politically incorrect families in their villages and towns, especially environmentalists who pose a threat to Critical Infrastructure corporations. The paranoia that currently infects the Arab-American community will spread until no one is sure who is a spy for the Thought Police. When the national emergency arrives, most likely the forthcoming depression, and the homeland security infrastructure goes on Red Alert, midnight arrests and disappearances into administrative detention centers will become commonplace. Amid the confusion, the CIA will form special units within the 93 terrorism task forces around the country, and other unilateral Phoenix Program-style hit teams will operate under cover of the security forces at their disposal.

The clincher is when the definition of a terrorist surrogate is expanded to include people deemed dangerous to the Public Order, at which point any person can be arrested on criminal charges for political offenses. No specific charge is required; a homelander like Ledeen or Bill O'Reilly will simply accuse someone of disturbing the peace or being un-American. The definitions of sedition and treason will grow to include disseminating information about government corruption, or undermining the will of the State by challenging its authority. Calling for civil disobedience will be a really scary threat to the homeland. Cadre in the Office of Cyberspace Security will expose you as a terrorist surrogate for sending sarcastic or satirical emails. How can you prove you were only joking when you blamed Bush for the terror attacks on the World Trade Center, and said Cheney's refusal to investigate proves that Bush did it? ...

I put the blame on "Bush" at the time (and the numbers have varied) but it's really the national security state that's to blame for the near Depression the homeland security state (financially and ideologically) has caused. And of course The Washington Post is part of the national security state –- that secret group of people who control America through secret deals –- the type of secret deals that enable Washington Post reporters' access to anonymous CIA officers.