In Government We Trust

[Fuckallyall]

From Townhall.Com

In government we trust
By Walter E. Williams

Jan 25, 2006


What lessons should we have learned from last summer's deadly and destructive hurricanes? The primary lesson is that we shouldn't have much faith in a federal bureaucracy like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). They amply demonstrated their incompetence, but what's our response? We'll give them more money and more authority. That's not smart.

The FEMA fiasco is discussed in several articles in the December 2005 issue of The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty magazine, published by the Foundation for Economic Education, the nation's first free market think tank (fee.org). Hillsdale College professor of economics Robert Murphy points to some of FEMA's stupidity in response to Hurricane Katrina, which includes "delaying firefighters two days in Atlanta hotels to receive sexual-harassment training and watch videos on the history of FEMA while people were dying in New Orleans."

By contrast, private firms like Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and Home Depot had trucks on the road immediately after the hurricane. Stores even gave away items like chain saws and boots for rescue workers, sheets and clothes for shelters, and water and ice for the public. Wal-Mart was so efficient that there was talk among some Louisiana officials of letting Wal-Mart take over FEMA's job and a suggestion that Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott run FEMA. Freeman editor Sheldon Richman says the latter suggestion misses a very important point. Wal-Mart was effective because it was not a government agency. If Mr. Scott were in charge of FEMA, he wouldn't do much better than its former director, Michael Brown. Government cannot achieve the efficiencies of a business. Trying to get government to be as efficient as business is as hopeless as trying to teach cats to bark and dogs to meow.

Dwight Lee, University of Georgia professor, penned an article with the instructive title "Mitigating Disaster: Abolish FEMA and Let Gas Prices Rise." I've written several columns about the surge in gasoline prices and criticized the "price-gouging" demagoguery. Professor Lee has an insight that I overlooked. He asks whether it would have been a good idea, in the wake of supply disruptions of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, for Americans to continue using gasoline as if there hadn't been those supply disruptions. After the hurricanes, more gas was suddenly needed to bring rescue personnel, evacuate the homeless, clear rubble and a host of other things to get the reconstruction efforts underway. If gas prices had remained what they were before the hurricanes, Americans would have continued using the same amount of gas. Professor Lee says, "The higher gas prices motivated tens of millions of drivers to conserve gasoline, allowing more to be available where it was badly needed." What's more, we didn't need a government edict; we voluntarily cut back on gasoline consumption.

Professor Lee explains that the waste, delays and incompetence are an inherent part of all federal programs and we'd be better off without FEMA. He gives many reasons why private or local disaster relief will produce a better outcome. However, Lee omits a question that I always ask when people assert that this or that government program is an absolute necessity. My question is, what did we do before? In 1871, a fire virtually destroyed Chicago. In 1900, a category 4 hurricane wiped out Galveston, Texas, and killed as many as 12,000 people. In 1906, an earthquake leveled San Francisco. Loss of life was estimated at nearly 3,000 people, and the damage estimated at the time was $400 million -- about $8 billion in today's dollars. After those massive disasters, each city recovered. I'd like to have an explanation, from those who'd argue that federal disaster relief and an agency like FEMA are the only ways to recover from a disaster, how these cities recovered.



Dr. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, since 1980.

 

[Greed]

Who's to blame for state of New Orleans?

Who's to blame for state of New Orleans?
By ALLEN G. BREED, AP National Writer
30 minutes ago

In many ways, New Orleans is a huge crime scene, with bodies and victims and fingerprints — many, many sets of fingerprints. But who did it? Who is responsible for this mess, for a barely functioning city with large swathes still uninhabited — or uninhabitable — a year after Hurricane Katrina?

An anonymous critic, posting his verdict at the edge of the French Quarter, blames the Army Corps of Engineers and its failure to build levees that could keep the floodwaters out: "Hold the Corps Accountable," demands the sign.

Others curse the Federal Emergency Management Agency — for its failure to rescue New Orleans as the waters rose, or in the months after. In ravaged Lakeview, a makeshift gallows bears a sign that reads: "Last Resort Shelter. Reserved for Looters/FEMA Reps/Adjusters."

But the roll of those accused of failing New Orleans is a long one: State and local officials who had no good plan for the disaster, and now preside over a languid recovery. A president who at first seemed remote from the cataclysm, and then made promises that have not been fully realized.

So many did not live up their responsibilities, says G. Paul Kemp, a Louisiana State University engineer and member of Team Louisiana, a group of forensic engineers examining how the flooding occurred. Every time anyone points that out, "people say, `Oh, we don't want to play the blame game. We've got to get things moving.'"

But things are moving agonizingly slow. Piles of debris and wrecked cars are everywhere, and astonishingly, searchers were still finding bodies in ruined homes just weeks ago.

Harried recovery officials say it's only been a year. How much can you expect?

But to Lakeview resident Pascal Warner — who walks through clouds of mosquitoes attracted by a neighbor's fetid, sludge-covered swimming pool still filled with stagnant Katrina floodwater — a year seems like a pretty long time.

"I wouldn't want to spend a year in jail," the retired stagehand says. "Would you?"

___

Why did New Orleans go under?

You could blame the French, for locating the city in the middle of a swamp. You could blame generations of local and federal leaders whose decisions to channel and tame the Mississippi starved the delta of silt and caused the land to sink. You could fault the shipping interests who lobbied for the river outlet that gave Katrina's storm surge a clear path to the city's front door.

Or, like Warner and others, you could blame the Corps of Engineers and the levees they were charged with building and maintaining.

"It wasn't Mother Nature," says Warner, whose home was about a dozen blocks from a break in the 17th Street Canal levee. "If it wouldn't have been for the break in the levee, we could have come home the next day and cleaned up the yard ... and gone right on living."

Forensic engineers have since uncovered design and construction flaws that some say border on criminal negligence.

Investigators say many levee sections along the city's drainage canals were built of weak, unstable soils, which apparently were scoured away by the water pressing in from Lake Pontchartrain. Metal sheet pilings that anchor the cement floodwalls atop the earthen structures were driven much shallower into the ground than the Corps believed.

Dan Hitchings, who is overseeing the flood-control repairs as director of the Corps' Task Force Hope, says the question of liability for damage from the collapsed floodwalls is still open. But the Corps must accept responsibility "for sections of this project that failed before we had intended it to."

"It's not anything that anyone in the Corps of Engineers feels good about, believe me."

But the tide unleashed by the levees did not have to reach a city that was unprepared.

"Louisiana had been on notice of its vulnerability to catastrophic hurricanes for decades, but over the long term had never fully upgraded its emergency response systems to the level necessary to protect its citizens from those events," according to a report by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

FEMA, too, was "unprepared for a catastrophic event" on this scale, the committee said.

And the suffering that resulted is unforgettable.

As President Bush slapped FEMA chief Michael Brown on the back — praising him for "a heck of a job" — people lay dying in the heat and filth outside the New Orleans convention center. The sick and elderly sweltered in crippled hospitals while ice- and water-laden tractor-trailers circled the country, awaiting orders of where to go.

Brown resigned in disgrace. But Kemp notes that, to a large extent, "We're still dealing with the same people who gave us Katrina."

"I guess probably in the old Stalinist regime, everybody would have been sacked and sent to Siberia," Kemp says. "But we don't do that."

And so thousands of people in and around the city are still awaiting delivery of government trailers, or for workers to install services at mobile homes already in place.

Karen Eugene applied to FEMA in March for an all-electric handicapped trailer after her doctor put her on 24-hour oxygen and told her she could no longer live in the propane-fueled travel trailer she'd been provided. The agency called her just this past week to say her new home was ready.

"I'm not saying I want to be first ... but I mean you work it to where this lady's medical condition is putting her in a different bracket than all these other people," says Eugene, 50, who has diabetes, arthritis, congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. "I was told by maybe five, six different people in two weeks, `You'll have your trailer.' I'll go back in two weeks, and that person I talked to no longer works with FEMA. ...

"I can't run around with FEMA no longer."

When FEMA isn't moving too slowly, it is criticized for moving too fast. The agency rushed to get $2,000 debit cards into the hands of evacuees in the storm's immediate aftermath, only to be accused in a government audit of giving as much as $1.4 billion to people who spent their disaster relief on champagne, sports tickets, pornography — even a sex-change operation.

Other government audits found that the government wasted millions of dollars in the contracts it issued in the days after the hurricane struck.

Wrangling among Mayor Ray Nagin and members of the City Council over which areas of the city should be given resources to rebuild has stalled the adoption of a unified redevelopment plan, leaving homeowners in many wrecked neighborhoods in limbo, unable to plan for the future.

When the Broadmoor Improvement Association recently released its 319-page neighborhood redevelopment plan, revitalization committee co-chairman Hal Roark said most of the work was "definitely happening in spite of the government. It's individuals taking their destiny into their own hands, and neighborhoods."

Standing in the space between his mold-infested Lower Ninth Ward duplex and the government trailer where he now lives, TV repairman Arnold Lewis speaks enviously of other neighborhoods that enjoy decent water pressure and city-sponsored wireless Internet service.

"There's something to be desired as far as the pace of recovery down here," Lewis, 46, says as water leaks out onto the ground from a nearby line break. "There's no phone service here. There's no cable service down here, and there's no gas."

Patricia Jones says it's no wonder the companies that provide services have been unwilling to reinvest in the Lower Ninth.

With about half the neighborhood still under a "look and leave" policy, residents have been unable to return and do basic salvage work on their houses, says Jones, who represents the Lower Ninth in the Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association. It seems to her that the neighborhood has been just about written off.

"It's kind of looked at as yesteryear's space," she says. "People just happen to live over there. That's not the main part of the city, so we're not really worried about it."

But services are little better in other, less-destitute sections of the city.

The city is losing about 70 million gallons of water a day to leaks, almost as much water as is making it to homes. Water pressure is so bad in parts of the city that officials have helicopters on standby to haul lake water to douse fires.

Before Katrina, garbage was collected twice a week. Now, the trucks come weekly, if that.

The pungent smell of moldy, rotting garbage wafts through the front door of the house Robert Devine is rehabilitating for his brother-in-law in the largely middle class, mixed-race neighborhood of Gentilly. He says the pile across the street — 4 feet high and 12 feet long — had been there for about a month.

"Sometimes they'll pick it up, sometimes they won't," says Devine, adjusting a cap bearing the slogan "Git R Done." "But they want you to pay for it at the end of the month."

The mayor says his city has had all it could to stave off bankruptcy. At a recent neighborhood meeting in Broadmoor, he made several sarcastic jabs at Washington for not providing more help.

"The only thing we've got as a city to continue to operate is a $150 million loan from the federal government," said Nagin. "They normally give other cities grants, but we got a loan. We're special."

Reed Kroloff, who resigned in disgust as head of the urban planning committee for the city's Bring New Orleans Back initiative, says inefficiency, political jockeying and downright incompetence on many fronts have delayed the recovery process by a year or more.

"This has been a process where everyone, almost every agency involved has to accept part of the blame," says Kroloff, dean of Tulane University's architecture school. "There's been a failure in leadership at all levels here."

The people in charge say whatever happened, happened. They say they're moving forward.

FEMA has provided housing assistance to more than 900,000 people across the region, more than 300 times its normal yearly workload. The agency has overseen the removal of 45 million cubic yards of debris from the state — enough to fill 10 Superdomes, or enough trucks to stretch end to end across the country four times.

Judy Martinez, who oversees debris removal and other public assistance projects in Louisiana for FEMA, says those numbers are "nothing to sneeze at."

"I think that we're moving full steam ahead," she says. "We're working six days a week, 10, 12 hours a day ... and we have been doing this since day one."

Gil Jamieson, FEMA's deputy director of Gulf Coast recovery, says he's attended town and neighborhood meetings where the agency gets blamed for leaking water pipes or stinking sewer lines — things for which it cannot possibly be responsible. If one of FEMA's new roles is as a target at which people can vent their frustrations, he says, so be it.

"FEMA did get off to a slow start down here, so it's not surprising that there's some fundamental mistrust," he says. "I'm not on a crusade to tell them that we're not responsible for it. Our actions will show our commitment to this problem."

There are other signs of progress. At the Superdome, symbol of some of the deepest suffering in the days after Katrina, workers recently finished restoring the stadium's gleaming-white 9.7-acre roof. And at the restored convention center, which had become festering cattle car of despair, the only smell of urine is in the bathrooms.

But the people of New Orleans have seen far too much bungling to be entirely hopeful.

While he has been working to restore his 1920s-era home in Broadmoor, out-of-work mechanical engineer Matt McBride has been keeping a wary eye on the flood gates the Corps has been installing on the outfall canals.

The canals were built to drain rainwater out of the city and into Lake Pontchartrain. But while the gates should keep storm surge out, the Corps has not installed enough pumps to empty the city in a major rainfall. At the 17th Street Canal gate, there is currently only 10 percent of pre-storm pumping capacity.

The Corps acknowledges that there is decreased pumping capacity and says it is working as fast as it can to improve it.

But based on his own examinations of the Corps' paperwork, and visits to the stations, McBride considers 60 percent of the city's pumping capacity unreliable. He says delays in finishing paperwork, failure to bid out work that was already funded, and the refusal to even acknowledge that some pumps need repair have set the city up for major flooding in a tropical storm, never mind another Katrina.

"For them to have abandoned the city like this is unconscionable, immoral and reprehensible — and possibly criminal, frankly," says McBride, who now regrets the money he's spent restoring his home. "It's a death trap."

Others say all the investment in New Orleans will be for naught if more is not done — and quickly — to restore the city's natural defenses.

In a single day, New Orleans lost wetlands that were expected to last another 50 years. Despite studies that show that every three to four miles of wetland that a storm surge crosses reduces its elevation by one foot, Congress has yet to earmark a single dollar for wetlands restoration, complains environmental advocate David Helvarg.

"The lessons that seem to be learned are how to do better evacuations, not how to prevent the need for the evacuations," says Helvarg, president of the Blue Frontier Campaign.

"The floods ain't going away. They're just going to intensify. But the present policy seems to be designed to create a Third World in this country ... that's never fully able to recover from the last series of storms before the new ones come in."

All together, the refrain is clear: The culprits who brought New Orleans to this sorry state are still not doing enough to reclaim its future.

Kroloff, the dean of Tulane's architecture school, thinks the federal government could easily have doubled or tripled the amount already committed to New Orleans. And he doesn't buy the excuse that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or other national priorities should prevent it.

"The rebuilding of this place neither taxes the imagination nor the resources of this country in any way," he says. The amount sent to the city so far is "ludicrous when you think of the relative value of this area to the rest of the country."

Kroloff says every day he wakes up in New Orleans, he is both grateful "and utterly frustrated." He considers New Orleans one of the half dozen truly great American cities, and it pains him to think that it might be allowed to just slip away.

"Cities come and cities go, there is no doubt about it," he says. "History demonstrates that over and over again. Amazing cities of the past that had huge influence over the way we live don't exist any more. Ultimately, that could be the fate the befalls New Orleans.

"But it's not necessary now."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060819/ap_on_re_us/katrina_who_s_to_blame

 

[GET YOU HOT]

FEMA - The Secret Government


By Harry V. Martin with research assistance from David Caul


Copyright FreeAmerica and Harry V. Martin, 1995


Some people have referred to it as the "secret government" of the United States. It is not an elected body, it does not involve itself in public disclosures, and it even has a quasi-secret budget in the billions of dollars. This government organization has more power than the President of the United States or the Congress, it has the power to suspend laws, move entire populations, arrest and detain citizens without a warrant and hold them without trial, it can seize property, food supplies, transportation systems, and can suspend the Constitution.
Not only is it the most powerful entity in the United States, but it was not even created under Constitutional law by the Congress. It was a product of a Presidential Executive Order. No, it is not the U.S. military nor the Central Intelligence Agency, they are subject to Congress. The organization is called FEMA, which stands for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Originally conceived in the Richard Nixon Administration, it was refined by President Jimmy Carter and given teeth in the Ronald Reagan and George Bush Administrations.

FEMA had one original concept when it was created, to assure the survivability of the United States government in the event of a nuclear attack on this nation. It was also provided with the task of being a federal coordinating body during times of domestic disasters, such as earthquakes, floods and hurricanes. Its awesome powers grow under the tutelage of people like Lt. Col. Oliver North and General Richard Secord, the architects on the Iran-Contra scandal and the looting of America's savings and loan institutions. FEMA has even been given control of the State Defense Forces, a rag-tag, often considered neo-Nazi, civilian army that will substitute for the National Guard, if the Guard is called to duty overseas.

THE MOST POWERFUL ORGANIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Though it may be the most powerful organization in the United States, few people know it even exists. But it has crept into our private lives. Even mortgage papers contain FEMA's name in small print if the property in question is near a flood plain. FEMA was deeply involved in the Los Angeles riots and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some of the black helicopter traffic reported throughout the United States, but mainly in the West, California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Colorado, are flown by FEMA personnel. FEMA has been given responsibility for many new disasters including urban forest fires, home heating emergencies, refugee situations, urban riots, and emergency planning for nuclear and toxic incidents. In the West, it works in conjunction with the Sixth Army.

FEMA was created in a series of Executive Orders. A Presidential Executive Order, whether Constitutional or not, becomes law simply by its publication in the Federal Registry. Congress is by-passed. Executive Order Number 12148 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. FEMA has only spent about 6 percent of its budget on national emergencies, the bulk of their funding has been used for the construction of secret underground facilities to assure continuity of government in case of a major emergency, foreign or domestic. Executive Order Number 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.

Here are just a few Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen:


EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 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.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 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.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049 assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 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.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has broad powers in every aspect of the nation. General Frank Salzedo, chief of FEMA's Civil Security Division stated in a 1983 conference that he saw FEMA's role as a "new frontier in the protection of individual and governmental leaders from assassination, and of civil and military installations from sabotage and/or attack, as well as prevention of dissident groups from gaining access to U.S. opinion, or a global audience in times of crisis."
FEMA's powers were consolidated by President Carter to incorporate:


the National Security Act of 1947, which allows for the strategic relocation of industries, services, government and other essential economic activities, and to rationalize the requirements for manpower, resources and production facilities;

the 1950 Defense Production Act, which gives the President sweeping powers over all aspects of the economy;

the Act of August 29, 1916, which authorizes the Secretary of the Army, in time of war, to take possession of any transportation system for transporting troops, material, or any other purpose related to the emergency; and

the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which enables the President to seize the property of a foreign country or national.
These powers were transferred to FEMA in a sweeping consolidation in 1979.
HURRICANE ANDREW FOCUSED ATTENTION ON FEMA

FEMA's deceptive role really did not come to light with much of the public until Hurricane Andrew smashed into the U.S. mainland. As Russell R. Dynes, director of the Disaster Research Center of the University of Delaware, wrote in The World and I, "...The eye of the political storm hovered over the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA became a convenient target for criticism." Because FEMA was accused of dropping the ball in Florida, the media and Congress commenced to study this agency. What came out of the critical look was that FEMA was spending 12 times more for "black operations" than for disaster relief. It spent $1.3 billion building secret bunkers throughout the United States in anticipation of government disruption by foreign or domestic upheaval. Yet fewer than 20 members of Congress , only members with top security clearance, know of the $1.3 billion expenditure by FEMA for non-natural disaster situations. These few Congressional leaders state that FEMA has a "black curtain" around its operations. FEMA has worked on National Security programs since 1979, and its predecessor, the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency, has secretly spent millions of dollars before being merged into FEMA by President Carter in 1979.

FEMA has developed 300 sophisticated mobile units that are capable of sustaining themselves for a month. The vehicles are located in five areas of the United States. They have tremendous communication systems and each contains a generator that would provide power to 120 homes each, but have never been used for disaster relief.

FEMA's enormous powers can be triggered easily. In any form of domestic or foreign problem, perceived and not always actual, emergency powers can be enacted. The President of the United States now has broader powers to declare martial law, which activates FEMA's extraordinary powers. Martial law can be declared during time of increased tension overseas, economic problems within the United States, such as a depression, civil unrest, such as demonstrations or scenes like the Los Angeles riots, and in a drug crisis. These Presidential powers have increased with successive Crime Bills, particularly the 1991 and 1993 Crime Bills, which increase the power to suspend the rights guaranteed under the Constitution and to seize property of those suspected of being drug dealers, to individuals who participate in a public protest or demonstration. Under emergency plans already in existence, the power exists to suspend the Constitution and turn over the reigns of government to FEMA and appointing 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. The plan also authorized the establishment of concentration camps for detaining the accused, but no trial.

Three times since 1984, FEMA stood on the threshold of taking control of the nation. Once under President Reagan in 1984, and twice under President Bush in 1990 and 1992. But under those three scenarios, there was not a sufficient crisis to warrant risking martial law. Most experts on the subject of FEMA and Martial Law insisted that a crisis has to appear dangerous enough for the people of the United States before they would tolerate or accept complete government takeover. The typical crisis needed would be threat of imminent nuclear war, rioting in several U.S. cites simultaneously, a series of national disasters that affect widespread danger to the populous, massive terrorist attacks, a depression in which tens of millions are unemployed and without financial resources, or a major environmental disaster.

THREE TIMES FEMA STOOD BY READY FOR EMERGENCY

In April 1984, President Reagan signed Presidential Director Number 54 that allowed FEMA to engage in a secret national "readiness exercise" under the code name of REX 84. The exercise was to test FEMA's readiness to assume military authority in the event of a "State of Domestic National Emergency" concurrent with the launching of a direct United States military operation in Central America. The plan called for the deputation of U.S. military and National Guard units so that they could legally be used for domestic law enforcement. These units would be assigned to conduct sweeps and take into custody an estimated 400,000 undocumented Central American immigrants in the United States. The immigrants would be interned at 10 detention centers to be set up at military bases throughout the country.

REX 84 was so highly guarded that special metal security doors were placed on the fifth floor of the FEMA building in Washington, D.C. Even long-standing employees of the Civil Defense of the Federal Executive Department possessing the highest possible security clearances were not being allowed through the newly installed metal security doors. Only personnel wearing a special red Christian cross or crucifix lapel pin were allowed into the premises. Lt. Col. North was responsible for drawing up the emergency plan, which U.S. Attorney General William French Smith opposed vehemently. The plan called for the suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to FEMA, appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and the declaration of Martial Law. The Presidential Executive Orders to support such a plan were already in place. The plan also advocated the rounding up and transfer to "assembly centers or relocation camps" of a least 21 million American Negroes in the event of massive rioting or disorder, not unlike the rounding up of the Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

The second known time that FEMA stood by was in 1990 when Desert Storm was enacted. Prior to President Bush's invasion of Iraq, FEMA began to draft new legislation to increase its already formidable powers. One of the elements incorporated into the plan was to set up operations within any state or locality without the prior permission of local or state authorities. Such prior permission has always been required in the past. Much of the mechanism being set into place was in anticipation of the economic collapse of the Western World. The war with Iraq may have been conceived as a ploy to boost the bankrupt economy, but it only pushed the West into deeper recession.

The third scenario for FEMA came with the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King brutality verdict. Had the rioting spread to other cities, FEMA would have been empowered to step in. As it was, major rioting only occurred in the Los Angeles area, thus preventing a pretext for a FEMA response.

On July 5, 1987, the Miami Herald published reports on FEMA's new goals. The goal was to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent, or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad. Lt. Col. North was the architect. National Security Directive Number 52 issued in August 1982, pertains to the "Use of National Guard Troops to Quell Disturbances."

The crux of the problem is that FEMA has the power to turn the United States into a police state in time of a real crisis or a manufactured crisis. Lt. Col. North virtually established the apparatus for dictatorship. Only the criticism of the Attorney General prevented the plans from being adopted. But intelligence reports indicate that FEMA has a folder with 22 Executive Orders for the President to sign in case of an emergency. It is believed those Executive Orders contain the framework of North's concepts, delayed by criticism but never truly abandoned.

The crisis, as the government now see it, is civil unrest. For generations, the government was concerned with nuclear war, but the violent and disruptive demonstrations that surrounded the Vietnam War era prompted President Nixon to change the direction of emergency powers from war time to times of domestic unrest. Diana Raynolds, program director of the Edward R. Murrow Center, summed up the dangers of FEMA today and the public reaction to Martial Law in a drug crisis: "It was James Madison's worst nightmare that a righteous faction would someday be strong enough to sweep away the Constitutional restraints designed by the framers to prevent the tyranny of centralized power, excessive privilege, an arbitrary governmental authority over the individual. These restraints, the balancing and checking of powers among branches and layers of government, and the civil guarantees, would be the first casualties in a drug-induced national security state with Reagan's Civil Emergency Preparedness unleashed. Nevertheless, there would be those who would welcome NSC (National Security Council) into the drug fray, believing that increasing state police powers to emergency levels is the only way left to fight American's enemy within. In the short run, a national security state would probably be a relief to those whose personal security and quality of life has been diminished by drugs or drug related crime. And, as the general public watches the progression of institutional chaos and social decay, they too may be willing to pay the ultimate price, one drug free America for 200 years of democracy."

The first targets in any FEMA emergency would be Hispanics and Blacks, the FEMA orders call for them to be rounded up and detained. Tax protesters, demonstrators against government military intervention outside U.S. borders, and people who maintain weapons in their homes are also targets. Operation Trojan Horse is a program designed to learn the identity of potential opponents to martial law. The program lures potential protesters into public forums, conducted by a "hero" of the people who advocates survival training. The list of names gathered at such meetings and rallies are computerized and then targeted in case of an emergency.

The most shining example of America to the world has been its peaceful transition of government from one administration to another. Despite crises of great magnitude, the United States has maintained its freedom and liberty. This nation now stands on the threshold of rule by non-elected people asserting non-Constitutional powers. Even Congress cannot review a Martial Law action until six months after it has been declared. For the first time in American history, the reigns of government would not be transferred from one elected element to another, but the Constitution, itself, can be suspended.

The scenarios established to trigger FEMA into action are generally found in the society today, economic collapse, civil unrest, drug problems, terrorist attacks, and protests against American intervention in a foreign country. All these premises exist, it could only be a matter of time in which one of these triggers the entire emergency necessary to bring FEMA into action, and then it may be too late, because under the FEMA plan, there is no contingency by which Constitutional power is restored.

 

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