cannabisnews.com: The Perilous Search for Security at Home





The Perilous Search for Security at Home
Posted by CN Staff on July 28, 2002 at 22:23:27 PT
By Alison Mitchell
Source: New York Times 
The ambitious plan to collapse 22 agencies and tens of thousands of employees into a new homeland security behemoth is nothing less than a project to transform American society. The question, as Congress and President Bush wrangle over the details, is into what? It promises to be a years-long debate, as day after day, policymakers weigh how much America wants to change its government, culture and way of life in the name of warding off further devastating attacks. 
"Creating a new department of homeland security is not the end of our reform efforts," says Tom Ridge, the White House director of homeland security. "It is the beginning." No one denies that the Sept. 11 attacks changed the balance that Americans had struck between security and civil liberties. And repeatedly throughout American history, safeguards on civil liberties have been lifted in times of war, only to return with peace.A central challenge a free society faces in countering terrorism is in maintaining its own character, protecting its citizens while preserving what makes the society worth protecting in the first place.What is different here, and what Americans are only now beginning to absorb, is the prospect of an open-ended war, without a decisive victory or clear end point. "It's hard to imagine what war doesn't permit, if this really is war," said Philip B. Heymann, a former deputy attorney general under President Clinton and the author of "Terrorism and America: A Commonsense Strategy for a Democratic Society" (M.I.T. Press, 1998). "But while this is a more dangerous terrorism than we've ever know, it isn't war as we've known it. To say that under these new circumstances, the president can, as if at war, do everything without Congressional consent, that civil rights and liberties have to take a back seat and that this will go on, not for five years, like World War II, but as long as terrorism goes on, seems to me to be quite frightening."That fear is not confined to liberals. Libertarians have expressed concern that the need for security will create a more intrusive, all-powerful government. In Congress, Republicans who support President Bush's proposals to give the government more sweeping powers are also struggling with the implications, even as they argue that extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures."There are going to be strong pressures to expand domestic intelligence collection, which will raise a number of issues of civil liberties and privacy," said Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "The questions are what type of domestic intelligence should the United States have? Against whom should that domestic intelligence capability be targeted? And where within the federal government should those responsibilities be placed?"All these questions take on new urgency in a new sort of mobilization — one in which the enemy is not in Europe or East Asia, but here.The pressure can already be seen on a number of fronts. • The Pentagon is reviewing whether the military, in a break with a century-old national tradition, should have a role in domestic law enforcement in the event that the nation faces a catastrophic attack.• Attorney General John Ashcroft was on Capital Hill last week defending a government program to enlist millions of Americans as spies on their fellow citizens in the hope that they will be able to tip off authorities to the presence of potential terrorists. • Lawmakers who are investigating the performance of the nation's intelligence agencies leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks are asking whether the United States should take a lesson from other Western nations and create an elite domestic intelligence service responsible for surveillance of terrorists inside the nation.President Bush has told the nation it is in a war against terror, a war like no other, and so Republicans argued on the House floor Friday that the president should have special national security authority to break out of the bounds of the civil service law at times in the creation of the Department of Homeland Security."We're in a war," said Representative Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican, "And the homeland security department is a very very important part of the president's strategy in dealing with the war." Yet by labeling the United States's fight against terrorism a war, Mr. Heymann said, it has already put pressure on the society to abandon its traditional standards of rights, liberties and basic fairness. Some lawmakers in both parties have their own concerns. "We don't want to see a `1984' Orwellian-type situation here where neighbors are reporting on neighbors," said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a Utah Republican, warning Mr. Ashcroft about the Justice Department's citizens' tips program.Part of the question the nation is still grappling with after seeing nearly 3,000 lives taken by terrorists using commercial airliners as weapons, is whether this is war, and if so what sacrifices are demanded. The end of World War II and the beginning of the cold war propelled forward the National Security Act of 1947, which began unifying the military and created the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. The space race led to creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.Christopher F. Edley Jr., a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights and a Harvard law professor, said that in these jittery times, suspicion itself is "like a highly charged cloud looking for something to attach itself to."That something, he said, is likely to exist "in the constitutional netherworld of immigration and preventive detention, where the limits of liberty are hotly debated in the first place, and where it therefore seems more difficult to resist the state's arguments about security and convenience. "Take the question of whether, under extraordinary circumstances, the military should be involved in law enforcement. It was used in this manner in the South after the Civil War until Congress began to worry that this posed a threat to the tradition of military subordination to civilian authorities. In response, lawmakers passed the 1878 Posse Comitatus act to make it a crime to use the army to enforce laws. Congress would need to act again if it wanted to grant the military a new role in case of a catastrophic terrorist act. For now, Congress is focusing its attention on homeland security in a rush to have a new Cabinet agency to bring home to the voters. Different House and Senate views of the power of the agency will still have to be reconciled in the fall. Then it will be up to the administration to show that it can meet its promise of melding different agencies with different cultures and mores into a unified force truly capable of fighting back terrorists and securing the nation's borders. "If we come back a year from now and immigration and customs and transportation security officers are not in the same office at the airports, we've got a big problem," said Paul C. Light, director for the Center for Public Service at the Brookings Institution. "They should be in the same office, come in the same door and be wearing the same uniform." But he also warned that getting reorganization right takes a long time. After all, almost 40 years after the 1947 National Security Act, Congress was still passing laws to give the Secretary of Defense enough power to force the armed services to cooperate. Source: New York Times (NY)Author: Alison MitchellPublished: July 28, 2002Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company Contact: letters nytimes.com Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Related Articles: Foundations are in Place for Martial Law in the US http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13557.shtmlUse of Military for Civilian Policing is Dangeroushttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13510.shtmlSoldiers at US Border Posts To Be Armed http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12371.shtml 
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Comment #16 posted by Zero_G on July 29, 2002 at 13:17:17 PT
I do, indeed
agree, I only point out that rather than "It Can't Happen Here" it "Has Happened Here" and continues...
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Comment #15 posted by Nuevo Mexican on July 29, 2002 at 13:12:48 PT
dimebag,dddd, mayan,zerog, p4me,indy,kap, jtyler
ditto to your links and posts! Nothing for me to add other than: Look at history, and the cycle we're in! Get ready for the fall, buy a trampoline! Its like a long leash, the longer the leash, the greater the threat of being choked to death when the end comes! Remember Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, Nixon, bush, history always repeats!
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Comment #14 posted by krutch on July 29, 2002 at 12:34:52 PT:
Point Taken, Zero G
This is scary. I think we should not legitimize this practice by officially trashing pose comitatus. I suspect you agree.I see a distinction between using military inteligence to drive a police action and actually having the military participate in the police action. I think it is as unnecessary now as it was when Reagan decided to trash it for the Drug War. This is not an armed insurgence, we are at war with no nation that exists any more, and the only attackers of American citizens were armed with box cutters.
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Comment #13 posted by Zero_G on July 29, 2002 at 12:04:44 PT
pose comitatus
No president ever proposed using the US military to seek out Soviet spies or stomp on our home grown communists. 
krutchThe US Army intelligence service was used to discredit Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and we don't really know the true extent of military involvement in Cointelpro.In any event, the Federal Gov't has consistently skirted posse comitatus as it has felt necessary. Scary.
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Comment #12 posted by krutch on July 29, 2002 at 11:42:21 PT:
What About the Cold War?
How quickly people forget.From the end of WWII until the USSR fell we where in a cold war with the USSR. We lived with the possiblity of devastating attack everyday. No president ever proposed using the US military to seek out Soviet spies or stomp on our home grown communists. Now some ragtag band of fanatics hijacks a few planes and we are ready to trash the constitution. Why destroy the rights of the Americian people? Instead lets start screening immigrants and visitors carefully. Especially those from the fundementalist countries where these kinds of terrorists come from.If we wait until the threat of terrorism is gone to get the rights that Bush and his puppet masters want to steal from us back we will have a long wait. Terrorism has been around for a long time. The possiblity is never going to dissappear. Many experts on terrorism and Moslem politics warned the US about the possiblity of terrorist attacks long before 9/11. We just about ignored them. Now that one terrorist attack happens we are ready to trash our whole system. We are fighting a war in Afganistan and I am clueless on what we have acomplished. If we can't fight the terrorists on foreign soil with our military, why are we worried about fighting them in country with our military? The people who did this were armed with box cutters, not missles and artillery. If we had proper intelligence any civilian police force could have subdued them.Get a clue George W.
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Comment #11 posted by Zero_G on July 29, 2002 at 11:18:49 PT
cussin'
I hope the voters turn him out of office like they did his father. John TylerJust quick note - the voters never turned him into office, the felonious five on the court did.Let me add my voice to the chorus:Gimee an FGimee a UGimee a C Gimee a KWhat's That Spell, Louder I can't hear you...One two three fourWe Don't Want Your Fuckin' War!
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Comment #10 posted by John Tyler on July 29, 2002 at 10:05:03 PT
Bush Team
These guys are in way over their heads. All they can come up with is more central control. They are going off the deep end. It seems a few people in Congress are waking up to this. This reminds me of Bush I's New World Order or One World Order, anyway it sounded scary, so he was voted out of office at the first chance. Now, we have a continuation of this with Bush II. I hope the voters turn him out of office like they did his father.  
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Comment #9 posted by dimebag on July 29, 2002 at 08:28:57 PT
Lets Tell It Like It Is
OK Sheeple, for those of you that dont know already this Whole 9/11 thing Could have and Should have been Prevented but seems the people pulling the strings in high places wanted this to happen, As part of a Bigger Plot / Scheme maybe to Rule the World. As we know, who rules the United States, pretty much rules the World.Ok, here it is the Whole shoot-N-match.  Basically the four planes that got Hijacked had a Flight path as does every plane. Some little Geek is supposed to sit at a computer and watch the plane as it flys its course. Well if this plane loses contact and goes off course in any way shape or form then Two F-16 fighter Jets are launched immediately to make contact with that plane and If no contact can be made with that plane then they decide if it poses any thret to American Soil. Meaning they can shoot the bitch down if they feel it necessary, Even if there are american citizens in it..... Do we get the Big picture here..... there were at lease 15 American Air-Force Bases close enough to catch each and every one of those Planes that hit the Twin Towers, and Pentagon. This should piss you off because Someone ordered those F-16's to not take off. And there should have been at least 8 in the air. I mean cummon it took 20minuts for the Second Plane to Hit the Second Tower, in that time plenty of F-16's and Harriers could have been in place to protect the second tower and the Pentagon and Oh the White house... Humm, which reminds me, That mysterious Plane that crash landed in Pennsylvania was headed for the White house, but mysteriously crashed. I dont think it was taken over by passengers but Shot down by U.S Government because they knew the Destination of that Plane and the damage it could have caused. So Any of you that thought this 9/11 thing was a big surprise to our government, THINK AGAIN. We are the product of some mastermind controlling everything. You are A sheep if you dont come to Grips with what I just told you. Or if what I just told you made no sense or your just too thick headed to realize the truth.Think About It.Dimebag.
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Comment #8 posted by goneposthole on July 29, 2002 at 06:48:40 PT
'Domestic Intelligence'
It would have been nice to have had 'domestic intelligence' before September 11, 2001.There wasn't much of it around back then.If one is referring to the people in the congressional, executive, and judicial branches of the US Gov. as 'domestic intelligence', sorry, but there isn't any. None, nada, nichts, nein, not, not any at all.Homeland Security. What homeland security? What are these jokers cooking up?Whatever it is, I don't like it. "Jokers to the left of me, clowns to the right."Stuck in the middle with 'homeland insecurity'.
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Comment #7 posted by mayan on July 29, 2002 at 04:14:10 PT
Cynthia McKinney
War on Terrorism or Police State?
http://www.counterpunch.org/mckinney0725.htmlMcKinney hits opponent's court record: 
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/metro/0702/4thcong.html
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Comment #6 posted by mayan on July 29, 2002 at 03:58:20 PT
Oh My God...
This is insane!Local governments can inspect inside your private home: 
http://www.ashevilletribune.com/local_gov__invade_homes.htm
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Comment #5 posted by Industrial Strength on July 29, 2002 at 02:00:55 PT
that dddd
The pied piper of cursing, a negative influence on us all with his filthy curse words. Don't you know women and children read these boards? Children. Children. Children. Children. Children. Children. What? In Michegan they could throw the book at you. What about the children????
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Comment #4 posted by BGreen on July 29, 2002 at 00:20:54 PT
More cussing. Sorry, FoM, it's dddds' influence
Typical. They fuck up, we suffer.
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Comment #3 posted by dddd on July 28, 2002 at 23:43:16 PT
..Right On p4me...
..we have seen very scant coverage of this in the national media!........this legistlation is a BEHEMOTH,in the world of US Sheeple!.....
 
..actually,Three Grotesque pieces of legistlation,(if you could call it that,),,that are at least equivalent to the USA/PATRIOT act.............For some strange reason,,,they must be SHOVED through...into LAW,,before the lawmakers go on "break"(?).........[...can you say "stock market?].....The stock market which is teetering on the brink of a grand meltdown,,,would be saved if these laws were passed....the shrub is like a desperado...his speech is absurdly surreal.....and no one seems to notice!...no one seems to think anything has a very high fuckedness level!
 
 
...sonuvafuckinbitch!!!!!!!!.................dd..........d................d.......{sorry for all the swear words...they were not meant to offend ,,but rather embellish...}
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Comment #2 posted by p4me on July 28, 2002 at 23:02:45 PT
What is the hurry?
Why can't they do this piecemeal instead of all at one time? And what the f is the hurry about next week? Screw that deadline. It has all the markings of another Patriot Act mistake with the built in excuse of we had to act.Where are the Cspan transcripts of the debate or is there really any debate. Cokie Roberts acts like they will push a Homeland Security Act through and Busch will sign it. Immediately after the speech by Busch announcing the desire for such an agency Charlie Rose had a stellar lineup of guest to analyze the situation. Ironically it had been a group of democrats that had wanted the new agency and it was acknowledged by I think it was 4 extremely high profile guest. One of them was the editor of the New Yorker and the NY Times had a representative, possibly that Aluetta(SP) guy I admire that is the media manager. Anyway I have not heard it mentioned since that night that the democrats were the first to call for a reorganization. It is just strange really with a massive free press and internet and all.Oil is the subject of the day and future days. You do not much here of stories on global domination of oil but onlinejournal.com had a good article about the Philippines and their oil: http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin072502/chin072502.html1,2
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Comment #1 posted by qqqq on July 28, 2002 at 22:54:19 PT
...."At War"...[?]...
""We're in a war," said Representative Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican, "And the homeland security department is a
      very very important part of the president's strategy in dealing with the war." "
...What a pile of CRAP!!! 
 
.
..we are not "at war"....If you buy into the charade that claims we are "at war",,then you probably also believe that there are "a few bad apples",in corporate America,,,and you probably think this latest radio address is normal.....!..
 
 President Bush's July 27 Radio Address to the Nation
U.S. Newswire
27 Jul 15:16WASHINGTON, July 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Following is the
text of President Bush's radio address to the nation today:THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This week, the federal government
took decisive action against corporate fraud and abuse. The Justice
Department arrested several executives who used a public company as
a personal loan agency, while hiding their actions from investors
and employees. Additional investigations coordinated by our
corporate fraud task force are underway across the country. It
should be clear to every shareholder, investor and employee in
America that this administration will investigate, arrest and
prosecute corporate executives who break the law.During the last several months, I've called on Congress to pass
strong reforms to hold corporate officers accountable for their
actions. This week, members of Congress responded to that call. The
House and the Senate passed bipartisan reforms, increasing the
penalties for corporate wrongdoers and creating tougher standards
for corporate auditors, so that investors and employees can trust
the accounting statements of their public companies. This
legislation will help reassure Americans that our economic system
is sound and fair. I thank the Congress for their hard work, and I
look forward to signing the bill next week.Members of the United States Senate have one more week before
they head home for August recess. I urge them to take up several
important issues. The Senate should pass trade promotion authority,
which will give me a stronger hand in negotiating foreign trade
agreements. Trade agreements create good jobs and economic growth,
because they open new markets to America's farmers and ranchers and
manufacturers. I urge the Senate to get a final bill to my desk so
I can immediately take action that will create jobs and strengthen
the economy.The Senate should pass the defense appropriations bill, which
includes the largest increases in defense spending since the Reagan
years. Our military needs to plan for a long war on terror and
prepare for all the missions that lie ahead. The House passed its
defense appropriations bill in June; now the Senate must make the
defense of our country a top priority.The Senate should not go home before approving a new Department
of Homeland Security. This department will coordinate our nation's
response to grave national threats, to anticipate our enemies,
analyze our vulnerabilities, and act forcefully to address them.
And the Senate must give the Department of Homeland Security all of
the authority and flexibility it needs to protect the American
people.And the Senate should protect the retirement security of
American workers. In April, the House passed pension reforms based
on my proposals, to give workers more timely information and
greater control over their own retirement funds, as well as access
to professional investment advice. America's retirement security is
too important to fall victim to political game playing, and the
Senate must act now.By taking action on these issues, the Senate can advance our
national priorities of defending freedom, protecting our homeland
and strengthening our economy. The Senate now has one week left to
make progress for the American people, and I urge them to seize the
opportunity.Thank you for listening.
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