[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 39 (Tuesday, March 11, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H1724-H1725]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          MARTIAL LAW CONCERNS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Madam Speaker, I come to the House floor tonight to 
talk about an issue which I think is of grave concern to this country.
  I recently read an article published in the Sydney, Australia, 
Morning Herald entitled ``Foundations Are in Place for Martial Law in 
the United States.''
  The author is a man named Ritt Goldstein, an investigative reporter 
for the Herald, and he said that recent pronouncements from the Bush 
administration and national security initiatives put in place in the 
Reagan era could see internment camps and martial law in the United 
States.
  When President Ronald Reagan was considering invading Nicaragua, he 
issued a series of executive orders which provided FEMA with broad 
powers in the event of a crisis, such as the violent and widespread 
internal dissent or national opposition against a U.S. military 
invasion abroad. They were never used.
  But with the looming possibility of a U.S. invasion of Iraq, recent 
pronouncements by President Bush's domestic security chief, Tom Ridge, 
and an official with the Civil Rights Commission should fire concerns 
that these powers could be employed or a de facto drift into their 
deployment in the future.

                              {time}  2030

  On the 20th of July, the Detroit Free Press ran a story entitled 
``Arabs in U.S. Could Be Held, Official Warns.'' The story referred to 
a member of the Civil Rights Commission who foresaw the possibility of 
internment camps for Arab Americans. FEMA has practiced for such an 
occasion.
  FEMA, whose main role is disaster response, is also responsible for 
handling U.S. domestic unrest.
  From 1982 to 1984, Colonel Oliver North assisted FEMA in drafting its 
civil defense preparations. Details of those plans emerged during the 
1987 Iran-Contra scandal. They included executive orders providing for 
suspension of the Constitution, the imposition of martial law, 
internment camps, and the turning over of government to the President 
and FEMA.
  A Miami Herald article on the 5th of July, 1987, reported that the 
former FEMA director's, Louis Guiffrida's, deputy, John Brinkerhoff, 
handled the martial law portion of the planning. The planning was said 
to be similar to one Mr. Guiffrida had developed earlier to combat a 
national uprising by black militants. It provided for the detention of 
at least 21 million American Negroes in assembly centers or relocation 
camps. Today, Mr. Brinkerhoff is with the highly influential Anser 
Institute for Homeland Security. Following a request by the Pentagon in 
January that the U.S. military be allowed the option of deploying 
troops on American streets, the institute in February published a paper 
by Mr. Brinkerhoff arguing the legality of this. He alleged that the 
Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which has long been accepted as 
prohibiting such deployments, had simply been misunderstood and 
misapplied. The preface to the article also provided the revelation 
that the national plan he had worked on under Mr. Guiffrida was 
approved by Reagan and actions were taken to implement it.
  By April, the U.S. military had created a Northern Command to aid 
homeland security. Reuters reported that the command is mainly expected 
to play a supporting role to local authorities. However, Mr. Ridge, the 
Director of Homeland Security, has just advocated a review of U.S. law 
regarding the use of military for law enforcement duties.
  Disturbingly, and it just really should disturb people, the full 
facts and contents of Mr. Reagan's national plan remain uncertain. This 
is in part because President Bush took the unusual step of sealing the 
Reagan Presidential papers last November. However, many of the key 
figures of the Reagan era are part of the present administration, 
including John Poindexter, to whom Oliver North later reported.
  At the time of the Reagan initiatives, the then-Attorney General, 
William French Smith, a Republican, wrote to the National Security 
Adviser, Robert McFarlane: ``I believe that the role assigned to the 
Federal Emergency Management Agency in the revised executive order 
exceeds its proper function as a coordinating agency for emergency 
preparedness. This department and others have repeatedly raised serious 
policy and legal objections to an emergency czar role for FEMA.''
  Criticism of the Bush administration's response to September 11 
echoes Mr. Smith's warning. On June 7 of last year, the former 
Presidential counsel, John Dean, spoke of America sliding into a, 
quote, ``constitutional dictatorship,'' close quote, and martial law.
  The reason I raise this issue is that I come from a State where in 
1941 under executive order by the President, 9661, we rounded up all 
the Japanese Americans in this country and put them in concentration 
camps. We have set in place the mechanism to do that again and we must 
not, we cannot sacrifice the Constitution in this rush to war that we 
are doing in Iraq.

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