29 October 2001
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 23:06:54 -1000
To: cypherpunks@minder.net
From: R
Subject: Re: Pravda Propaganda On The NRA, GOA and MilitiasI'm not so sure Bill White is a "red."
Bill White, the author of the subject-line story, wrote something for Indymedia.org also - it sheds a bit of light on him, perhaps also on Tim's response to the article.
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=79625BILL WHITE: ISRAELI LOBBY SCRAMBLING FOR NEW APPROACH TO CRISIS (PART 1)
[Reader comment on Bill White's Indymedia article:]
Bill White's name pops up on some email lists I lurk on notably the National Anarchist egroup. Which is a bunch of racist fuckwits trying to pretend that they aren't racist fuckwits.
They seem to believe in communities based on racially pure lines. They also don't seem to like gays too much.
Yuda
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 07:30:11 -0500
To: R
From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: Re: Pravda Propaganda On The NRA, GOA and MilitiasI had one of my Russian friends check Pravda to see how Bill White's article was inserted (Since I can't read Russian fluently). Here is what he said:
Freematt's Russian friend in Moscow wrote:
It is, most probably, neither a posting in an open forum nor an editorial. It is just an outside commentary/opinion article. Pravda.ru has many writers doing this kind of articles for it. Sometimes it publishes articles by Antiwar.com authors, seemingly with their permission.
27 October 2001
Tim May, Pravda, FBI, Jim Kallstrom, FBI/CIA, US Army.
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 09:01:36 -0700
Subject: Re: Pravda Propaganda On The NRA, GOA and Militias
From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
To: cypherpunks@lne.com
On Friday, October 26, 2001, at 08:27 AM, Matthew Gaylor wrote:
Matt Gaylor has forwarded this article. My profound thanks to him. This is one of the most insightful articles I've seen on the real internal political situation in the U.S., the "red" vs. "blue" separation.
Truly ironic that it takes a "red" to understand the "reds" in the U.S.
(For those outside the U.S., a word of explanation. For some reason, political mappers showed votes for Al Gore in blue and votes for Bush in red. I have no idea how this came to be...I had never noticed it until this past election. In fact, it was only in this past election that most of the commentators glommed on this "look at the red parts of the map versus the blue parts of the map" meme, so apparently a lot of us got exposed to this red vs. blue mapping only recently.)
While there's still a little bit of "propaganda" language in the article, it is generally a more incisive analysis of the developing trends in American politics than nearly all of what passes for analysis by American journalists.
I urge people to read the full article carefully. I'll only comment on a handful of paragraphs.
--Tim May
http://english.pravda.ru/usa/2001/10/18/18529.html[Full article below.]
Oct, 18 2001
20:11 2001-10-18BILL WHITE: GUN GROUPS SEE STEADY BLEED INTO MILITIAS; DOMESTIC UNREST STILL GROWING IN UNITED STATES
There are three issues that motivate America's militia movement - support of gun rights, opposition to taxation, and opposition to the United Nations and the loss of America's sovereignty to global corporate rule - a system the militias see as socialism and anti-globalists label capitalism, and which is really a blend of the worst elements of the two.
Amazing that a Russian publication (is it really Russian, or just reprinted by them?) gets this so right. Nearly all American journalists just babble about skinheads and survivalists when they talk about the militia movement.
Among these issues, the most important, the one that seems most immediately threatening, and which has been the prime motivation for the existence of the militia movement, has been the possibility of nation-wide confiscation of firearms by the US Federal government.
Indeed.
The Real ActivistsThe Southern Poverty Law Center, a rather shady group of lawyers who make profit by suing organizations they label as "hateful",
Wow. It takes a Russian to call a spade a spade.
The SPLC is the most anti-liberty organization in the U.S. Words fail me in describing them.
One militia group based in Southern values that recently drew attention was the Militia of Georgia, an armed formation consisting of what researchers claim is 300 men who operate in at least 20 cells throughout the state, which ordered its members to mobilize in the wake of the September 11 bombings, and to be on guard against attempts by the government to use the bombings to create a New World Order.
This move to a police state took a big move forward this morning, October 26th.
The Potential For SeparatismAmerica's Southerners aren't the only regional-ethnic groups seeking independence from the cosmopolitan internationalism of the nations' elite. Rural New Englanders have launched a "blood and soil" separatist movement of their own. Carolyn Chute's Second Maine Militia, a group that has mixed right-wing, left-wing, and green politics, as well as regional ethnic identity and national separatism, into a 500+ man armed formation based in Northern New England and Canada's eastern provinces, re-released a manifesto calling for people in New England and Canada to revolt and create a new nation - the New Atlantic Confederacy - independent of either government, should the impending war on terrorism cause the central government to lose the ability to maintain control in America's more remote rural areas. Her movement is explicitly pro-gun and anti-capitalist, and deals regularly with other "right-wing" militia organization active in the area. As Chute put it in a 2000 interview:
No particular comment on this excerpt, but I include it to give a flavor of this guy's detailed understanding (he knows a lot more than I do about militia movements, that's for sure!).
"Behind all those urban killings are people created by the Great Progressive Society. These people are not revolting against the Great Progressive Society. They are raw imitations of the Great Progressive Society. We are led to believe that the professional middle class are the winners, the working class are the losers. As I see it, class is about values, dependence and ways of communicating. The working class person values place, interdependence, cooperation, the tribe. Rural working class especially values land. Many of us would kill to keep our land, our home, which for thousands of years was not considered a crazy thing to do. Middle-class professionals are into "success" and they are a dependent people, happily dependent on the consumer system for everything. You call it independence. But if you lost your electricity, your service people, your access to stores, you'd see how independent you are! Working-class people have become dependent on these things, too, but working-class values resent this dependency."
Wow.
Conclusion: America's Militia Movement Is Not To Be DiscountedIt is clear that the rural people of American - the mostly white population descended from the original European settlers of the nation - have become alienated from the cosmopolitan blend of urban white liberals and their train of ethnically defined special interests that have gained control of America's cities. One only has to look at a map of who voted for George Bush and who voted for Al Gore to see that a clear divide has occurred between the values of the country's elite and their lackeys, and the real working people of the nation.
Agreed. Too bad Bush is pushing the New World Order agenda, though I suppose it was thrust upon him by events. Al Gore certainly would have been even more internationalist.
America's white working class, so long reviled by the intellectuals and the clique that control the government, has been organizing itself into regional-ethnically based citizen militias that are prepared to fight to restore the values of their ancestor's revolution two hundred and twenty five years ago. For the first time in a century, more of America's white population lives in rural areas than in it's cities, and that demographic change is only one indicator of the larger, more widely spread divide.Should the American nation fracture, whether due to a massive terrorist attack, the repressive domestic policies of its government, or a combination of both, it is clear that there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Americans who are already organized in paramilitary armed formation for the goal of seizing power and restoring the Constitutional Republic that they feel progressive liberalism has lost them.
An insightful summary.
Copyright )1999 by "Pravda.RU". When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, reference to Pravda.RU should be made.
Gladly.
--Tim May
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Nietzsche
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 11:27:24 -0400
To: cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com
From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: Pravda Propaganda On The NRA, GOA and Militias
http://english.pravda.ru/usa/2001/10/18/18529.html
Oct, 18 2001
20:11 2001-10-18
When agents of America's US Marshals surrounded the Indiana Baptist Temple, accusing the church and its parishioners of violating US tax laws by refusing to pay social security taxes on non-clergical employees, they didn't charge in with guns blazing, as they did at Waco. Concern about bad publicity was there, but there was a more serious concern just under the surface - the Southern Indiana Regional Militia, a 250-man "unorganized" citizen's militia unit, had pledged to defend the church - and their threats were taken seriously.
"Steps have been taken and we are ready to respond if something does happen," Roger Stalcup, elected commander of the militia, told Indiana's Hoosier Times, "It's my opinion that if you've got people in that church and the U.S. marshals go in, anything can happen."
His statements were taken seriously, and his unit, which marches under the slogan "God Bless The Republic -- Death to the New World Order", was listed in a press release by the US Marshals as a major reason they chose to negotiate, rather than raid, the dissident religious group's headquarters. The Southern Indiana Regional Militia had been trained in small-unit tactics by former US military personnel, several of whom hold officer ranks in the citizen's group, and their ability to take on the US government in a fire fight could not only have been difficult for the federal police forces - it could have been disastrous.
The Southern Indiana Regional Militia is not an isolated phenomena - it is one of hundreds of similar units which have been growing in size and influence across the country since the announcement by George the First of his plans for a "New World Order" - a New World Order that many Americans believe is planning to destroy the US Constitution and enact dictatorial martial law in the name of the United Nations and the international corporate-socialism.
Origins In America's Gun Activist Community
There are three issues that motivate America's militia movement - support of gun rights, opposition to taxation, and opposition to the United Nations and the loss of America's sovereignty to global corporate rule - a system the militias see as socialism and anti-globalists label capitalism, and which is really a blend of the worst elements of the two. Among these issues, the most important, the one that seems most immediately threatening, and which has been the prime motivation for the existence of the militia movement, has been the possibility of nation-wide confiscation of firearms by the US Federal government. In America, the people know that the foundation of their liberty is their ability to use firearms to resist government police and military personnel, and it is widely believed that an attempt to confiscate their arms will be the first step in imposing a dictatorship on US citizens. Daily this has seemed more real, and thus there has been a steady bleed of activists out of mainstream groups like the National Rifle Association, and into more confrontational activist groups, like Gun Owners of America and the Tyranny Response Team, and eventually into militias and other armed non-governmental formations.
The NRA recently reported in the last election, with voters faced with the threat of anti-gun Al Gore winning the presidency, that its membership surged from under three million to over four million. Some say that number is slowly edging closer to five. In a nation of 280 million people, nearly 1.5% of the population - one person out of sixty six - is a member of the country's largest gun lobby.
It is from these membership figures, and from the ability to mobilize large numbers of activists at the local level and bring them out to work polls and fill campaign offices for pro-gun politicians, that the NRA has always derived its power. While there is no doubt of the NRA's monetary power, it's opponents, often funded by billionaires like Andrew J. McKelvey, can usually match or exceed it in that arena. What the NRA has that anti-gun groups don't is the ability to bring out tens of thousands of Americans each election cycle to hand out literature, plant road signs, fold mailings, and engage in the community activism needed to fight anti-gun legislation. But it is in this arena that upstart groups have offered the most competition.
Gun Owners of America, headed by Larry Pratt, is a radically pro-gun organization that, in contrast to the NRA, has called for the elimination of all regulations on firearms purchases and ownership, including mandatory background checks, and which has taken a hard line against the United Nations. Pratt is a radical Constitutionalist and Christian who openly mixes his religious beliefs with his politics, and has been accused of sharing the stage with even more extreme leaders - including members of the Aryan Nations and the Ku Klux Klan (though he has not been accused of sharing their views). In 1996, that accusation forced Pratt out as an aid to the Buchanan campaign. In 1998, according to anti-gun researcher Kenneth Stern, Pratt's organization had 100,000 members. Now, similar anti-gun researchers estimate his group has grown to as many as 150,000 - 200,000 in size, and there is no question that the core of his strength is NRA grassroots activists who are leaving the NRA to be involved in more militant forms of activism.
Another group that has worked with Pratt's, and which forms an even more confrontational front of its own, is the Tyranny Response Team, a network of pro-gun "minute men", based on the minute men militias of the American Revolution, who go out to anti-gun events and to speeches by anti-gun politicians to confront and challenge the often skewed and distorted presentation of gun politics. The TRT, founded by Jewish gun store owner Bob Glass, has also gone beyond gun activism, holding regular 500-man protests against the Internal Revenue Service and the United Nations conference on small arms. While the TRT declined to give out membership information, it has branches in approximately 33 states, and most branches have 50 to 100 regular active members, meaning the group comprises at least 1500 regular activists nationwide - with an unknown number of less-active "supporting" members.
These groups, with their anti-globalist, anti-UN rhetoric and primitive class perspective - what Americans call "populism" - have begun to draw more radical elements of the NRA, such as Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, to adopt similar rhetoric. In a recent issue of America's First Freedom - the NRA's fast-growing political magazine - LaPierre denounced global corporations, the wealthy, and ruling-class billionaires as being behind the plot to take away America's Second Amendment rights.
And while groups like Gun Owner's of America and the Tyranny Response Team are not militias per se, and often engage in very mainstream pandering in some of their rhetoric - the headquarters branch of the TRT in particular is ultra-Zionist, with its members sometimes appearing in public with yellow Stars of David reading "gun owner" in an attempt to link the current conflict between gun owners and the US government with the conflict between Jews and the German Third Reich - they serve as a bridge for gun owners who don't want to engage in the compromising, pro-Republican politics of the NRA, but who also reject the more extreme step of joining armed formations that openly challenge the power of the central government - groups like the Southern Indiana Regional Militia.
A Case Study In Radical Growth
Recently, in Montgomery County, Maryland, a relatively affluent suburb of Washington, DC, the local government attempted to ban gun shows - large, open exhibitions where guns and traded and sold on tables set up at the local fairgrounds. The result was a series of protests that destroyed the local NRA organization, led to the radicalization of its local head, and which left a definite imprint on local politics.
Augustus Alzona, an official in the Maryland Republican Party Central Committee, and the head of the County NRA's lobbying division at the time (NRA-ILA), was incensed at the decision of local officials to ban trading in guns. When he heard that a hearing was planned, he began organizing members to show up and protest the government's decision.
But Greg Costa, the NRA's official lobbyist in the State of Maryland, was equally incensed at Alzona's decision to hold protests. Costa views the NRA as a "moderate" and "non-confrontational" organization, and decided to make his legislative priority in the state not a pending local ban on gun shows, but stopping a noise ordinance that would have threatened a business investment he had made in a local shooting range. He ordered Alzona not to hold protests, and when Alzona refused, Costa fired him from his position in the NRA:
"I told him I didn't want them to protest and he wouldn't listen. I can't have people doing what I tell them not to do," Costa told a Pravda source.
The meeting collapsed in a raucous bout as pro-gun protestors threatened to shoot local Councilmembers if they passed the legislation. Local news media focused on the role of the Tyranny Response Team in the protests, though the truth was that most of the anger came from more radical elements not affiliated with the TRT group. For Alzona, it was a decisive moment. He took on a new role in the TRT Maryland group as its Volunteer Media Coordinator. Regarding the NRA, he told Pravda that Costa was a liar, and that his non-involvement in activism was a motivator for this defection:
"I've never spoken to [Costa] regarding the gun show bill and any of it's ramifications - never have, so far. I did try to reach him to discuss last February's hearing a week before the hearing, but, never did."
And Alzona isn't the only Maryland activist that sees the NRA and its lobby as ineffective, unreachable, and out of touch. John Latham, a gun activist who joined the NRA in the wake of the anti-gun hysteria that followed the Columbine shootings, decided to move over to the TRT as well. He has now declared he is running for the State Legislature as an Independent in Maryland's 16th legislative district, and told Pravda he left the NRA because he grew tired of the people and their perspective on what gun rights activism means:
"A man reaches a certain age he decides he wants to have a club," Latham told Pravda, "I don't consider that real activism that's a club, not a lobby."
The Real Activists
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a rather shady group of lawyers who make profit by suing organizations they label as "hateful", has been reporting that the number of "militia" groups active in the United States has been declining. Unfortunately, their research is badly skewed, as they count as a "militia" group anyone who opens a post office box and declares themselves a one-man "militia". Other figures, such as those circulated by the ADL, a Jewish organization which is opposed to the private ownership of firearms, estimates that while the number of groups may be shrinking, this is due to a consolidation of activists in a smaller number of larger organizations, and that as many as one million Americans may be sympathetic to, and peripherally involved in, militia activity.
This has been evidenced as well by the "radicalization" of mainstream groups that share common views with the militias, but until recently have not shared the militia's extreme image and tactics. Southern groups - groups that represent the values of America's White Southern minority - have been particularly radicalized in recent months with the continuation of a campaign by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a pro-black group with origins in the communist movement of the turn of the last century, to destroy public monuments to the Southern Revolution and to the Southern Nation - known as "Dixie" -- which existed from 1861-1865 during the American Civil War. With a heritage based in revolt against the US federal government, and with an often deeply held belief in the independence of the states and the decentralization of government power, views that motivate Southern political thinking and ideology have definitely exerted their influence over militia thinkers.
One militia group based in Southern values that recently drew attention was the Militia of Georgia, an armed formation consisting of what researchers claim is 300 men who operate in at least 20 cells throughout the state, which ordered its members to mobilize in the wake of the September 11 bombings, and to be on guard against attempts by the government to use the bombings to create a New World Order. The local commander, Jimmy Wynn, in a message to his membership wrote:
"When we cease to intervene in the affairs of every nation on earth, maybe some of these people will leave us alone. The WTC attack should be a WAKE UP CALL. I need each of you to become involved each of you needs to take preparedness seriously (we could go to war and it could reach our shores) The biggest thing we need is commitment: the commitment [to] prepare ourselves. THE TIME FOR ACTION IS NOW!!!"
The Potential For Separatism
America's Southerners aren't the only regional-ethnic groups seeking independence from the cosmopolitan internationalism of the nations' elite. Rural New Englanders have launched a "blood and soil" separatist movement of their own. Carolyn Chute's Second Maine Militia, a group that has mixed right-wing, left-wing, and green politics, as well as regional ethnic identity and national separatism, into a 500+ man armed formation based in Northern New England and Canada's eastern provinces, re-released a manifesto calling for people in New England and Canada to revolt and create a new nation - the New Atlantic Confederacy - independent of either government, should the impending war on terrorism cause the central government to lose the ability to maintain control in America's more remote rural areas. Her movement is explicitly pro-gun and anti-capitalist, and deals regularly with other "right-wing" militia organization active in the area. As Chute put it in a 2000 interview:
"Behind all those urban killings are people created by the Great Progressive Society. These people are not revolting against the Great Progressive Society. They are raw imitations of the Great Progressive Society. We are led to believe that the professional middle class are the winners, the working class are the losers. As I see it, class is about values, dependence and ways of communicating. The working class person values place, interdependence, cooperation, the tribe. Rural working class especially values land. Many of us would kill to keep our land, our home, which for thousands of years was not considered a crazy thing to do. Middle-class professionals are into "success" and they are a dependent people, happily dependent on the consumer system for everything. You call it independence. But if you lost your electricity, your service people, your access to stores, you'd see how independent you are! Working-class people have become dependent on these things, too, but working-class values resent this dependency."
And Chute's movement is growing. She recently joked that she could probably maintain 1500 men under arms in the State of Maine alone "if she could keep up with the mail", and in a state of emergency, the number of women seeking protection under arms from ready formations would likely swell those ranks.
With groups like Chute's growing in every state of the Union, and the central government growing more and more willing to enact the kind of emergency measures that these groups are willing to fight against, the potential for wide-spread confrontation, and wide-spread revolt, particularly in the context of a break-down of government control caused by massive terrorist attacks, is growing.
Domestic Unrest and Anthrax
As the US has continued to see its media and government institutions attacked by anthrax-infected letters, a debate has raged over who is responsible. The Zionist-dominated US media has used the attacks as an excuse to implicate Iraq, though that effort seems to be motivated more by political gain than the actual facts. Though Iraq was found by UN weapons inspectors, during the 1990s, to have built two missile warheads with liquid anthrax payloads, the weapons were discounted by US experts as "ineffective", and Iraq is not known to have the ability to create the refined powder form of anthrax being used in the recent attacks. In fact, that ability exists in only two organizations in two countries - the US and Russian governments.
The US federal government also appears to believe in the domestic terror theory. Recently, the Center for Disease Control re-released a 1999 report authored by Jessica Stern of the Council of Foreign Relations, stating that most anthrax threats in the United States are linked to "far-right militia" organizations. Certainly, some of the recent scares, including the mailing of over 100 bogus threat letters to Planned Parenthood clinics, match the "far-right militia" pattern. But the possibility that the actual anthrax cases are linked to militia groups has been seized on by social democratic political lobbyists in an attempt to turn the US "war on terrorism" against dissident groups back at home. Australian terrorism "specialist" Clive Williams recently told the Times of India with utmost confidence:
"I think the first instances of [the anthrax threats], the ones involving media, were more likely to have been caused by extremist militia in the US who have shown an interest in anthrax in the past and tried to acquire it. The subsequent instances were basically copy-cat episodes by mentally unbalanced people."
But no US militia group is known to posses the refined, military form of anthrax being used against the US media and government, and most US militia groups are more concerned with defending themselves against anthrax than spreading it in such a way that their families and communities might be affected. That leaves a third possibility - that the recent anthrax attacks have been committed by members of the US political establishment against other members of that establishment - a theory boosted by the revelation that two of the most recent victims - Tom Brokaw and Tom Daschle - are apparently good friends who's families know each other and often vacation together in the Dakotas.
In short, it appears more likely at this point that the recent string of anthrax threats in the US is the result of a deterioration of the internal political situation, than of an outside threat to the integrity of the nation. The question of whether it is related to the growing armed dissent against the central government is open however, as it may simply be a manifestation of political factions using instability as an excuse for assassination.
Conclusion: America's Militia Movement Is Not To Be Discounted
It is clear that the rural people of American - the mostly white population descended from the original European settlers of the nation - have become alienated from the cosmopolitan blend of urban white liberals and their train of ethnically defined special interests that have gained control of America's cities. One only has to look at a map of who voted for George Bush and who voted for Al Gore to see that a clear divide has occurred between the values of the country's elite and their lackeys, and the real working people of the nation.
America's white working class, so long reviled by the intellectuals and the clique that control the government, has been organizing itself into regional-ethnically based citizen militias that are prepared to fight to restore the values of their ancestor's revolution two hundred and twenty five years ago. For the first time in a century, more of America's white population lives in rural areas than in it's cities, and that demographic change is only one indicator of the larger, more widely spread divide.
Should the American nation fracture, whether due to a massive terrorist attack, the repressive domestic policies of its government, or a combination of both, it is clear that there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Americans who are already organized in paramilitary armed formation for the goal of seizing power and restoring the Constitutional Republic that they feel progressive liberalism has lost them.
Osama bin Laden has said that he feels that terrorist attacks can create enough instability in America that forces that already want to change the course of the government will see it weakened enough that an opportunity to act will emerge. With the growing divorce between an imperial government of usurpation and the nation's original Constitutional principles, bin Laden may not be far off.you may discuss the article in our forum
Copyright )1999 by "Pravda.RU". When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, reference to Pravda.RU should be made.
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From: "Garrison St.Clair"
<gunslinger@insaro.org>
To: TERRORISM@MEDICCOM.ORG
Subject: TERRORISM: USA/WORLDWIDE - Speech by FBI Director - 24OCT01 [long
text]
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 20:21:26 -0600
Remarks by Robert S. Mueller III
Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation
At the Mayors Emergency, Safety, and Security Summit
United States Conference of Mayors
Washington, DC
October 24, 2001
Good morning, and thank you. Thank you for having me here today. As Mayor Morial indicated, I started as FBI director on September 4. And more than one person has come up to me and said, "You had a relatively short honeymoon." And that would be accurate.
I want to thank, before I go further, I want to thank you for your leadership -- Mayor Morial, Mayor Menino, Mayor Garner, and Executive Director Tom Cochran -- for having the foresight and the wisdom to call this important meeting, and for giving me the opportunity to join with you today.
I want to thank all of you for the outstanding leadership that you're providing to your cities and to our country. And at this pivotal -- I think it's fair to say -- at this pivotal moment in history, you have been towers of strength in your communities. And I particularly want to thank you for your extraordinary support, your cooperation and your guidance that you provided to the FBI during these past six weeks.
This morning, I want to let you know how deeply committed the FBI is to working with you to ensure the safety and security of your communities now and in the future. The FBI, as you probably know, is pouring its heart and its soul into the investigation of the September 11 attacks. Every resource that can be deployed is being deployed. Every person who can be utilized is being utilized. We now have well over 7,000 FBI personnel involved, and that's about one in four of our employees. We are examining every scrap of evidence. In fact, we've gathered, sometimes working on hands and knees in the rubble and mud of crash sites, more than 3,700 separate pieces of evidence. This is easily the largest and most comprehensive investigation in our history.
But beyond the investigation itself, our overriding priority right now is prevention, making sure that terrorists do not succeed in striking America and America's cities again. Now, it may well be overly optimistic to think that every single attack can be prevented. But we can certainly give it everything we have got, and that is exactly what we are doing.
Now, we at the FBI are not new to prevention. With your help, over the last few years, we've had successes. An example, perhaps, would be two years ago when we foiled a plot to blow up a gas tank in Sacramento, perhaps saving as many as 12,000 lives. But historically, we have been better at tracking down terrorists after the fact than at stopping them in their tracks before they strike. And we have, in the past, not always aligned our resources, our strategies, and our skills specifically towards prevention, to the degree that they are now so aligned.
A few weeks ago, we established at FBI headquarters a terrorist prevention task force made up of representatives of a dozen different agencies. Its goal is to identify and stop future terrorist acts with proactive investigations and to attempt to predict and to prevent future scenarios. The work of this group, for example, has led us to heightened sensitivities on crop dusters in the latter part of September. We have had in the past, and do today, have 35 joint terrorism task forces located in your cities and other cities across the country. Those task forces are working hard to gather intelligence and pursue any hint of a lead that might help us identify terrorists or their associates. We also have beefed up our resources overseas, where many of the leads have taken us and where we're getting some outstanding cooperation from England, Germany, France, Spain and a number of other countries.
We're also working with you and other colleagues at the federal, state and local level to shore up security at critical public events and to protect critical infrastructures like water and transportation systems. We are assessing threats in real time and providing warnings to your cities and to the nation. I must tell you that the threat level remains very high. More attempts and possible attacks are a distinct possibility. This possibility requires all of us to continue walking the fine line of staying alert on the one hand, without causing undue harm on the other hand.
Clearly, we are deeply concerned about the growing wave of anthrax attacks and related incidents. At this point, it is not clear if the few confirmed anthrax exposures were motivated by organized terrorism, but these attacks were clearly meant to terrorize a country already on the edge. We're responding swiftly to each and every incident. By way of background, we usually are involved in 250 assessments and responses relating to weapons of mass destruction a year. We've had more than 3,300 in just the past three weeks alone, including 2,500 involving suspected anthrax incidents. And even though most turned out to be false alarms or hoaxes, we are taking each report seriously, as I know each of you in your cities are also. And those who are pulling pranks and hoaxes won't find our severe response to those all that funny.
Our work in these investigations, of course, has been supported at every turn by you and your colleagues across the nation, as well as by a host of federal, state, and even international partners. From the first moment that I joined the FBI several weeks ago, one of my highest priorities has been to improve our working relationship with you, with elected leaders and law enforcement partners around the world. And the events of September 11th have only strengthened my resolve in that regard. I have from my experience and am now even more convinced that no one institution is strong enough to tackle the challenge of terrorism alone. No one agency or entity at any level, whether it be federal, state or local, has the length or the breadth of talent and expertise. We must work together. Law enforcement, quite simply, is only as good as its relationships.
Now, these past six weeks have given me a good opportunity to see how well our FBI supports you and your cities, and I've seen encouraging signs. I know that many of our Special Agents in Charge -- our SACs, as we call them -- are reaching out and keeping you involved and informed. But at the same time, I heard that there are some areas where lines of communication aren't as open as they should be, where we're keeping you at arm's length, and where we're not affording you the level of support you deserve.
As soon as I heard of these issues, I reached out to key law enforcement leaders and asked them to educate me on their issues and their concerns. I asked them to give it to me straight, and they did.
Building on these initial conversations, I held a series of meetings last week with representatives of the major city chiefs, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Sheriffs' Association, and along with the Attorney General, have met with a number of other similar law enforcement associations. The meetings were helpful, open, candid and I think productive.
What we heard will likely be familiar to many of you. We heard that the FBI is not always calling on your local police professionals to track down leads; that we're sometimes not following up quickly enough on leads that come to us that involve your cities; that you need information digitally, if at all possible; and that the FBI isn't giving you specific enough information on threats; and that we're even withholding information.
Let me start and clarify the last point, the point about specific information on threats and withholding information. The FBI is not withholding significant information due to security concerns. The fact is much of the information we have can be released to law enforcement. But the fact is also that often, on most occasions, our information is simply not as specific or developed as we would all like it to be.
One issue that has come up and that is our ability to distribute to your law enforcement agencies what we call the watch list. The issue was raised as to why it could not be put into NCIC and distributed to you digitally. We now have done that. We've added that watch list to the National Crime Information Center list, or NCIC. But, by the same token, we often do not have much more than names or aliases. As we get confirmed photos or other information, we will add them to the system.
There's another point I do have to emphasize, and that is, when it comes to the electronic arena, the FBI is often far behind you and your colleagues. Overhauling our electronic infrastructure is a major priority for us, one that we are addressing now.
Beyond these few clarifications, I must say that many of the concerns that I've heard were valid, and we are stepping forward to address them. I've asked the Special Agents in Charge in cities where we don't already have a joint terrorism task force to get one up and running quickly. While these task forces aren't a panacea, they do break down stereotypes and communications barriers, more effectively coordinate leads and help get the right resources in the right places. In short, they are an excellent tool for melding us together in ways that make information sharing a non-issue. I've also asked the SACs to coordinate leads with local law enforcement wherever and whenever possible. I've invited law enforcement leaders to identify individuals, two or more, who can work with us in our Strategic Command Center at the FBI headquarters on the national investigation. And I've asked that representatives be added to our prevention task force.
I'm also exploring with the leaders of law enforcement the possibility of establishing a working group composed of officials from the FBI and local law enforcement that could identify other specific issues and find workable solutions.
Now, in my mind these are some initial first steps, and more will follow. Some issues may need to be addressed through legislation. And as we move through this process, I only ask that you please bring any problems or issues to our attention. I want to know what you're experiencing, how the FBI is treating you, and you can be assured that we will, and I will, respond.
In the coming months, we'll continue our work to strength and modernize the FBI. We had some changing to do before September 11, and that need has only intensified since the tragedy of that date. We at the FBI, as well as state and local law enforcement, clearly have got to become more proactive and more prevention oriented. We need to be able to look down the road five or 10 years and gauge what's coming and start adapting now.
We've got to look closely at our skill sets to see if they are tracking where we need to be to cope with the 21st century and crime in the 21st century. We've got to rebuild our electronic infrastructure and digitize our information systems. And of course we've got to continue building a stronger, more seamless and more supportive relationship with you and with law enforcement and with emergency responders nationwide.
These are my priorities for the coming months, and I welcome any advise and insight you might have. And I welcome and appreciate your continuing support. As difficult and as trying as these times are, I have a great deal of confidence and optimism about the future. We will get through this challenge as we've gotten through every other. And we will get through it by leaning on each other, by falling back on our bedrock values and by tapping into the deep reservoir of determination, strength, and courage that exists throughout America. And together, I'm confident that we can keep our cities safe and strong and continue to make our country a shining example of freedom for the world. I want to thank you and bless you and the cities for which you are responsible.
(end text)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/27/nyregion/27KALL.html
The New York Times
October 27, 2001
SECURITY
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The former F.B.I. official heading New York State's antiterrorism campaign said yesterday that the state's 80,000 municipal law enforcement officers would be tied into a new network providing intelligence information intended to prevent new terrorist attacks.
The official, James K. Kallstrom, said he spoke to a group of 300 police chiefs and officers in Albany this week, telling them, "We are going to get all of you back into the business of counterterrorism." He called the local forces "our front line of defense."
In an interview in his office at 633 Third Avenue in Manhattan, Mr. Kallstrom, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York office and now Gov. George E. Pataki's director of public safety, said the effort was intended in part to keep better track of foreigners who are considered potential security risks after years of letting them into the country with few controls.
"If some night police on the Taconic Parkway stop someone who's an illegal alien who doesn't have proper documentation, we need a better system of contacts and follow-up," he said. He declined to describe the network in any detail, saying only that it would be some kind of computer link.
"We are communicating with every cop on the street and every sheriff on the street with relevant real- time information all the way from Washington and down to the cops and back again," he said. "We want to make their vision even more peripheral and piercing."
College security officials should also be mobilized to look out for foreign students who obtain visas for study in the United States but disappear before ever registering, Mr. Kallstrom said.
To assist him in his duties, he said, he lured out of retirement a former chief of the New York Police Department, Louis R. Anemone, to be his deputy, and was planning a staff of 25 to 30. Among those who have volunteered their services, he said, are a former official of the Central Intelligence Agency and a businessman with expertise in biological threats.
"I want to have people of many different mind-sets in the room," Mr. Kallstrom said.
He said he was setting up a number of "brain trusts" of experts in health, science and engineering. "Shame on us if we don't take advantage of biometrics and our ability to positively identify someone," he said, referring to the science of identifying people through their individual characteristics, like fingerprints or retinal patterns.
He said he was also working closely with a special state subcommittee on terrorism formed by State Senator Roy M. Goodman, the Manhattan Republican and chairman of the Senate Investigations Committee.
In three weekly closed-door meetings so far, including one on Wednesday with Mr. Kallstrom, that panel, which includes four former New York police commissioners and several former federal agents, identified persistent vulnerabilities in aviation, rail and waterway systems; emergency medical care; and other areas, and offered a variety of remedies, some drawn from the war against organized crime.
Panel members said they called for installing chemical and biological sensors in airports, rail stations and tunnels; arming pilots in the cockpit; and getting the Federal Aviation Administration and private contractors out of the airline security business.
The group reviewed about 2,000 possible targets, a list compiled for the millennium celebrations, said Raymond W. Kelly, a former New York police commissioner and United States customs commissioner.
Robert J. McGuire, another former police commissioner, said that if the country was truly at war, the authorities should be viewing terrorist suspects more as potential prisoners of war to be interrogated than as criminals to be prosecuted. Mr. Kallstrom said he would not comment on Mr. McGuire's position.
Henry I. DeGeneste, a former superintendent of the Port Authority police in charge of the New York area's airports, said food service employees and other staff members still had too much unsupervised access to secure areas, and he called for passenger and employee screenings to be taken over by federal officers.
One medical specialist who addressed the panel, Dr. Irwin Redlener, president of the Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, told the group that the emergency health care system was not paying enough attention to the needs of children, who are particularly vulnerable to chemical and biological agents.
Mr. Kallstrom said, "There may be bumps in the road," but vowed an unrelenting engagement. "We're obsessed with this, not having something happen," he said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59509-2001Oct26.html
Officials Doubt Any Links to Bin Laden
By Bob Woodward and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 27, 2001; Page A01
Top FBI and CIA officials believe that the anthrax attacks on Washington, New York and Florida are likely the work of one or more extremists in the United States who are probably not connected to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist organization, government officials said yesterday.
Senior officials also are increasingly concerned that the bioterrorism is diverting public attention from the larger threat posed by bin Laden and his network, who are believed to be planning a second wave of attacks against U.S. interests here or abroad that could come at any time, officials said.
None of the 60 to 80 threat reports gathered daily by U.S. intelligence agencies has connected the envelopes containing anthrax spores to al Qaeda or other known organized terrorist groups, and the evidence gleaned from the spore samples so far provides no solid link to a foreign government or laboratory, several officials said.
"Everything seems to lean toward a domestic source," one senior official said. "Nothing seems to fit with an overseas terrorist type operation."
The FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service are considering a wide range of domestic possibilities, including associates of right-wing hate groups and U.S. residents sympathetic to the causes of Islamic extremists. But investigators have no clear suspects, and are not even certain whether there are other undetected letters that contained the deadly microbe.
But federal health officials said yesterday that a new case of pulmonary anthrax in a man who worked at a State Department mail facility in Northern Virginia has persuaded them that more than one contaminated letter may have been sent to the Washington area. Health experts previously believed that a single letter, sent to the office of Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), likely caused all the anthrax reports in the Washington area as it came in contact with other pieces of mail in the system.
Now the "working hypothesis would be that this is not cross-contamination," said Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "There is not enough infectious material from cross-contamination to do that."
However, ongoing searches of truckloads of undelivered mail to the U.S. Capitol and other government buildings has turned up no other letters laced with anthrax bacteria, leading FBI officials to assume that the Daschle letter may still be the only local source. Two employees at the U.S. Postal Service's Brentwood facility in Washington have died from inhaling the lethal bacteria, and three other local postal workers have contracted inhalational anthrax.
"This envelope, Daschle's envelope, is not watertight or airtight or anything like that," one law enforcement official said. "It's porous. At one or two microns, there's plenty of room for the spores to escape."
Although there is consensus at the FBI and CIA that al Qaeda associates are planning more serious attacks, "nobody believes the anthrax scare we are going through is" the next wave of terrorism, one senior official said. "There is no intelligence on it and it does not fit any [al Qaeda] pattern."
No links between known foreign terrorist groups and the anthrax letters have shown up on the daily Top Secret Threat Matrix, which includes the latest raw intelligence on potential bombings, hijackings or other terrorist attacks, one official said. Though "lots of things are alarming" on the list, there is little agreement on how, when or where an attack might be launched, officials said.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III warned earlier this week that additional terror attacks are a "distinct possibility."
President Bush and other top U.S. officials have publicly voiced their suspicion that bin Laden and al Qaeda -- accused of carrying out the Sept. 11 suicide assaults on the World Trade Center and Pentagon -- may be responsible for the anthrax mailings.
But Mueller, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other law enforcement officials have said they have discovered no links between the mailings and bin Laden. Authorities, speaking on condition of anonymity yesterday, said they are increasingly doubtful that any connections will be found.
One official said the only significant clue raising the possibility of foreign terrorist involvement is the conclusion of FBI behavioral scientists, who believe that whoever wrote the three letters delivered to Daschle, NBC News and the New York Post did not learn English as a first language.
But the writer could have lived in this country for some time, and the other evidence gathered so far points away from a foreign source, several officials said.
The anti-Israel message in the anthrax letters and bin Laden's statements are echoed by U.S. extremist groups, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.
One group, Aryan Action, praises the Sept. 11 attacks on its Web site and declares: "Either you're fighting with the jews against al Qaeda, or you support al Qaeda fighting against the jews."
Cooper said a meeting this year in Beirut was attended by neo-Nazis and Islamic extremists united in their hatred of Jews. "Some extremists are now globalized," he said.
White supremacists have been linked with anthrax in the past, but not in relation to an attack.
Larry Wayne Harris, an Ohio microbiologist and former member of the Aryan Nations, was convicted of wire fraud in 1997 after he obtained three vials of bubonic plague germs through the mail. He was arrested the next year near Las Vegas when the FBI acted on a tip that he was carrying anthrax. But agents found harmless anthrax vaccine in the trunk of his car.
Cooper and officials at the Southern Poverty Law Project, which monitors U.S. hate groups, said they have seen no evidence of a domestic group capable of launching a sophisticated anthrax attack.
One of the challenges that a would-be terrorist faces is learning how to alter the anthrax so that it will float in the air and disperse widely. The Washington Post reported this week that the spores in the Daschle letter had been treated with a chemical additive using technology so sophisticated that it almost certainly came from the United States, Iraq or the former Soviet Union.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday, however, that investigators believe a broad range of people are capable of the crime. "The qualityanthrax sent to Senator Daschle's office could be produced by a Ph.D. microbiologist and a sophisticated laboratory," he told reporters.
U.S. officials said the evidence so far does not point to either Russia or Iraq. However, FBI checks of private and government laboratories in the United States have not yet revealed any missing anthrax stockpiles, disgruntled scientists or other suspicious circumstances, one top official said.
Koplan, the CDC director, said he suspects more than one letter was involved based on his understanding of how difficult it is to contract inhalational anthrax. To cause the disease, 8,000 to 10,000 anthrax spores must enter a person's lungs.
Although some officials said it is possible for that many spores to have sloughed off the letter sent to Daschle onto another piece of mail, Koplan said that is hard to imagine. "We all think that would be highly unlikely to virtually impossible," he said.
Koplan speculated that there may have been multiple mailings and that "there may be several places within the federal government that have been deemed targets."
By contrast, the minuscule amounts of anthrax bacteria discovered at Walter Reed Hospital and the CIA "may well represent cross-contamination," Koplan said.
William C. Patrick, who is retired from the U.S. Army installation at Fort Detrick, Md., said extensive studies show that once anthrax spores hit the ground or other surfaces they stick, and are very hard to "re-aerosolize.
There's a theoretical possibility that a few spores picked up by an envelope might cause a skin anthrax infection, but a case of inhalational anthrax "is highly unlikely," Patrick said.
Staff writers David Brown, Ceci Connolly, Ellen Nakashima and Peter Slevin and researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
(c) 2001 The Washington Post Company
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 18:30:17 -0400
From: dltranscripts_sender@DTIC.MIL
Subject: Secretary White Briefing on Homeland Security
NEWS TRANSCRIPT from the United States Department of Defense
DoD News Briefing
Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White
Friday, October 26, 2001 - 10:30 a.m. EDT
White: Good morning, everyone. My name is Tom White. I'm the Secretary of the Army. But I'm here today in my capacity as executive agent for the department for Secretary Rumsfeld in homeland security.
As most of you know, we held a hearing -- or the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing -- on this subject yesterday. We had an extensive discussion yesterday afternoon. Let me make three points to kick this off that I made during the hearing, and then we can open it up for your questions.
As I have assessed, as executive agent for homeland security, the current situation, it seems to me that three principal tasks need to get done, and we're working on all three.
The first is to consolidate responsibility for homeland security and the myriad of issues and functions and responsibilities that touch that across the Department of Defense staff into a single organization. This would not represent any significant increase in the DoD staff; it would be a realignment of many people and bits and pieces of staff elements that are already there. Homeland security cuts across certain aspects of SOLIC [Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict], assistant secretary of defense, it cuts across Health Affairs, Reserve Affairs, Policy, Acquisitions to a certain extent in some key areas. And so the first strategic task is to consolidate all that into a single organization. We're working on that.
The second is to complete a review of the operational planning for homeland security through the Joint Staff -- the chairman, the Joint Staff, and the unified commands, to ensure that the arrangements for homeland security between the various unified commands that touch this, that those arrangements are optimal.
General Pace, the vice chairman, who testified with me yesterday, also said that beyond this short-term review that I just described, the Unified Command Plan is being looked at on a more global basis as to whether the arrangements of the Unified Command Plan to deal with global terrorism and the security environment we find ourselves in post-QDR findings are appropriate.
And those will be dealt with in due course. And the final solutions on homeland security will obviously be an integral part of wherever the Unified Command Plan changes come up that the Secretary of Defense will make decisions on, and ultimately, the President.
The third strategic task is the whole business of interagency in coordination with Governor Ridge's office and all the activities that he is undertaking. Let me give you a construct to think about homeland security that I think is useful, and it will contrast who does what to whom.
I define and view homeland security as having two principal elements. The first is homeland defense. And I define defense as those areas where the Department of Defense takes the lead in the activity, like combat air patrols under the command and control of CINC [Commander in Chief] NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command], for example; like maritime coastal protection, which Joint Forces Command would be responsible for, in conjunction with the U.S. Coast Guard, obviously. So there are a set of activities where the unique capabilities of the department cause us to be the lead.
Then there are a whole raft of other activities where we provide support, as requested, to other federal agencies that have the lead, and we call that civil support.
So break it down into those two pieces, and I think it's easier to think about it.
On the civil-support side, that covers a wide range of activities, both at the federal level, and the state and local level involving the Guard, for example, both under state control, under governors' control, and under federal control. And we have a number of examples since the 11th of September of how that process is executed.
So those are the two pieces.
The challenge in the interagency that we are confronting with Governor Ridge, obviously, is there are a wide number of agencies that are involved in the civil support side. So biological attacks, then, as you know, Health and Human Services has the lead; if it's a chemical, it's EPA, and so on -- nuclear, DOE. And to train everyone up to assist the local first responders across the country and what their capabilities -- (prolonged audio break from source) -- Guard today is in Bosnia. And we have about 2,400 of our Virginia/Maryland Guardsmen in Bosnia. So there's a whole slug of people in that category.
There are then a whole group of people who have been activated for homeland security, under the control of governors, but the federal money is paying for those activities. That would include airport security, for example.
And then, finally, the governors have on their own hook activated certain parts of the National Guard to suit their own purposes, and they are paying for them or getting a FEMA reimbursement, as a separate category. So we'll break that all up for you and provide it.
Q: Sir, you are now wearing three hats -- ASD/SOLIC, you're the executive agent for homeland security, and Secretary of the Army. Can you explain, first of all, why you needed to be made acting ASD/SOLIC and then address how long you can do what are usually three full-time jobs simultaneously without giving short shrift to one of the organizations, at least, that you're supposed to be looking after?
White: The reason for the ASD/SOLIC assignment, again on an interim basis, was because there are certain elements of the SOLIC structure that have to do with homeland security and chemical/biological/radiological-type things.
So my interest in SOLIC is that side of SOLIC, and not their Special Operations Command oversight functions and the things that they do for special operations forces. I'm focusing on those pieces for that -- so that's why the SOLIC hat.
The appointment is very clearly on an interim basis, because Secretary of the Army is a full-time job. And as we structure and consolidate at DOD level the new arrangements, we will recruit and bring someone in to head that up, and the Secretary will make choices on that as we go forward.
Q: Mr. Secretary, General Kernan testified yesterday that he's established a directorate within Joint Forces Command to work on planning functions for their operations in homeland defense. Is it reasonable to infer from that that he is likely to be the homeland CINC? Can you tell us any more about the changes coming in the --
White: No. I think it's reasonable to infer from that that he has a significant responsibility for homeland security now, and consequently, he is standing up the appropriate planning activities to accommodate those responsibilities as they currently sit. Where it ends up with revisions to Unified Command Plan is an entirely separate matter.
I might also say that he has under his command, he has stood up a standing Joint Task Force for Civil Support, which is deployable, which has north of a hundred people, and which has done a great deal of planning on how to interface with local and state first responders and FEMA. And they represent a significant capability on the ground now. So JFCOM, Joint Forces Command, has spent a great deal of time looking at this homeland security.
Q: Just to stay with the UCP for a minute, do you expect now that there will be a new four-star billet, a new CINC for homeland security, or is it more likely that that's going to be parcelled among the existing CINCs?
White: Well, all of those options are on the table, and not only the arrangements for homeland security, but the global arrangements, as would be the case in any review of the Unified Command Plan. And that comes up the operational chain, not up my chain. And those are under review, and I don't want to preempt, certainly, the Secretary of Defense, who hasn't made any decisions on that yet.
Q: Mr. Secretary --
White: Yes, ma'am? And then I'll come right to you.
Q: -- would you just direct your comments to the American people. Yesterday in the hearing, a number of senators also said that they wanted the Defense Department to take a much stronger lead than just this on the homeland defense, and would you direct your comments now to the American people on -- many of them are worried about exactly where they stand now. Should they be -- what would you say to them?
White: Well, on the issue of homeland security, the Department of Defense has been actively involved in all aspects of it, and is today and will always be in the future.
We said very clearly in the Quadrennial Defense Review that was released just a month or so ago that homeland security was the most important activity of the Department of Defense. And I think we are giving it the priority that the QDR suggested it should have. That has been the case in the past, and it will certainly be the case in the future.
There are some aspects of homeland security that it is not appropriate for us to be the lead. But in those -- like biological threats, Health and Human Services, the public health system, Center for Disease Control -- those are the appropriate agencies to lead. But we provide a significant level of support from Department of Defense assets to Health and Human Services, to make sure that the overall response to this type of threat is effective. And that's true in a number of other areas as well.
Q: But the senators were saying that they really wanted to amend Posse Comitatus so that the Defense Department could do a whole lot more than it's now doing.
White: We have not found -- well, first of all, we had a lively discussion of that yesterday in the hearing. The law is a law that dates from Reconstruction days after the Civil War, prevents federal troops from being used in law enforcement activities. The president has certain opportunities under the law to take exception to that in matters of emergency.
What we said yesterday was that the broad construct which is -- that is a tradition that has served our country well we think is appropriate. And so I would not see a complete change of that basic prohibition against federal troops being used in law enforcement.
But we are looking at the details of the law to see if revisions are appropriate in the way it's executed or the exceptions that can be taken, and we will get back to the Senate Armed Services Committee with our detailed review when it's finished.
Q: Mr. Secretary?
White: Ma'am?
Q: On homeland defense, I notice there are actually quite a few biological detectors out in front of the Pentagon now. Can you tell us if that was actually the result of a credible threat that the decision was taken to do that? And have you, in a civil support role, deployed other detectors around the nation?
White: We have -- the detectors outside are from a biological detection company that we have in the active force structure. They monitor air quality for a range of biological agents. Their purpose is to identify those. And we have taken a number of steps to improve Pentagon security since the 11th of September. That just happens to be one of them. I won't talk about the details of any threat projections that caused us to do that, consistent with Secretary Rumsfeld's guidance. But that's why they're there, and that's their capability.
Q: Have you sent them elsewhere?
White: Yes?
Q: I'm sorry. Have you sent them elsewhere, to other --
White: Yes, we have. And that, again, is an example of -- the reason we have those companies in the structure is because we face biological agents on the battlefield, which dates from the Soviet days. But they are also tremendously useful from a homeland security perspective, and they are an example of how we in the DOD are stepping up to provide our resources to support Health and Human Services, in this case, to enhance the overall capability.
Yes?
Q: Everybody is crying out for some form of coordination and centralization of the homeland security responsibilities. And yet it seemed that we're -- you know, constantly dividing up the pie again and again. You know, Governor Ridge is an adviser, but the president appointed a retired Army general, General Downing, as the NSC counterterrorism guy. You have your responsibility. You're going to create a new DOD level post, and a CINC. So, instead of consolidating, aren't we dividing this thing up even more?
White: No, I don't think so. I think that we are bringing the appropriate focus by putting these people in critical positions that the subject requires; that homeland security is our most important activity, and consequently, we should be arranged for policy planning and resource allocation within the department in a way that reflects that importance, number one. Number two, that we should look at the command arrangements that we have to make sure that there are no gaps or seams and to make sure that the arrangement of the forces for homeland security is as effective as it can be.
I view that as a positive step. The fact that the president has named a Cabinet-level special assistant to focus the efforts of the entire government I think is very positive as well, and you cite General Downing, who has specific counterterrorism responsibilities on the NSC.
This all to me indicates a heightened awareness and concern for homeland security that I think is appropriate to the environment that we face. So I view that all as a tremendous positive. We are giving it the importance that it hasn't seen since the old civil defense days that we grew up with as kids in the '50s and '60s.
Q: The problem is that no one has centralized budget authority. Everybody is still going to be competing for dollars. And it may be more dollars than we had envisioned before 9/11, but there is nobody, you know, who has control of those budgets. Governor Ridge has no budget authority. You don't have budget authority on his position.
White: Well, we have budget authority over the DoD resources consistent with what the President and the Congress choose to appropriate. And so we have a fundamental responsibility to ensure that we adequately fund what we have stated is a top-priority activity of DoD. Governor Ridge has the position of reviewing budgets and stating his views to the president as to whether he thinks they're adequate or not for homeland security, and that at this point is what the president thought were sufficient arrangements.
Q: Mr. Secretary, it seems like that every decade, the military takes on a new responsibility. In the '80s, it was counterdrug. In the '90s, it was peacekeeping operations. And now in this decade, it looks like it's going to be counterterrorism. How much can the military really take on with its existing resources? And you mentioned that one of your recommendations is to complete a review of the operational planning for homeland security. So what kind of expanded military powers do you envisions as part of counterterrorism? And what additional resources do you need?
White: Well, the answer to the first question is, in the business of homeland security, we started out as a homeland security organization 226 years ago. So in a way, we are returning to our roots. This is really the first time we've been threatened on our soil since the War of 1812, I think. And so this is not a question of an additional duty; this is an inherent duty, a historical duty for the department.
The question of resource allocation to the activity is a question that we are going to get after in the operational planning, at least in the following context: Take the Army, for example. We have active and federal Reserve and National Guard components. They are all actively involved as one Army in what I would call normal deployment activities. The Virginia Guard is in Bosnia, for example. We have Guardsmen in Kosovo. We have Guardsmen forward deployed in other areas of the world.
So there is a -- so there is, from a common force structure, a call for global purposes to suit federal responsibilities, at the same time, governors, who bear principal responsibility for homeland security within their own states, have that same Guard under state control -- Title 32, if you like. And what we have to sort out are the arrangements for what takes priority from a common force structure, and how much of the force should be apportioned or dedicated to homeland security; how much should be ready for overseas deployment. Because that's the fact of life as we currently sit here today. And so that, I think, is the resource challenge that you mentioned in your question, and that's what we're working on.
Yes, ma'am?
Q: Yes. You've said a lot about forces, but not about acquisition. Acquisition, as you know, can be a 20-year process, and it includes requirements. If you're looking at missions that we need to fly over the U.S. defending the homeland, that's very different than the type of things we've defined before. What are your thoughts on what will be the requirements process that gets funneled into acquisition strategy? Don't you need a homeland CINC to do that, if the requirements come down from the CINC level?
White: Well, I think -- yes. And right now -- General Eberhart talked about that yesterday. He got that very question from an air defense perspective during the hearing. And, you know --
Q: It's not just air defense.
White: Hm?
Q: It wouldn't just be air defense.
White: Right. And of course, General Kernan, who was also at the hearing, from a land and maritime responsibility, also will bring forward into the requirements process his views of what his critical deficiencies are, and the requirements that would ultimately either drive acquisition of something or some reconfiguration of structure or something else to deal with that. That's why the operational planning that's going on is so important.
And I think General Eberhart was talking about the different requirements associated with flying a domestic-type cap, as opposed to the traditional cap in the CENTCOM AOR, and the communications associated with it, and other things that would be unique here, that he has to deal with the requirements of. So they are getting on with it, and that's why it's so important to make sure that everybody understands who is in charge of what piece of it.
Yes, sir?
Q: Mr. Secretary, those of us who come to work in this building have gotten used in the last few weeks, used to passing by checkpoints with troops, as opposed to policemen. Americans are seeing troops in their airports now instead of just policemen. Do you expect that in the coming months we're going to have to become accustomed to seeing troops at shopping malls or city halls or banks? Is that going to be -- become a fixture of American life?
White: Well, I think in the short term, and mainly under state control, you will see the Guard used for security purposes, as deemed appropriate by the governors of the various states. The airport security -- uniformed airport security is under state control, and it's all National Guard.
We hope that that is of a temporary nature and that those Guardsmen, for, example, who are currently in the airports -- about 6,000 of them total, in over 430 airports across the country -- would be replaced in the near term by civilians in some contractual arrangements that would ensure us to meet the same standards of security, but without the uniformed military. So our view is that it should be, in most cases, temporary in nature, and that we would seek to put more permanent solutions in place.
Yes?
Q: Yes, sir. What DoD resources or support are local and state officials requesting most? And how able are you to provide them?
White: We have had a number -- well, first of all, on the state and local side, the first call to fill in that gap is the Guard of the particular state in question. In 23 of our states, our adjutant general, who directs the Guard on a daily basis, is also the director of emergency services for the governor. So they come together in a fairly efficient way. So most of the state and local requests are handled by the Guard, and a number of Guardsmen are deployed protecting power stations in New York or other critical infrastructure that the governor seeks.
We get a steady flow of requests -- over 70 of them so far, since the 11th of September -- from federal agencies of all types for specific types of support, and then we decide and work with the lead federal agency as to the appropriateness of the use of DoD resources for that, and then we get the resources deployed in an efficient way. And that is a daily activity here at the department. And as I said, we've filled over 70 requests. And by and large, the vast majority of requests that we get, we find ways to accommodate.
Q: May I follow up on the answer you gave to his question about you would like to see the Guardsmen there on just a temporary basis and have a more -- it sounds like the answer to that question and the answer to -- you don't really want to see posse comitatus eliminated, you want a very limited role for the Defense Department in security --
White: Well, we want whatever role is necessary in the near term to solve the security challenge. But in the long term, we would much rather see airport security, for example, being a civilian security arrangement, as opposed to the use of Guardsmen in that capacity.
Yes?
Q: But -- not just exactly on that example, but overall, you want a very limited role?
White: Yes -- well, I think -- let's think about homeland security just for a minute in terms of who does it.
There are in the country 11 million state and local first responders across a broad range of activities in homeland security -- local hazmat teams, fire departments, emergency medical teams, and so forth. And they are the first line of defense for homeland security.
It seems to me the long-term solution is to ensure that those 11 million, or 12 million, or whatever the number has to be, bear the principal responsibility for most aspects of the civil side -- as opposed to the fighter caps -- of homeland security, and that we commit the additional resources necessary to ensure that the first responders are competent to deal with the range of threats that we now see ourselves very clearly confronted with. And that we, from a department perspective, can fill in the gaps in the interim until they reach that level of confidence, but at some point, we work ourselves out of a job because we'd much prefer to have the state and local people and emergency services able to take care of most of these things, rather than take dedicated resources of the department and manpower of the department to fill that in. And I think it's Governor Ridge's charter to lead us all in this evaluation of the first-responder community and to find out what the right balance is. Yes, sir?
Q: Mr. Secretary, the law provides for, in the case of war, the Coast Guard shifts to DoD from DoT. The president has called this a war against terrorism. You know, is there any talk about shifting the Coast Guard authority? And I understand that JFCOM is going to take over control of the coastal patrol craft from the Navy and use those for homeland security. Do you know what role they're going to play?
White: Well, on the first point: the U.S. Coast Guard works on a daily basis with the Department of Defense and, specifically, the United States Navy in the protection of ports and our coastline. And that is a very tight coordination relationship, which is -- which has been very effective -- particularly since the 11th of September. So that's the -- that is the first point.
The second point is that Joint Forces Command is responsible for the coastal maritime security on both coasts of the United States. And to the extent that Naval forces are involved in that, they are the supported CINC for those activities, so they would exercise control for coastal protection consistent with that.
One more question. Please?
Q: Mr. Secretary, the war in Afghanistan against the terrorists is ongoing, of course. And it seems like the anthrax issue has taken a front seat now. And the Army, of course, is involved. There's a unit up in Detrick, I understand, that's heavily involved in research, and so on and so forth. One thing -- can you say, tell me how important their role is in this responding to the anthrax?
White: I think the Army has -- we've been worried about anthrax for a long time because we were worried about the Soviets for a long time, and the Soviets had an anthrax capability widely reported. So we have been in the business of infectious disease research, including anthrax, because our soldiers who deploy worldwide are in environments in many cases very much unlike what we have in the United States, exposure to yellow fever or a whole bunch of other exotic things. So we have been in the business -- are in the business of research against these infectious diseases. We're very actively involved in supporting the Center for Disease Control and Health and Human Services in this activity.
Q: And sir, do you anticipate from the Army's viewpoint -- could this get much worse? Ten thousand people, evidently, are taking Cipro now throughout the country, predominantly around here.
White: Well, you're -- you should really direct that question to Secretary Thompson because Health and Human Services has the federal responsibility for that. And his assessment would be far more accurate than mine.
Thank you very much. Have a good day.
[Web version: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/t10262001_t1026sa.html]
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 10:50:22 -0400
From: dlnews_sender@DTIC.MIL
Subject: Secretary Rumsfeld Designates Commanders for Homeland Defense
NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SECDEF DESIGNATES COMMANDERS FOR HOMELAND DEFENSE
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld today announced that U.S. military commanders are being provided additional authorities to defend the United States homeland, its states, territories, trusts and commonwealths. As previously announced, Secretary of the Army Thomas White is DoD's executive agent for Homeland Defense and will coordinate the department's efforts with the White House's Office of Homeland Security. The commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., has been placed in charge of the land and maritime defense of the continental United States, as well as providing military assistance to civil authorities. The commander of the North American Aerospace Defense command (NORAD), in Colorado Springs, Co., has been placed in charge of aerospace defense. U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs, Co., will provide support in the area of computer network operations while U.S. Pacific Command, Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii, and U.S. Southern Command in Miami, Fla., are responsible for their respective geographic areas of responsibility.
The Department of Defense will continue to support local and state officials, as well as federal agencies, to combat terrorism in our country. Today's decision allows additional detailed planning and training to occur that will increase our military's ability to respond more effectively and quickly to requests from civil authorities.
[Web version: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/b10262001_bt542-01.html]