Interview: Is Posse Comitatus Dead? US Troops on US Streets

Democracy Now

AMY GOODMAN: In a barely noticed development last
week, the Army stationed an active unit inside the United States. The
Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Team is back from Iraq, now training
for domestic operations under the control of US Army North, the Army
service component of Northern Command. The unit will serve as an
on-call federal response for large-scale emergencies and disasters.
It’s being called the Consequence Management Response Force, CCMRF, or
“sea-smurf” 

It’s the first time an active unit
has been given a dedicated assignment to USNORTHCOM, which was itself
formed in October 2002 to “provide command and control of Department of
Defense homeland defense efforts.”

An initial news report in the Army Times
newspaper last month noted, in addition to emergency response, the
force “may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control.”
The Army Times has since appended a clarification, and a
September 30th press release from the Northern Command states: “This
response force will not be called upon to help with law enforcement,
civil disturbance or crowd control.”

When Democracy Now!
spoke to Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Goodpaster, a public
affairs officer for NORTHCOM, she said the force would have weapons
stored in containers on site, as well as access to tanks, but the
decision to use weapons would be made at a far higher level, perhaps by
Secretary of Defense, SECDEF.

Well, I’m joined now by two
guests. Army Colonel Michael Boatner is future operations division
chief of USNORTHCOM. He joins me on the phone from Colorado Springs.
We”re also joined from Madison, Wisconsin by journalist and editor of The Progressive magazine, Matthew Rothschild.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now!
Why don’t we begin with Colonel Michael Boatner? Can you explain the
significance, the first time, October 1st, deployment of the troops
just back from Iraq?

COL. MICHAEL BOATNER: Yes,
Amy. I”d be happy to. And again, there has been some concern and some
misimpressions that I would like to correct. The primary purpose of
this force is to provide help to people in need in the aftermath of a
WMD-like event in the homeland. It’s something that figures very
prominently in the national planning scenarios under the National
Response Framework, and that’s how DoD provides support in the homeland
to civil authority. This capability is tailored technical life-saving
support and then further logistic support for that very specific
scenario. So, we designed it for that purpose.

And really, the new development is that it’s been assigned to
NORTHCOM, because there’s an increasingly important requirement to
ensure that they have done that technical training, that they can work
together as a joint service team. These capabilities come from all of
our services and from a variety of installations, and that’s not an
ideal command and control environment. So we”ve been given control of
these forces so that we can train them, ensure they”re responsive and
direct them to participate in our exercises, so that were they called
to support civil authority, those governors or local state
jurisdictions that might need our help, that they would be responsive
and capable in the event and also would be able to survive based on the
skills that they have learned, trained and focused on.

They ultimately have weapons, heavy weapons and combat vehicles
and another service capability at their home station at Fort Stewart,
Georgia, but they wouldn’t bring that stuff with them. In fact, they”re
prohibited from bringing it. They would bring their individual weapons,
which is the standard policy for deployments in the homeland. Those
would be centralized and containerized, and they could only be issued
to the soldiers with the Secretary of Defense permission.

So I think, you know, that kind of wraps up our position on
this. We”re proud to be able to provide this capability. It’s all about
saving lives, relieving suffering, mitigating great property damage to
infrastructure and things like that, and frankly, restoring public
confidence in the aftermath of an event like this.

AMY GOODMAN: So
the use of the weapons would only be decided by SECDEF, the Secretary
of Defense. But what about the governors? The SECDEF would
have-Secretary of Defense would have-would be able to preempt the
governors in a decision whether these soldiers would use their weapons
on US soil?

COL. MICHAEL BOATNER: No, this
basically only boils down to self-defense. Any military force has the
inherent right to self-defense. And if the situation was inherently
dangerous, then potentially the Secretary of Defense would allow them
to carry their weapons, but it would only be for self- and
unit-defense. This force has got no role in a civil disturbance or
civil unrest, any of those kinds of things.

AMY GOODMAN: Matt Rothschild, you”ve been writing about this in The Progressive magazine. What is your concern?

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Well,
I’m very concerned on a number of fronts about this, Amy. One, that
NORTHCOM, the Northern Command, that came into being in October of
2002, when that came in, people like me were concerned that the
Pentagon was going to use its forces here in the United States, and now
it looks like, in fact, it is, even though on its website it says it
doesn’t have units of its own. Now it’s getting a unit of its own.

And Colonel Boatner talked about this unit, what it’s trained
for. Well, let’s look at what it’s trained for. This is the 3rd
Infantry, 1st Brigade Combat unit that has spent three of the last five
years in Iraq in counterinsurgency. It’s a war-fighting unit, was one
of the first units to Baghdad. It was involved in the battle of
Fallujah. And, you know, that’s what they”ve been trained to do. And
now they”re bringing that training here?

On top of that, one of the commanders of this unit was boasting in the Army Times
about this new package of non-lethal weapons that has been designed,
and this unit itself is going be able to use, according to that
original article. And in fact, the commander was saying he had even
tasered himself and was boasting about tasering himself. So, why is a
Pentagon unit that’s going to be possibly patrolling the streets of the
United States involved in using tasers?

AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Boatner?

COL. MICHAEL BOATNER: Well, I”d like to address that.
That involved a service mission and a service set of equipment that was
issued for overseas deployment. Those soldiers do not have that on
their equipment list for deploying in the homeland. And again, they
have been involved in situations overseas. And having talked to
commanders who have returned, those situations are largely nonviolent,
non-kinetic. And when they do escalate, the soldiers have a lot of
experience with seeing the indicators and understanding it. So, I would
say that our soldiers are trustworthy. They can deploy in the homeland,
and American citizens can be confident that there will be no abuses.

AMY GOODMAN: Matt Rothschild?

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Well,
you know, that doesn’t really satisfy me, and I don’t think it should
satisfy your listeners and your audience, Amy, because, you know, our
people in the field in Iraq, some of them have not behaved up to the
highest standards, and a lot of police forces in the United States who
have been using these tasers have used them inappropriately.

The whole question here about what the Pentagon is doing
patrolling in the United States gets to the real heart of the matter,
which is, do we have a democracy here? I mean, there is a law on the
books called the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act that says
that the president of the United States, as commander-in-chief, cannot
put the military on our streets. And this is a violation of that, it
seems to me.

President Bush tried to get around this act a couple years ago
in the Defense Authorization Act that he signed that got rid of some of
those restrictions, and then last year, in the new Defense
Authorization Act, thanks to the work of Senator Patrick Leahy and Kit
Bond of Missouri, that was stripped away. And so, the President isn’t
supposed to be using the military in this fashion, and though the
President, true to form, appended a signing statement to that saying
he’s not going to be governed by that. So, here we have a situation
where the President of United States has been aggrandizing his power,
and this gives him a whole brigade unit to use against US citizens here
at home.

AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Michael Boatner, what about the Posse Comitatus Act, and where does that fit in when US troops are deployed on US soil?

COL. MICHAEL BOATNER: It
absolutely governs in every instance. We are not allowed to help
enforce the law. We don’t do that. Every time we get a request-and
again, this kind of a deployment is defense support to civil authority
under the National Response Framework and the Stafford Act. And we do
it all the time, in response to hurricanes, floods, fires and things
like that. But again, you know, if we review the requirement that comes
to us from civil authority and it has any complexion of law enforcement
whatsoever, it gets rejected and pushed back, because it’s not lawful.

AMY GOODMAN: Matthew Rothschild, does this satisfy you, editor of The Progressive magazine?

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: No,
it doesn’t. One of the reasons it doesn’t is not by what Boatner was
saying right there, but what President Bush has been doing. And if we
looked at National Security Presidential Directive 51, that he signed
on May 9th of 2007, Amy, this gives the President enormous powers to
declare a catastrophic emergency and to bypass our regular system of
laws, essentially, to impose a form of martial law.

And if you look at that National Security Presidential
Directive, what it says, that in any incident where there is
extraordinary disruption of a whole range of things, including our
economy, the President can declare a catastrophic emergency. Well,
we”re having these huge disturbances in our economy. President Bush
could today pick up that National Security Directive 51 and say, “We”re
in a catastrophic emergency. I’m going to declare martial law, and I’m
going to use this combat brigade to enforce it.”

AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Michael Boatner?

COL. MICHAEL BOATNER: The
only exception that I know of is the Insurrection Act. It’s something
that is very unlikely to be invoked. In my thirty-year career, it’s
only been used once, in the LA riots, and it was a widespread situation
of lawlessness and violence. And the governor of the state requested
that the President provide support. And that’s a completely different
situation. The forces available to do that are in every service in
every part of the country, and it’s completely unrelated to the-this
consequence management force that we”re talking about.

AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned governors, and I was just looking at a piece by Jeff Stein-he is the national security editor of Congressional Quarterly–
talking about homeland security. And he said, “Safely tucked into the
$526 billion defense bill, it easily crossed the goal line on the last
day of September.

“The language doesn’t just brush aside a liberal Democrat slated
to take over the Judiciary Committee”-this was a piece written last
year-it “runs over the backs of the governors, 22 of whom are
Republicans.

“The governors had waved red flags about the measure on Aug. 1, ²⁰⁰⁷,
sending letters of protest from their Washington office to the
Republican chairs and ranking Democrats on the House and Senate Armed
Services committees.

“No response. So they petitioned the party heads on the Hill.”

The letter, signed by every member of the National Governors
Association, said, “This provision was drafted without consultation or
input from governors and represents an unprecedented shift in authority
from governors”to the federal government.”

Colonel Michael Boatner?

COL. MICHAEL BOATNER: That’s
in the political arena. That has nothing to do with my responsibilities
or what I’m-was asked to talk about here with regard to supporting
civil authority in the homeland.

AMY GOODMAN: Matthew Rothschild?

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Well,
this gets to what Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont was so concerned
about, that with NORTHCOM and with perhaps this unit-and I want to call
Senator Leahy’s office today and ask him about this-you have the
usurpation of the governor’s role, of the National Guard’s role, and
it’s given straight to the Pentagon in some of these instances. And
that’s very alarming. And that was alarming to almost every governor,
if not every governor, in the country, when Bush tried to do that and
around about the Posse Comitatus Act. So, I think these are real
concerns.

AMY GOODMAN: Matt Rothschild, the
Democratic and Republican conventions were quite amazing displays of
force at every level, from the local police on to the state troopers
to, well, in the Republican convention, right onto troops just back
from Iraq in their Army fatigues. Did this surprise you?

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: It
did. It surprised me also that NORTHCOM itself was involved in
intelligence sharing with local police officers in St. Paul. I mean,
what in the world is NORTHCOM doing looking at what some of the
protesters are involved in? And you had infiltration up there, too. But
what we have going on in this country is we have infiltration and
spying that goes on, not only at the-well, all the way from the campus
police, practically, Amy, up to the Pentagon and the National Security
Agency. We”re becoming a police state here.

AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Michael Boatner, a tall order here, could you respond?

COL. MICHAEL BOATNER: Well,
that’s incorrect. We did not participate in any intelligence
collection. We were up there in support of the US Secret Service. We
provided some explosive ordnance disposal support of the event. But I”d
like to go back and say that, again, in terms of-

AMY GOODMAN: Could you explain what their-explain again what was their role there?

COL. MICHAEL BOATNER: They
were just doing routine screens and scans of the area in advance of
this kind of a vulnerable event. It’s pretty standard support to a
national special security event.

AMY GOODMAN: And are you saying there was absolutely no intelligence sharing?

COL. MICHAEL BOATNER: That’s correct. That is correct. [inaudible] we”re very constrained-

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: But
even that, Amy, now the Pentagon is doing sweeps of areas before, you
know, a political convention? That used to be law enforcement’s job.
That used to be domestic civil law enforcement job. It’s now being
taken over by the Pentagon. That should concern us.

AMY GOODMAN: Why is that, Colonel Michael Boatner? Why is the Pentagon doing it, not local law enforcement?

COL. MICHAEL BOATNER: That’s
because of the scale and the availability of support. DoD is the only
force that has the kind of capability. I mean, we”re talking about
dozens and dozens of dog detection teams. And so, for anything on this
large a scale, the Secret Service comes to DoD with a standard Economy
Act request for assistance.

AMY GOODMAN: Boatner,
in the Republican Convention, these troops, just back from
Fallujah-what about issues of, for example, PTSD, post-traumatic stress
disorder?

COL. MICHAEL BOATNER: Well, my sense is
that that’s something that the services handled very well. There’s a
long track record of great support in the homeland. If those soldiers
were National Guard soldiers, I have no visibility of that. But for the
active-duty forces, citizens can be confident that if they”re employed
in the homeland, that they”ll be reliable, accountable, and take care
of their families and fellow citizens in good form.

AMY GOODMAN: Last word, Matthew Rothschild? Ten seconds.

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: Well,
this granting of the Pentagon a special unit to be involved in US
patrol is something that should alarm all of us. And it’s very
important to the Army. General Casey, Army chief of staff-

AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD: -was a drill exercise for this group just last week, or just three weeks ago. It was called-

AMY GOODMAN: We leave it there. We”ve got to leave it there. Thank you to Matthew Rothschild and Colonel Michael Boatner.

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