Cheney-Rumsfeld Surveillance Plans Date Back to 1980s

Cheney-Rumsfeld Surveillance Plans Date Back to 1980s
Commentary/Analysis, Peter Dale Scott,

New America Media, Jan 03, 2006
Editor's Note: Illegal eavesdropping and illegal detentions of U.S. citizens marks a revival of presidential powers curtailed since Watergate, and likely grew out of a secret Reagan-era program that planned to suspend the U.S. Constitution in the event of a national emergency.

In the 1980s Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld discussed just such emergency surveillance and detention powers in a super-secret program that planned for what was euphemistically called "Continuity of Government" (COG) in the event of a nuclear disaster.

At the time, Cheney was a Wyoming congressman, while Rumsfeld, who had been defense secretary under President Ford, was a businessman and CEO of the drug company G.D. Searle. Overall responsibility for the program had been assigned to Vice President George H.W. Bush, "with Lt. Col. Oliver North...as the National Security Council action officer," according to James Bamford in his book, "A Pretext for War."

These men planned for suspension of the Constitution, not just after nuclear attack, but for any "national security emergency," which they defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as: "Any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States." Clearly 9/11 would meet this definition.
As developed in the mid-1980s by Oliver North in the White House, the plans called for not just the surveillance but the potential detention of large numbers of American citizens. During the Iran-Contra hearings, North was asked about his work on "a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution." The chairman, Democratic Senator Inouye, ruled that this was a "highly sensitive and classified" matter, not to be dealt with in an open hearing.

The supporting agency for the planning and implementation was the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA was headed for much of the 1980s by Louis Giuffrida, whose COG plans for massive detention became so extreme that even President Reagan's then Attorney General, William French Smith, raised objections.

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im to the point i dont know whats going on anymore...but i do believe something is going to shift and it wont be all flowers and candy...


Damn, 10 years ago I was watching x files and getting this kinda crap and today its playing out

we DO know what's going on..
but we just don't want to admit it.

Not to beat an analogy to death BUT...
the same thing happened in pre-war Germany.

If we don't act... we KNOW what this all leads to

listen dude, im 27 and gay.. when i was 21 <thank you clinton>, I had dreams, ambitions, and hope. I figured I could finish college with a degree in anthropology and follow my dream by going on a dig someplace in antiquity. I would have been happy to scratch dirt in Jordan just to find a clay shred..

Welp, I am going back to school thing spring to finish out my anthro degree, but im too scared to go out of the country...im doing it because Im to scared NOT to have a degree..what with all the out-sourcing and all...

Anywho, Bush took that away from me, a feeling of security that I could goto a foreign land.. It pales in comparison so the 2100+ military lives and "30,000 or so" iraqi lives that he took.

and the gay part? well hell, the fundy's just scare the hell out of me....



damn that man to hell..