Bush's Posse Roundup

By James Bovard, AlterNet. Posted December 10, 2004.

Over the past three years, the Bush administation has accelerated a trend of using the military as a tool in our nation’s domestic affairs. From its support of the Total Information Awareness surveillance vacuum cleaner, to its use of Pentagon spy planes during the Washington-area sniper shootings in late 2002, to its attempt to empower military officials to seize Americans' financial and other private information without a warrant, the Bush administration gives grave cause for concern about the growing role of the armed forces in our daily life.

The framers of the Constitution sought to put the U.S. military on a short leash, as they had witnessed standing armies topple one European government after another. One example of their intent to keep the military out of domestic affairs was the Third Amendment, which declares “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” This separation was strengthened in 1878 by the U.S. Congress with the passage of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits any involvement of the U.S. military with domestic law enforcement. The law was enacted after pervasive abuses by the U.S. military in southern states during the Reconstruction. Congress at the time recognized that using military forces against civilians would likely trample Americans’ Constitutional rights. When former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) said, “When we send the Marines overseas we don't have them carry a copy of the Miranda rights," he knew what he was talking about. The military is trained to kill the enemy, not serve our domestic rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

Unfortunately for our democracy, in recent decades, the restrictions on using the military at home have been eviscerated, particularly under this sitting president. And because the Bush administration is so intent on secrecy, and because the Congress during Bush’s presidency has almost totally defaulted on its duty to conduct oversight, we have little idea of how often the Posse Comitatus law is now being violated. The few Bush efforts that have become public do not inspire confidence.

The Patriot Act of 2001 created a new Information Office in the Pentagon that promptly launched work on the Total Information Awareness (TIA) system, which was a project of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). TIA was intended to create a massive dragnet to build dossiers on American citizens—seeking “connections between transactions – such as passports, visas, work permits, driver’s licenses, credit cards, airline tickets, rental cars, gun purchases, chemical purchases – and events such as arrest or suspicious activities and so forth," according to Undersecretary of Defense Pete Aldridge.

The feds claimed that the TIA’s database would not constitute a search of private citizens – at least until the government decided to have someone arrested based on the data stockpile. Thus, the TIA would not violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches. Aldridge declared: “It is absurd to think that DARPA is somehow trying to become another police agency. DARPA’s purpose is to demonstrate the feasibility of this technology. If it proves useful, TIA will then be turned over to the intelligence, counterintelligence and law enforcement communities as a tool to help them in their battle against domestic terrorism.”

In January 2003, Sen. Charles Grassley learned that the FBI was working on a memorandum of understanding with the Pentagon “for possible experimentation” with TIA. Assistant Defense Secretary for Homeland Security Paul McHale confirmed, in March 2003 testimony to Congress, that the Pentagon would turn TIA over to law enforcement agencies once the system was ready to roll. There was nothing in the original TIA design to prevent the Pentagon from turning over the information it gathered to the FBI — or anyone else.

That set off alarm bells far and wide, and Congress sought to rein in its development in early 2003. But by that time, the Pentagon had already awarded 26 contracts for dozens of private research projects to develop components for TIA. Congress's action did nothing to stop the feds from pursuing massive data mining research closely akin to TIA—especially the Novel Intelligence from Massive Data (NIMD) project being conducted by the National Security Agency. Many of the companies and researchers previously working on TIA are now working on the NIMD project. Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists commented that “the whole congressional action looks like a shell game. There may be enough of a difference for them to claim TIA was terminated while for all practical purposes the identical work is continuing.”

James Bovard is the author of "The Bush Betrayal" (Palgrave, August 2004), "Terrorism and Tyranny" (Palgrave, September 2003), and six other books.

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