Homeland Defense

And the Posse Comitatus Act

[Homeland Defense; Posse Comitatus; Richard A. Clarke]

While the Clinton administration seeks to redefine warfare as "humanitarian intervention," it also seeks to bring back one of the most mind-numbing concepts of the Cold War's glory days, namely, the Threat. As Clinton, with his NATO allies, undermines the concept of the nation-state in Yugoslavia, he has seized upon a definition of the Threat that fits his world-view at home. A terrorist group is likely to use, or threaten to use, chemical or biological weapons, or other weapons of mass destruction, against the United States, Clinton said, "sometime in the next few years."1

      His response has been to create an unprecedented role for the military, a role he called "the last big kind of organizational piece" in the defense against the new menace, terrorism.2 Such a move flies in the face of long-standing tradition.

      Since the passage of the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878, the American military has been forbidden to engage in domestic law enforcement. Indeed, there are fears of just such problems if Clinton's counter-terrorism planners are given a free hand. Warns the ACLU's Gregory Nojeim, "The Pentagon ought not be doing any of this work."3

      The erosion of Posse Comitatus ("power of the country" in Latin) over the years has not been challenged in the courts. Former Senator Sam Nunn observed recently that legislation exists waiving its provisions in cases involving drug interdiction, nuclear terrorism, and chemical, and germ attacks.4

      The President has appointed an unreconstructed Cold War hawk, at Cabinet level, as its anti-terrorism czar. Richard A. Clarke, a member of the National Security Council (he occupies Oliver North's old office in the White House), is the only administration holdover from the Reagan-Bush years. He came to the NSC from the State Department, where he had been forced out for unilaterally pushing a pro-Israeli policy on Israeli transfers of American technology to third countries, contrary to law and policy. Earlier, while pursuing a psychological warfare operation against Libya, Clarke had been caught placing false reports in the Wall Street Journal.5

      With no oversight but the President, Clarke will be commanding a $10 billion annual budget to coordinate military and local police training, equipment, and planning to respond to the new Threat. And President Clinton is on the verge of approving a proposal, endorsed by Secretary of Defense William Cohen, to create a Joint Task Force for Civil Support, which would develop ways for the branches of the armed forces to aid federal agencies in times of domestic crisis, according to the Times.6

      Hinting at the dangerous potential of this radical break with the past, Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre acknowledged that "most Americans" are "apprehensive" about military involvement in domestic policing. But, he pointed out, in Clintonspeak, "Frankly, we're not seeking this job.... But we know we're being asked to be involved because we do have the only part of the government that has the resources that can be mobilized."7

      No such false modesty emanates from the low-profile but aggressive Richard Clarke, for whom defense of the U.S. against states or rogue groups is "almost the primary responsibility of the government." Clarke sees the Threat in the form of cyberwar, nerve gas, deadly germ attacks, or an "electronic Pearl Harbor."8 He believes the Threat must be relentlessly pursued wherever it may be. He was an eager proponent of attacking the pharmaceutical factory in Sudan which he claimed was connected to the Saudi Osama bin Laden.

      In Clarke's thinking, the military is being given an enhanced role in domestic policing, because the Threat can cross borders without warning. Meanwhile, Attorney General Janet Reno has established a National Domestic Preparedness Office within the FBI. "Presidential directives issued last May put the FBI in the lead if terrorists use a weapon of mass destruction in the United States."9 The FBI has seen its counter-terrorism budget vastly increased, from $256 million in fiscal 1995 to over $608 million in fiscal 1999.10

      Inevitable intra-government turf battles aside, there is little doubt that the Clinton administration is committed to enhancing the government's ability to monitor and repress the activities of citizens, under the pretext of an ill-defined, but all-encompassing New Threat, and to use the military to do so.

Endnotes:

1. New York Times, Jan. 22, 1999, p. A12.

2. New York Times, Jan. 28, 1999, p. A21.

3. Washington Post, Feb. 1, 1999, p. A2.

4. New York Times, Feb. 1, 1999, p. A3

5. Ibid.

6. Op. cit., n. 2.

7. Op. cit., n. 3.

8. Op. cit., n. 4.

9. Dallas Morning News, Feb. 9, 1999.

10. Legal Times, Nov. 9, 1998.