U.S. MILITARY CIVIL DISTURBANCE PLANNING:

Under the heading of "civil disturbance planning", theU.S. military is training troops and police to suppress democratic oppositionin America. The master plan, Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan55-2, is code-named, "Operation Garden Plot". Originated in 1968, the "operationalplan" has been updated over the last three decades, most recently in 1991.The plan was activated during the Los Angeles "riots" of 1992, and morethan likely during the recent anti-WTO "Battle in Seattle."
Current U.S. military preparations for suppressingdomestic civil disturbance, including the training of National Guard troopsand police, are part of a long history of American "internal security"measures dating back to the first American Revolution. Generally, thesemeasures have sought to thwart the aims of social justice movements, embodyingthe concept that within the civilian body politic lurks an enemy that oneday the military might have to fight, or at least be ordered to fight.Equipped with flexible "military operations in urban terrain" and "operationsother than war" doctrine, lethal and "less-than-lethal" high-tech weaponry,US "armed forces" and "elite" militarized police units are being trainedto eradicate "disorder", "disturbance" and "civil disobedience" in America.Further, it may very well be that police/military "civil disturbance" planningis the animating force and the overarching logic behind the incrediblenationwide growth of police paramilitary units, a growth which coincidentallymirrors rising levels of police violence directed at the American people,particularly "non-white" poor and working people. Military spokespeople,"judge advocates" (lawyers) and their congressional supporters aggressivelytake the position that legal obstacles to military involvement in domesticlaw enforcement civil disturbance operations, such as the 1878 Posse ComitatusAct, have been nullified. Legislated "exceptions" and private commercializationof various aspects of U.S. military-law enforcement efforts have supposedlyremoved their activities from the legal reach of the "public domain". Possiblyillegal, ostensible "training" scenarios like the recent "Operation UrbanWarrior" no-notice "urban terrain" war games, which took place in dozensof American cities, are thinly disguised "civil disturbance suppression"exercises. Meanwhile, President Clinton recently appointed a "domesticmilitary czar", a sort of national chief of police. You can bet that heis well versed in Garden Plot requirements involved in "homeland defense".
Ominously, many assume that the training of militaryand police forces to suppress "outlawed" behavior of citizens, along withthe creation of extensive and sophisticated "emergency" social responsenetworks set to spring into action in the event of "civil unrest", is prudentand acceptable in a democracy. And yet, does not this assumption beg thequestion as to what civil unrest is? One could argue for example, thatcivil disturbance is nothing less than democracy in action, a message tothe powers-that-be that the people want change. In this instance "disturbingbehavior" may actually be the exercising of ones' right to resist oppression.Unfortunately, the American corporate/military directorship, which hasthe power to enforce its' definition of "disorder", sees democracy as athreat and permanent counter-revolution as a "national security" requirement.The elite military/corporate sponsors of Garden Plot have their reasonsfor civil disturbance contingency planning. Lets' call it the paranoiaof the thief. Their rationale is simple: self-preservation. Fostering severeand targeted "austerity", massive inequality and unbridled greed, whileshifting more and more billions to the generals and the rich, the de-regulated"entities of force" and their interlocking corporate directors know quitewell what their policies are engendering, namely, a growing resistance.
Consequently, they are systematically organizingto protect their interests, their profits, and their criminal conspiracies.To this end, they are rapidly consolidating an infrastructure of repressiondesigned to "suppress rebellion" against their "authority". Or more convenientlyput, to suppress "rebellion against the authority of the United States."And so, as the Pentagon Incorporated increases its' imperialist violencearound the world, the chickens have indeed come home to roost here in Americain the form of a national security doctrine obsessed with domestic "insurgency"and the need to pre-emptively neutralize it. Its' code-name: "Garden Plot".
Recently, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon "acknowledgedthat the Air Force wrongfully started and financed a highly classified,still-secret project, known as a black program without informing Congresslast year." The costs and nature of these projects "are the most classifiedsecrets in the Pentagon."(1) Could it be that the current United StatesAir Force Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2 Garden Plot is one such program financedfrom this secret budget? We have a right to know. And following Seattle,we have the need to know.
As this and numerous other documents reveal, U.S.military training in civil disturbance "suppression", which targets theAmerican public, is in full operation today.
The formulation of legitimizing doctrine, the trainingin the "tactics and techniques" of "civil disturbance suppression", andthe use of "non-lethal" weaponry, are ongoing, financed by tax dollars.The overall operation is called Garden Plot. And according to the bossesat the Pentagon, "US forces deployed to assist federal and local authoritiesduring times of civil disturbance will follow use-of-force policy foundin Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan-Garden Plot." (Joint Chiefsof Staff, Standing Rules of Engagement, Appendix A, 1 October 1994.)