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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- The Sixth Column -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Agency Atrocities #3 FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) The Constitution's Worst Enemy This article/file is a compilation of information I've collected in respect to an almost unknown government agency. This agency has been shrouded in mystery and secrecy for a long time. However, the information contained in this file should make you very concerned about what the people on Capital Hill have been getting away with. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- FEMA's structure for fascist rule ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By Kathleen Klenetsky and Herbert Quinde "You have an authoritarian structure. . .with FEMA." --Harold Relyea, chief specialist on presidential directives at the Congressional Research Service, in an interview with EIR. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was founded during the presidency of one Trilateral Commission member, Jimmy Carter, and it seems increasingly likely that its fundamental purpose -- to seize control of the reins of government through emergency fiat -- will be realized under the presidency of another, George Bush. The Trilateral link is no accident. Together with the other leading Eastern Establishment think tank, the New York Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Trilateral Commission effectively brought FEMA into existence. The leading theoreticians behind the creation of FEMA were Samuel Huntington, a National Security Council consultant under Carter, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as Carter's national security advisor. Before that, Brzezinski was executive director at the Trilateral Commission, a "New Ager" who envisioned a "technetronic society" in the United States. Nominally a Democrat, Brzezinski nevertheless became a leading adviser on strategic policy to George Bush's 1988 campaign, and continues to serve as an informal consultant to the Bush administration. Huntington is currently a member of the FEMA Advisory Board. Both Huntington and Brzezinski belong to the CFR. FEMA was established in March 1979 by presidential Review Memorandum 32, with the mandate to maintain "the continuity of government" (COG) during a national security emergency. PRM 32 bypassed the U.S. Constitution, and awarded power to the _unelected_ officials at the National Security Council to direct U.S. government operations by emergency decree. By placing FEMA under the NSC's control, Huntington, Brzezinski, et al., turning the NSC into a shadow technocratic dictatorship, waiting for a real or manufactured crisis to seize control of the country. Although FEMA was sold to Congress and the public as the vehicle through which the United States could mount an adequate, centralized response to natural and other disasters, the agency has consistently failed to fulfill that purpose. In its last major interventions, in 1989's San Francisco earthquake and Hurricane Hugo, FEMA's ineptness and bungling enraged disaster victims and local officials. FEMA was more interested in psychologically profiling the population's response to the disasters, than it was in assisting their physical survival. That was typical of FEMA's 10-year record, which began with its panic-mongering handling of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979. Burying the Constitution ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FEMA has proven by it's own actions that it is not a disaster preparedness agency. Its true purpose is found in the 1970s policy decisions of the CFR and the Trilateral Commission, decisions which ushered in the "post-industrial society" and "limits to growth" era which brought the United States into the current depression. It is clear from viewing these policy decisions, that the Establishment had made a conscious decision to deal with economic contraction and concomitant social unrest by resorting to fascist emergency rule and other forms of "fascism with a democratic face." In one of the earliest Trilateral Commission reports, "The Crisis of Democracy," published in 1975, Huntington demanded that democratic government be curbed in times of economic crisis. "We have come to recognize that there are potentially desirable limits to economic growth," he stated. "There are also potentially desirable _limits to the indefinite extension of political democracy_. . . . A government which lacks authority. . .will have little ability, short or cataclysmic crisis to _impose on its people the sacrifice which may be necessary_" (emphasis added). In 1973, the Council of Foreign Relations launched its "1980s Project," which it called the "largest single effort in our 55-year history." By its own account, the 1980s Project was aimed at "describing how world trends might be steered toward a particular desirable future outcome." Zbigniew Brzezinski belonged to the 1980s Project's governing body, and Samuel Huntington served on its coordinating group. Among the most important products of the project was _Alternatives to Monetary Disorder_, by the late Fred Hirsch, senior adviser to the International Monetary Fund. Hirsch wrote: "A degree of controlled disintegration in the world of economy is a legitimate objective for the 1980s and may be order. A central normative problem for the international economic order in the years ahead is how to ensure that the disintegration indeed occurs in a controlled way and does not rather spiral into damaging restrictionism." "Controlled disintegration" became the policy of Jimmy Carter's Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, whose high interest rates wrecked the U.S. industrial and farm base during the Carter and Reagan years. Another Key 1980s Project document was _International Disaster Relief_, by Stephen Green. It predicted that the future will bring about "megadisasters" that will "create conditions of political instability and, in all likelihood, of conflict, which will further erode the capacity of societies to cope with natural disasters." Green recommended rapid implementation of new disaster preparedness efforts. He called for the creation of a central, global agency, under the United Nations, with a mandate to intervene in disaster situations, despite opposition from local governments. "Such a shift," he wrote, "would reflect increasingly widespread _dissatisfaction with the constraints posed by the recognition of sovereign national jurisdictions" and the "abstract notion of national sovereignty" (emphasis added). "Disaster relief" thus became an excuse for tossing out existing forms of government which stand in the way of fascist economic policies (for which "sacrifice" and "controlled disintegration" are merely euphemisms) which the Eastern Establishment has decided must be imposed. Oliver North and FEMA ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FEMA's powers have been enhanced during the Reagan and Bush administrations to the point that the agency is now positioned to take over the country in the event of a national security crisis, such as a war with Iraq or an interruption of oil-imports. A preview of FEMA dictatorship can be found in the Iran-Contra affair. One of the key components of the FEMA apparatus is a group of 100 persons it has positioned throughout the government bureaucracy. Known as the "continuity of government" (COG) structure, these 100 individuals are charged with running government departments in times of crisis. One member of this group was none other than Oliver North -- whom President Bush called a "national hero." Bush was at the center of both the Iran-Contra fiasco, and the broader FEMA-linked crisis management apparatus set up during the Reagan years. In early 1982, Reagan created the Special Situations Group (SSG), designating Vice President Bush as chairman. In May 1982, the Reagan administration is sued a memorandum which announced that the SSG "is charged, _inter alia_ with formulating plans in anticipation of crisis. In order to facilitate this crisis pre-planned responsibility, a Standing Crisis Pre-Planning Group (CPPG) is hereby established." North was assigned to the CPPG -- and later helped to write the 1984 "Rex" exercise for police-state rule in the United States. Through an outgrowth of this structure, the Iran-Contra controllers wielded extraordinary power and ran various foreign and domestic initiates, including the overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines through what became the Project Democracy apparatus, the Iran-Contra affair, and the government's effort to jail Lyndon LaRouche, who was rightly seen as a major threat to the FEMA network's "government by fiat" scheme. (As EIR has previously reported, Buster Horton, the foreman of the jury which found LaRouche guilty on trumped-up charges in December 1988, belonged to the same 100-man COG structure as North.) On July 22, 1982, President Reagan issued his National Security Decision Directive 47 to complement the operations of the SSG and CPPG. Titled "Emergency Mobilization Preparedness," NSDD 47 defined the responsibilities of federal departments and branches of the U.S. government to respond to a national security crisis or domestic emergency. The president charged the Emergency Mobilization Preparedness Board with implementing the programs detailed in the directive, which included a restriction of civil rights, bordering on explicit police-state measures (see accompanying article -- "12656.TXT"). As one of his first acts in office, Bush issued National Security Directive 1, which boosted the powers of the National Security Council, the body that runs FEMA. Bush also stacked the FEMA leadership with "old boys" from the intelligence and covert operations networks, among them Jerry Jennings, who was confirmed as a FEMA deputy director in May. Jenning's background includes nearly a decade of White House service as an advisor to the President's national security adviser under four administrations, beginning in 1973. Before that, he worked with the CIA in the Far East during the gear up for the Vietnam War (1965-68), and for the FBI, where he specialized in drugs. EIR Nov 23, 1990 (pg.23) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ESTABLISHMENT PRESS 'EXPOSES' FEMA [Reproduced with permission from _The Spotlight_.] The SPOTLIGHT 300 Independence Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20003 The hidden agenda of the misnamed Federal Emergency Management Agency, exposed years ago in The SPOTLIGHT, is just now coming to the attention of the Establishment media. EXCLUSIVE TO THE SPOTLIGHT BY MIKE BLAIR The Establishment news media and a congressional investigation have finally gotten around to reporting and investigating a story that first appeared in the May 5, 1980 issue of The SPOTLIGHT. The populist Washington weekly detailed how on July 20, 1979, then- President Jimmy Carter signed Executive Order 12148, establishing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a super-secret agency which would wield complete dictatorial powers over the American nation and its people in the event of the president declaring a "national emergency." Last February 22, the Cox News Service revealed "three times as many FEMA employees work on the top-secret activities of the agency as work on natural disaster programs," which has been touted by federal officials as FEMA's primary responsibility. "Only 20 members of Congress -- those with adequate security clearance -- know that rather than concentrating on natural disasters such as last year's Hurricane Andrew, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been gearing up for Armageddon," Cox News Service reported. SECRETS UNRAVELED FEMA's darkest secrets began to unravel after Hurricane Hugo and the Los Angeles riots in 1989. This process accelerated after Hurricane Andrew devastated southern Florida last August 24, when the agency proved to be totally inept at dealing with natural disaster. Members of the House and Senate without the clearances necessary to be privy to the agency's secrets started asking questions about FEMA's inability to deal effectively with the chaos left in the wake of the hurricane. As an example, the city manager of hard-hit Homestead, Florida pleaded for 100 hand-held radios because the municipality had only one operating telephone. Instead of sending the radios, FEMA sent the city manager three of its 300 special, formerly top-secret, vans capable of sending encrypted messages and multifrequency radio messages to military aircraft halfway around the globe. Homestead never got its hand-held radios -- but they did get FEMA gear capable of calling in an air strike. The vans, equipped with their own generators, were used to provide electricity and 36 telephone lines to local, state and federal officials operating in Miami. The vans represent only a small fraction of the mobile communications units, which to a large degree still remain secret. At a recent Senate hearing delving into the ineptitude of federal assistance after Andrew struck, Sen. Barbara Mikulski ( D-Md. ) noted the government's inability to deal with the disaster "was widely seen by many of Hurricane Andrew's victims in Florida as a disaster itself." 'BLACK CURTAIN' Actually, FEMA employees sent to deal with Hurricane Andrew were not even aware of the agency's total strength in manpower or of its real purpose, due to what congressional investigators have called "a black curtain of secrecy" that has shrouded FEMA since its inception. The SPOTLlGHT's revelations about the agency began with its initial story about FEMA on May 5, 1980, with follow-up stories outlining further details on May 26 and June 30, 1980. The SPOTLlGHT's detailed and exclusive coverage continued in numerous articles over the 13 years since the initial revelations, including the publication of a special supplement detailing the agency's secret activities and the sinister powers created by secret presidential executive orders. The shadowy agency has the power to take over all government operations and suspend civil rights and the Constitution itself if a declaration of a "national emergency" is made by the president. Moreover, the powers of FEMA were increased by President Ronald Reagan. PLANNING FOR WAR From 1982 to 1991, FEMA was allocated more than $1.3 billion for equipment, support facilities and personnel to provide communications for government leaders in the event of a nuclear war, which illustrates that while the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush were witnessing the collapse of the former Soviet Union they were still preparing for a global nuclear war. During the same period, FEMA spent an additional $1.6 billion on related national security programs, a total of $2.9 billion spent behind the "black curtain of secrecy." The Mobile Emergency Response (MER) program -- which created the vans sent to Homestead-was set up to provide the president the means of 'communicating with his generals and various top government officials' while traveling around the country. Each MER van is capable of sending and receiving classified civilian and military information to and from anywhere in the world. According to a number of sources, former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, who achieved fame during the Iran-contra affair, was a key figure in establishing the MER program. Retired Army Gen. Julius W. Becton Jr., who headed FEMA from 1985 to 1989, said the MER program was "top secret" and that he was cautioned upon leaving government never to discuss it. * -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Series Title: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY ... FEMA vs. Your Constitutional Rights [This series of texts is reproduced with permission from a special supplement to _The Spotlight_, May 25, 1992.] The SPOTLIGHT 300 Independence Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20003 WHAT IS FEMA? This text may be freely reproduced provided acknowledgement to The Spotlight appears, including the above address.] FEMA is the acronym for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It was established by Executive Order 12148 and signed into existence by Jimmy Carter in 1979. It was originally planned as an umbrella administration consisting of the disaster and emergency response arms of nearly a dozen scattered federal agencies. Questions have existed about FEMA's role from the beginning. Veteran Washington watchers have long been puzzled by its secretive role. The Reagan administration, for example, had plans for arresting tens of thousands of "potentially subversive" suspect aliens, critics and dissenters in the wake of an undefined national emergency. Does FEMA pose a danger to lawful government? Is there the possibility of a dictatorial overthrow of the Constitution with the president seizing all power? These are the questions Americans should ask. This reprint from The SPOTLIGHT is designed to provide the facts necessary. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Series Title: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY ... FEMA vs. Your Constitutional Rights [This series of texts is reproduced with permission from a special supplement to _The Spotlight_, May 25, 1992. The SPOTLIGHT 300 Independence Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20003 This text may be freely reproduced provided acknowledgement to The Spotlight appears, including the above address.] YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS COULD DISAPPEAR OVERNIGHT By Mike Blair Exclusive to The SPOTLIGHT Washington, DC -- It is a frightening thought, but there are Executive Orders (EOs) on the books that make it possible for a president to ignore the Constitution and its cherished Bill of Rights, Congress, the judiciary and the very will of the American people. It is a fact that a complete dictatorship can be imposed upon the people at any time, simply by the president declaring a national emergency. During the 1950s and 1960s, it was believed that the best way to bring about one-world government was by disarming the United States. Those who feared for America's Constitutionally guaranteed liberties, and rightfully so, warned that America would be disarmed and would become easy prey for the ever-expanding military power of the Soviet Union and Red China. They particularly opposed the powers of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, established to disarm America. Now, however, with Eastern Europe shaking itself free from the shackles of communism and those peoples exercising their nationalistic yearnings, disarmament by both sides has become a necessity to cure social ills plaguing the U.S. and former Soviet bloc countries. With the apparent failure of the Red military machine, the general movement has been toward an easing of the arms race. New Friendship From this newfound "friendship" with Eastern Europe and in particular from the so-called multinational effort against Iraq in the Persian Gulf, President George Bush rarely gives a speech or holds a press conference in which he fails to mention his thoughts about a "New World Order." Now, however, a new method is needed to nullify America's treasured Constitution and the insidious EOs have gained a new and even more dangerous part to play in the plotting of the one worlders of the Trilateralist-Bilderberger ilk. The biggest danger of such schemes as those proposed by Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) is that any declared "national emergencies" would allow the president to activate repressive EOs signed by presidents going back to World War II. Here are some of the EOs involved: * EO 10995, which provides for the takeover of the communications media. In other words, forget about freedom of the press. * EO 10997, which provides for the takeover of all electric power, petroleum, gas and other fuels and minerals. * EO 10998, which provides for the takeover of all food resources and the nation's farms. * EO 10999, which provides for the takeover of all modes of transportation, control of highways, seaports, etc. * EO 11000, which provides for mobilization of all civilians into work brigades under government supervision. In other words, slave labor. * EO 11001, which provides for government takeover of all health, education and welfare functions. * EO 11002 designates the postmaster general to operate a national registration of all persons. * EO 11003, which provides for the government to take over airports and aircraft. * EO 11004, which provides for the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, designate areas to be abandoned and establish new locations for populations. * EO 11005, which provides for the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities. All of the above orders were combined by President Richard Nixon into the notorious EO 11490 (pronounced EO eleven-4-9-oh), which allows all of these insidious things to take place if a national emergency is ever declared. Here are some direct quotes from the 40-page Nixon EO: "Develop plans and procedures for the Department of Defense utilization of non-industrial facilities in the even of an emergency in order to reduce requirements for new construction and to provide facilities in a minimum period of time ..." -- in other words, the confiscation of private property. "Develop plans and procedures for the provision of logistical support to members of foreign forces, their employees and dependents as may be present in the United States under terms of bilateral or multilateral agreements which authorize such support in the event of a national emergency ..." In other words, prepare for the billeting of foreign troops in your home, contrary to the Third Amendment. "Develop emergency plans for the control of alien enemies and _other aliens_ within the United States ... . The location, restraint or custody of aliens ..." "The Secretary of Labor shall have primary responsibility for preparing national emergency plans and developing preparedness programs covering civilian manpower resources." Preparations can be undertaken for forced labor. "Provision for regulation of money and credit in accordance with the needs of the economy, including the acquisition, decentralization and distribution of emergency supplies of currency; the collection of cash items and non-cash items; and the conduct of fiscal agency and foreign operations. "Provision for the continued or resumed operation of banking, savings and loan, and farm credit institutions, including measures for the recreation of evidence of assets or liabilities destroyed or inaccessible. "Regulation of the withdrawal of currency and the transfer of credits, including deposit and share account balances." There are those naive souls who believe that fears of the United States ever becoming a dictatorship are unwarranted. From the above EO signed by Nixon on October 28, 1969, the reader can judge for himself. Then along came President Jimmy Carter and EO 12148, titled the Federal Emergency Management Act. All prior EOs having anything to do with emergency planning were incorporated into it. This EO gives the president absolute power during any "emergency," so declared by him. From Carter's machinations emerged a totally new bureaucracy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which assumed control of a chain of older "emergency agencies," including the Federal Disaster Insurance Assistance Administration, the Federal Insurance Administration, the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Broadcast System and about a dozen others. In an "emergency," FEMA was, through EO 12148, to virtually take over the key functions of the national government by means of "senior representatives" and "liaison agents" now positioned in every major government agency. Incredibly, FEMA even has the power to assume the duties of the president himself. FEMA, under its more innocent-appearing posture, is the organization of the federal government that rushes in to administer federal aid and assistance when a disaster strikes a community or state. Those who want to know the complete truth about its not-so-innocent nature only need to peruse Carter's EO 12148, as it appeared on July 24, 1979, in the _Federal Register_, and as it was reprinted in the May 26, 1980 issue of The SPOTLIGHT. Finally, President Ronald Reagan updated this EO in his last full year in office on November 18. 1988, leaving his successor, Bush, the tools to create a dictatorship, his "New World Order." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Series Title: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY ... FEMA vs. Your Constitutional Rights [This series of texts is reproduced with permission from a special supplement to _The Spotlight_, May 25, 1992. The SPOTLIGHT 300 Independence Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20003 This text may be freely reproduced provided acknowledgement to The Spotlight appears, including the above address.] AMERICANS `COMPUTERIZED' BY FEMA By Warren Hough and Martin Mann Exclusive to The Spotlight Washington, DC -- Fort Meade, Maryland is the government's most tightly guarded installation (it houses, among others, the secret National Security Agency). In an unmarked, windowless office building on the grounds of Fort Meade, hundreds of thousands of American citizens are being "computerized" by technicians on the payroll of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). "Administratively, this place is the equivalent of an unlisted telephone," explained a former senior official of FEMA, who agreed to an interview on condition that his identity be protected. "It has no official existence. There is no listing for it, no traceable designation. But it's there, idling quietly, like a doomsday bomb waiting for its moment in history." The task of FEMA's secret data control annex at Fort Meade is to develop so-called CAPs -- the term stands for "crisis action programs" -- to be implemented in national emergencies. The term was originally used to denote disaster relief plans at the Federal Preparedness Agency, once a department of the General Services Administration, now merged into FEMA. But the computerized action plans instrumented at Fort Meade have nothing to do with aiding victims of hurricanes or other natural disasters. They are blueprints for taking over the U.S. government and converting it into a command system under the "emergency management" of federal bureaucrats. Privately, congressional investigators, intelligence analysts and veteran Washington newsmen familiar with the inner machinery of the vast federal bureaucracy have long expressed concern and anxiety about FEMA. An "umbrella administration" born in 1978 when President Jimmy Carter combined the disaster and emergency response functions of nearly a dozen scattered federal outposts into a single agency, FEMA has always been known as an "activist" and secretive fraternity. Under Louis Giuffrida, appointed FEMA director by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, the agency developed a top-secret project for arresting tens of thousands of "suspect aliens" along with troublesome critics and dissenters whom the White House found annoying enough to be labeled "potentially subversive." Tagged Operation Rex 84, these un-Constitutional plans were first discovered and revealed by this populist newspaper in a series of exclusive investigative reports in the April 23 and May 14, 1984 issues. But although The SPOTLIGHT's expose wrecked FEMA's plans for setting up mass "emergency detention centers" -- and cost Giuffrida his post as director -- secret preparations for "[ensuring] the continuity of the federal government" in ill-defined "emergencies" remained the major concern of FEMA's senior officials. "Those words, enunciated by President Gerald Ford in Executive Order 11921, were understood by FEMA to mean that one day they would be in charge of the country," explained Dr. Henry Kliemann, a political scientist at Boston University. "As these bureaucrats saw it, FEMA's real mission was to wait, prepare and then take over when some `situation' seemed serious enough to turn the United States into a police state." To illustrate FEMA's conspiratorial core, knowledgeable Washington intelligence sources cited the instance of the 1989 visit by President George Bush to Cartagena, Colombia, to attend a so-called regional drug summit with three Latin American presidents. "There wee rumors of a terrorist threat against Bush by Colombian drug hit squads," recounted Monroe H. Brown, a former federal security officer with long years of service in Miami. "Teams of Secret Service, FBI and CIA agents were mobilized to find out how serious the threat was, while back in Washington, FEMA went to work on an emergency program in case the presidential plane was hit by a Stinger missile somewhere over Colombia." FEMA's emergency measures included preparations to round up more than 10,000 Americans "redlined" in the agency's computers as "activists, supporters or sympathizers of terrorism in the United States," explained Brown. In August 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, FEMA got ready to deal with "terrorist emergencies" in the United States by churning up the same old discredited computer compilation of "terrorist supporters and sympathizers," adding thousands of names to it and alerting the U.S. Army to set up detention camps to hold these innocent victims of its bureaucratic brutality. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Series Title: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY ... FEMA vs. Your Constitutional Rights [This series of texts is reproduced with permission from a special supplement to _The Spotlight_, May 25, 1992. The SPOTLIGHT 300 Independence Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20003 This text may be freely reproduced provided acknowledgement to The Spotlight appears, including the above address.] CHIEF EXECUTIVE COULD SEIZE DICTATORIAL POWER ANY TIME A little-known executive order hands the President authority to seize control of the political, economic and military structure on a whim. WHAT IS AN EO? Under the Constitution, the president is vested with the executive power of the government (Article II, Section I, clause 1), the power to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" (Art. II, Sect. 1, clause 7), and the power to see that the laws are faithfully executed (Art. II, Sect. 3). From these powers is implied the authority to issue "executive orders." The president must have the authority to issue directives to keep control of the executive branch and to provide detail to legislation. Neither Congress nor the courts have the right to prohibit the executive branch from adding or subtracting authority from one government agency to another, for example. However, this presidential power has been abused in the form of executive orders that impinge across legislative concerns which are properly the province of Congress. The validity of executive orders (EOs) has been questioned many times dating at least to the Civil War. However, a ruling as to the extent or limit to which they may be used has never been determined by the courts or Congress. The _Federal Register_ contains the text of EOs issued by the presidents. There is no congressional authorization required, nor is there any review by the judiciary. All EOs are "laws" made by a single man -- the president of the United States. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT Executive Order 12148. July 20, 1979 By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, including the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 2251 (et seq.), the Disaster Relief Act of 1970, as amended (42 U.S.C. Chapter 58 note), the Disaster Relief Act of 1974 (88 Stat. 143; 42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq.), the Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977 (42 U.S.C. 7701 et seq.), Section 4 of Public Law 92-385 (86 Stat. 556), Section 43 of the Act of 1950, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 206 1 et seq.), Reorganization Plan No. I of 1958, Reorganization Plan No. I of 1973, the Strategic and Critical Materials Stock Piling Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 98 et seq.), Section 202 of the Budget and Accounting Procedures (Jct of 1950 (31 U.S.C..58Sc), and Section 30/ of Title 3 of the United States Code, and in order to transfer emergency functions to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, it is hereby ordered as follows: SECTION 1. TRANSFERS OR REASSIGNMENTS 1-1 Transfers or Reassignment of Existing Functions. 1-101. All functions vested in the President that have been delegated or assigned to the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, Department of Defense, are transferred or reassigned to the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 1-102. All functions vested in the President that have been delegated or assigned to the Federal Disaster Assistance Adminis- trations, Department of Housing and Urban Development, are trans- ferred or reassigned to the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including any of those functions redelegated or reassigned to the Department of Commerce with respect to as- sistance to communities in the development of readiness plans for severe weather-related emergencies. 1-103. All functions vested in the President that have been delegated or assigned to the Federal Preparedness Agency, General Services Administration, are transferred or reassigned to the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 1-104. All functions vested in the President by the Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977 (421 U.S.C. 770 1 et seq.), includ- ing those functions preformed by the Office of Science and Tech- nology Policy, are delegated, transferred, or reassigned to the Director of the Federal Emergency Agency. 1--2. Transfer or Reassignment of Resources. 1--201. The records, property; personnel and positions, and un- expended balances of appropriations, available or to be made available, which relate to the functions transferred, reassigned, or redelegated by this Order are hereby transferred to the Direc- tor of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 1--202. The Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall make such determinations, issue such orders, and take all actions necessary or appropriate to effectuate the transfers or reassign- ments provided by this Order, including the transfer of funds, records, property, and personnel. SECTION 2. MANAGEMENT OF EMERGENCY PLANNING AND ASSISTANCE 2--1. General. 2-101 The Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency shall establish Federal policies for, and coordinate, all civil defense and civil emergency planning, management, mitigation, and assistance functions of Executive agencies. 2-102. The Director shall periodically review and evaluate the civil defense and civil emergency functions of the Executive agencies. In order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of those functions, the Director shall recommend to the President alternative methods oF providing Federal planning, management, mitigation, and assistance. 2--103. The Director shall be responsible for the coordination of efforts to prame dam safety, for the coordination of natural and nuclear disaster warning systems, and for the coordination of preparedness and planning to reduce the consequences of major terrorist incidents. 2--104. The Director shall represent the President in working with State and local governments and private sector to stimulate vigorous participation in civil emergency preparedness, mitiga- tion, response, and recovery programs. 2--105. The Director shall provide an annual report to the Presi- dent for subsequent transmittal to the Congress on the func- tions of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The report shall assess the current overall state of effectiveness of Feder- al civil defense and civil emergency functions, organizations, resources, and systems and recommend measures to be taken to im- prove planning, management, assistance, and relief by all levels of government, the private sector, and volunteer organizations. 2--2. Implementation. 2--201. In executing the functions under this Order, the Director shall develop policies which provide that all civil defense and civil emergency functions, resources, and systems of Executive agencies are; (a) founded on the use of existing organizations, resources, and systems to the maximum extent practicable: (b) integrated effectively with organizations, resources, and programs of State and local governments, the private sector and volunteer organizations; and (c) developed, tested and utilized to prepare for, mitigate, respond to and recover from the effects on the population of all forms of emergencies. 2--202. Assignments of civil emergency functions shall, whenever possible, be based on extensions (under emergency conditions) of the regular missions of the Executive agencies. 2-203. For purposes of this Order, "civil emergency" means any accidental, natural, man-caused, or wartime emergency or threat thereof, which causes or may cause substantial injury or harm to the population or substantial loss of property. 2-204. In order that civil defense planning continues to be fully compatible with the Nation's overall strategic policy, and in or- der to maintain an effective link between strategic nuclear plan- ning and nuclear attack preparedness planning, the development of civil defense policies and programs by the Director of the Feder- al Emergency Management Agency shall be subject to oversight by the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council. 2 -- 205. To the extent authorized by law and within available resources, the Secretary of Defense shall provide the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency with support for civil defense programs in the areas of program development and adminis- tration, technical support, research, communications, transporta- tion, intelligence, and emergency operations. 2 -- 206. All Executive agencies shall cooperate with and assist the Director in the performance of his functions. 2 -- 3 Transition Provisions. 2--301 The functions which have been transferred, reassigned, or redelegated by Section I of this Order are recodified and revised as set forth in this Order at Section 4, and as provided by the amendments made at Section 5 to the provisions of other Orders. 2-302. Notwithstanding the revocations, revisions, codifications, and amendments made by this Order, the Director may continue to perform the functions transferred to him by Section I of this Or- der, except where they may otherwise be inconsistent with the provisions of this Order. SECTION 3. FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL 3-1. Establishment of the Council. 3-101. There is hereby established the Emergency Management Coun- cil. 3-102. The Council shall be the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who shall be the Chairman, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and such others as the President may desig- nate. 3.2 Functions of the Council 3-201. The Council shall advise and assist the President in the oversight and direction of Federal emergency programs and policies. 3-302. The Council shall provide guidance to the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the performance of func- tions vested in him. 3-3 Administrative and General Provisions. 3-301. The heads of Executive agencies shall cooperate with and assist the Council in the performance of its functions. 3-302. The Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency shall provide the Council with such administrative services and support as may be necessary or appropriate SECTION 4. DELEGATIONS 4-1. Delegation of Functions Transferred to the President. 4-101. The following functions were transferred to the Director of the Office of Defense Mobilization by Section 2 of Reorganiza- tion Plan No. 3 of 1953 (50 U.S.C. 404 note); they were sub- sequently transferred to the President by Section I (a) of Reorganization Plan No. I of 1958, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 2271 note), and they are hereby delegated to the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: (a) The functions vested in the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, Air force, and Interior by the Strategic and Critical Materials Stock Piling Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 98 et seq.), including the functions vested in the Army and Navy Munitions Board by item (2) of section 6(a) of that Act (50 U.S.C. 98e(a) (2)), but ex- cluding the functions vested in the Secretary of the Interior by Section 7 of that Act (50 U.S.C. 98f). (b) The functions vested in the Munitions Board of the Department of Defense by Section 4 (h) of the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act, as amended (15 U.S.C. 714b(h)). ' (c) The functions vested in the Munitions Board of the Department of Defense by Section 204(f) [originally 204(e)1 of the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, as amended (40 U.S.C. 485(f)]. 4-102. The functions vested in the Director of the Office of Defense Mobilization by Sections 103 and 303 of the National Security Act of 1947, as amended by Sections 8 and 50 of the Act of September 3, 1954 (Public Law 779; 68 Stat. 1228 and 11244) (50 U.S.C. 404 and 405), were transferred to the President by Section I (a) of Reorganization Plan No. I of 1958, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 2271 note), and they are hereby delegated to the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 4-103. (a) The functions vested in the Federal Civil Defense Ad- ministration or its Administrator by the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 2251 et seq.), were transferred to the President by Reorganization Plan No. I of 1958, and they are hereby delegated to the Director of the Feder- al Emergency Management Agency. (b) Excluded from the delegation in subsection (a) is the func- tion under Section 205(a) (4) of the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 2286(a) (4)), relating to the establishment and maintenance of personnel standards on the merit basis that was delegated to the Director of the Office of Person- nel Management by Section I(b) of Executive Order No. 11589, as amended (Section 2-lOl(b) of Executive Order No. 12107). 4-104. The Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency is authorized to redelegate in accord with the provisions of Section I(b) of Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1958 (U.S.C. App. 2271 note), any of the functions delegated by Sections 4-101, 4-102, and 4-103 of this Order. 4-105. The functions vested in the Administrator of the Federal Civil Defense Administration by section 43 of the Act of August 10, 1956 (70A Stat. 636) were transferred to the President by Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1958, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 2271 note), were subsequently revested in the Director of the Of- fice of Civil and Defense Mobilization by Section 512 of Public Law 86-500 (50 U.S.C. App. 2285) [the office was changed to Of- fice of Emergency Planning by Public Law 87-296 (75 Stat. 6301 and then to the Office of Emergency Preparedness by Section 402 of Public Law 90-608 (82 Stat. 1194)], were again transferred to the President by Section I of Reorganization Plan No. I of 1973 (50 U.S.C. App. 2271 note), an they are hereby delegated to the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 4-106. The functions vested in the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness by Section 16 of the Act of September 23, 1950, as amended (20 U.S.C. 646), and by Section 7 of the Act of September 30, 1950, as amended (20 U.S.C. 241-11, were trans- ferred to the President by Section I of Reorganization Plan No. I of 1973 (50 U.S.C. App. 2271 note), and they are hereby delegated to the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 4-107. That function vested in the director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness by Section 762(a) of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as added by Section 161(a) of the Education Amend- ments of 1972, and as further amended (20 U.S.C. 1132d-I(a), to the extent transferred to the President by Reorganization Plan No. I of 1973 (50 U.S.C. App. 2271 note), is hereby delegated to the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 4-2. Delegation of Functions Vested in the President. 4-201. The functions vested in the President by the Disaster Relief Act of 1970, as amended (42 U.S.C. Chapter 58 note), are hereby delegated to the Director of the Federal Emergency Manage- ment Agency. 4-202. The functions (related to grants for damages resulting from hurricane and tropical storm Agnes) vested in the President by Section 4 of Public Law 92-385 (86 Stat. 556) are hereby delegated to the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 4-203. The functions vested in the President by the Disaster Relief Act of 1974 (88 Stat. 143; 42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq.) except those functions vested in the President by Sections 301 (relating to the declaration of emergencies and major disasters), 401 (relating to the repair, reconstruction, restoration, or replace- ment of Federal facilities), and 409 (relating to food coupons and surplus commodities), are hereby delegated to the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 4-204. The functions vested in the President by the Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977 (91 Stat. 1098; 42 U.S.C. 7701 et seq.) are hereby delegated to the Director of the Federal Emer- gency Management Agency. SECTION 5. OTHER EXECUTIVE ORDERS 5-1. Revocations. 5-101. Executive Order No. 10242, as amended, entitled "Pres- cribing Regulations Governing the Exercise by the Federal Civil Defense Administrator of Certain Administrative Authority Granted by the Federal Civil Defense Act of 1950", is revoked. 5-102. Sections 1 and 2 of Executive Order No. 10296, as amended, entitled "Providing for the Performance of Certain Defense Hous- ing and Community Facilities and Service Functions" are revoked. 5-103. Executive Order No. 10494, as amended, relating to the disposition of remaining functions in EO 5-104. Executive Order No. 10529, as amended, relating to federal employee participation in State and local civil defense programs, is revoked. 5-105 Section 3 of Executive Order No. 10601, as amended, which concerns the Commodity Set Aside, is revoked. 5-106. Executive Order No. 10634, as amended, relating to loans for facilities destroyed or damaged by a major disaster, is revoked. 5-107..Section 4(d)(2) of Executive Order No. 10900, as amended, which concerns the Commodity Set Aside, is revoked. 5-108. Executive Order No. 10952, as amended, entitled "Assign- ing Civil Defense Responsibilities to the Secretary of Defense and Others", is revoked. 5-109. Executive Order No. 11051, as amended, relating to responsibilities of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, is revoked. 5-110. Executive Order No. 11415, as amended, relating to the Health Resources Advisory Committee, is revoked. 5-111. Executive Order No. 11795, as amended, entitled "Delegating Disaster Relief Functions Pursuant to the Disaster Relief Act of 1974", is revoked, except for Section 3 thereof. 5-112. Executive Order No. 11725, as amended, entitled "Trans- fer of Certain Functions of the Office of Emergency Prepared- ness", is revoked. 5 -- 113. Executive Order No. 11749, as amended, entitled "Con- solidating Disaster Relief Functions Assigned to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development", is revoked. 5-2. Amendments. 5-201. Executive Order No. 10421, as amended, relating to physical security of defense facilities, is further amended by (a) substituting the "Director of the Federal Emergency Manage- ment Agency" for "Director of the Office of Emergency Planning" in Sections I(a), I(c), and 6(b); and (b) substituting "Federal Emergency Agency" for "Office of Emergency Planning" in Sections 6(b) and 7(b). 5-202. Executive Order No. 10480, as amended, is further amended by (a) substituting "Director of the Office of Emergency Management Agency" for "Director of the Office of Emergency Man- agement Agency Planning" in Sections 101(a), 101(b), 201(a), 201(b), 301, 304, 307,308, 310(b), 311(b), 312, 313, 401(b), 401(e), and 606; and, (b) substituting "Director of the Federal Emergency Agency" for "Administrator of General Services" in Sec- tion 610. 5-203. Section 3(d) of Executive Order No. 10582, as amended, which relates to determinations under the Buy American Act, is amended by deleting "Director of the Office of Emergency Plan- ning" and substituting therefor "Director of the Federal Emer- gency Management Agency". 5-204. Paragraph 21 of Executive Order No. 10789, as amended, is further amended by adding "The Federal Emergency Management Agency" after "Government Printing Office". 5-205. Executive Order No. 11179, as amended, concerning the National Defense Executive Reserve, is further amended by delet- ing "Director of the Office of Emergency Planning" in Section 2 and substituting therefor "Director of the Federal Emergency Man- agement Agency". 5-206. Section 7 of Executive Order No. 11912, as amended, con- cerning energy policy and conservation, is further amended by deleting "Administrator of General Services" and substituting therefor "Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency". 5-207. Section 2(d) of Executive Order No. 11988 enkindled "Flood-plain Management" is amended by deleting "Federal Insur- ance Administration" and substituting therefor "Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency". 5-208. Section 5-3 of Executive Order No. 12046 of March 29, 1978, is amended by deleting "General Services Administration" and substituting therefor " Federal Emergency Management Agency" and by deleting "Administrator of General Services" and sub- stituting therefor "Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency". 5-209 Section 1-201 of Executive Order No. 12065 is amended by adding "The Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency" after "The Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Adminis- tration" and by deleting "Director, Federal Preparedness Agency and to the" from the parentheses after "The Administrator of Gen- eral Services". 5-210. Section 1-102 of Executive Order No. 12075 of August 16, 1978, is amended by adding in alphabetical order "(p) Federal Emergency Management Agency". 5-211. Section 1-102 of Executive Order No. 12083 of September 27, 1978 is amended by adding in alphabetical order "(x) the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency". 5-212. Section 9.11(b) of Civil Service Rule IX (5 CFR Part 9) is amended by deleting "the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency and". 5-213. Section 3(2) of each of the following described Executive Orders is amended by adding "Federal Emergency Management Agency" immediately after "Department of Transportation". (a) Executive Order No. 11331 establishing the Pacific Northwest River Basins Commission. (b) Executive Order No. 11345, as amended, establishing the Great Lakes Basin Commission. (c) Executive Order No. 11371, as amended, establishing the New England River Basins Commission. (d) Executive Order No. 11578, as amended, establishing the Ohio River Basin Commission. (e) Executive Order No. 11658, as amended, establishing the Mis- souri River Basin Commission. (f) Executive Order No. 11659, as amended, establishing the Upper Mississippi River Basin Commission. 5-214. Executive Order No. 11490, as amended, is further amended as follows: (a) Delete the last sentence of Section 102(a) and substitute therefor the following: "The activities undertaken by the depart- ments and agencies pursuant to this Order, except as provided in Section 3003, shall be in accordance with guidance provided by, and subject to, evaluation by the Director of the Federal Emer- gency Management Agency". (b) Delete Section 103 entitled "Presidential Assistance" and substitute the following new Section 103: "Sec. 103 General Coor- dination. The Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) shall determine national preparedness goals and policies for the performance of functions under this Order and coordinate the performance of such functions with the total national preparedness programs". (c) Delete the portion of the first sentence of Section 401 prior to the colon and insert the following: "The Secretary of Defense shall perform the following emergency preparedness functions". (d) Delete "Director of the Federal Preparedness Agency (GSA)" or "the Federal Preparedness Agency (GSA)" and substitute therefor "Director FEMA", in Sections 401 (3), 401 (4), 401 (5), 401 (9), 401 (10), 401 (14), 401 (15), 401 (16), 401 (19),401 (21), 401 (22), 501 (8), 601 (2), 904 (2), 1102 (2), 1204 (2), 1401 (a), 1701, 1702, 2003, 2004, 2801 (5), 3001, 3002 (2), 3004, 3005, 3006, 3008, 3010, and 3013. (e) The number assigned to his Order shall be substituted for " 11051 of September 26, 1962" in Section 3001, and for "11051" in Sections 1802, 2002(3), 3002 and 3008(1). (f) The number assigned to this Order shall be substituted for "10952" in Sections 1103, 1104, 1205, and 3002. (g) Delete "Department of Defense" in Sections 502, 601(1), 804, 905, 1103, 1104, 1106 (4), 1205, 2002 (8), the first sentence of Section 3002, and Sections 3008 (1) and 3010 and substitute therefor "Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency". SECTION 6. This Order is effective July 15, 1979. JIMMY CARTER The White House, July 20, 1979. * -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Series Title: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY ... FEMA vs. Your Constitutional Rights [This series of texts is reproduced with permission from a special supplement to _The Spotlight_, May 25, 1992. The SPOTLIGHT 300 Independence Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20003 This text may be freely reproduced provided acknowledgement to The Spotlight appears, including the above address.] CARTER'S TRUE LEGACY SHOCKING By Mike Blair Exclusive to The SPOTLIGHT Washington, DC -- While many frown when they think of the high interest rates, U.S. hostages held abroad and foreign policy giveaways associated with the Carter administration, former President Jimmy Carter's true legacy may be even more shocking than imagined. Carter seemingly ran an end run around a law passed in the wake of Watergate and signed before Carter took office, which limited White House powers, when he formed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA was based on Richard Nixon's Executive Order (EO) 11490. The legislation contained nearly 200,000 words on 32 pages. It pertained to every executive order ever issued unless specifically revoked. When Carter took office, EO 11490 was incorporated into a new order allowing a president to assume dictatorial powers during any self- proclaimed "emergency" situation; these powers will remain with a president until specifically revoked by Congress. Some senators thought they had successfully squashed the chief executive's "national emergency" powers more than 10 years ago, after a bipartisan congressional committee pushed the National Emergencies Act into law. Until September 14, 1976, the nation's chief executive officer was empowered by more than 470 special statues to "seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, restrict travel and, in a host of other ways, control the lives of Americans," then-Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) said in the _Congressional Record_. The National Emergencies Act, which took effect in 1978, was supposed to prevent the nation from turning into a potential dictatorship. Presidents had used their "emergency" powers at least four times in the previous 45 years. The president held this little-known sway over citizens through executive orders, which he could write into law in a moment's notice. No group, neither elected officials, business leaders, nor private citizens, had the power to void these laws. Franklin Roosevelt invoked a national emergency in 1933 to deal with the banking crisis, and Harry Truman responded to the Korean War with an emergency act in 1950. Richard Nixon declared a pair of crises. In March 1970 he declared a national emergency to deal with the post office strike. The Nixon White House was at it again 16 months later when it implemented currency restriction in August of 1971 in order to control foreign trade. Then, in 1976, after two years of public hearings and committee meetings, a bipartisan special congressional Committee on Emergency Powers pushed legislation to wrestle power from the White House. The National Emergencies Act became law on September 14, 1978,. Senators used the second anniversary of their law to pat each other on the back -- through the _Congressional Record_ -- and to attempt to establish Congress's role in national security. "The Congress must never again trade away its responsibilities in the name of national emergency," Church said. "Let that be one of the lessons learned from the investigation completed, the passage of the National Emergencies Act and the termination today of emergency powers." Church's warning fell on deaf ears. Less than one year later, President Jimmy Carter ordered into being an entire apparatus -- unprecedented in American history -- designed to seize and exercise all political, economic and military power in the United States. Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush or any future president could establish himself as total dictator. Carter did this with an executive order -- EO 12148. An executive order has never been defined by Congress. The validity of such directives has been questioned many times, but there has never been a decision made by the courts or Congress on how far-reaching executive orders may be. Through existing executive orders it is possible for one person to ignore the Constitution, Congress and the will of the American people. A complete dictatorship can be imposed under the veil of law. A declaration by the president of the existence of a "national emergency" has always stopped short of martial law, although the president has that prerogative. Undoubtedly it would be exercised in the event of an attack on the United States. An attempt was made to incorporate all the "national emergency" powers into one law under Nixon. However, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, he was unable to pull off the presidential coup. Carter, a Trilateralist, did. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Series Title: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY ... FEMA vs. Your Constitutional Rights [This series of texts is reproduced with permission from a special supplement to _The Spotlight_, May 25, 1992. The SPOTLIGHT 300 Independence Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20003 This text may be freely reproduced provided acknowledgement to The Spotlight appears, including the above address.] BLUEPRINT FOR U.S. DICTATORSHIP PLACES INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AT RISK By Mike Blair Exclusive to The SPOTLIGHT Washington, DC -- During the Persian Gulf war and the military buildup leading to it, President George Bush began using the term "New World Order," often suggesting that the commitment of so-called multinational forces involved in the military effort was the beginning of this alleged worldwide utopia. Supposedly using the vehicle of the United Nations, Bush's New World Order would be the arbitrator of all world problems and the apparatus to enforce globalist dictates through the use of armed forces combined from the armies of member nations. The UN law would be, regardless of the nationalist interests of individual countries, the final word. Actually, even the mention of a New World Order would normally be anathema to thinking Americans and, in particular, conservative political leaders and civil libertarians. SINISTER TECHNOLOGY It is also surprising to many critics of the move toward one-world government that Bush would even dare choose the term "New World Order" to define his globalist schemes. However, most Americans alive today were born after World War II, when propaganda of the so-called Allied powers used the terms of "New Order" or "New World Order" to describe in a sinister way the military efforts of Japan and, in particular, Germany under Adolf Hitler. Few, it seems, have taken the time to analyze just what Bush has in mind for his New World Order, of which America is to become an integral part, starting with supplying about 90 percent of the muscle, and young lives, that tackled and defeated Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's Arab legions. However, patriotic Constitutional scholars know that Bush's New World Order is the worst attack ever on America as a sovereign, independent and free nation. BEGAN WITH WILSON Efforts to form a global government are certainly nothing new. American political leaders, who were concerned with America first, were able to overcome the internationalist, one-world government machinations of President Woodrow Wilson following World War I. Wilson was prevented from realizing his visions of a New World Order, through the League of Nations, by a powerful Senate opposition, which refused to rubber-stamp for Wilson U.S. membership in the world body. A few decades later, however, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, near the end of World War II, was able to get his one-world plans under way by laying the groundwork for today's United Nations, which was completed under his successor, Harry S. Truman. A few years later, that membership in an UN-mandated war in Korea cost America 35,000 young lives. The problem that one-worlders have always encountered, of course, is the U.S. Constitution, which has stood as a bulwark against any globalist schemes. Nevertheless, American presidents since Roosevelt have insidiously chipped away at the great powers of the people, written into the Constitution by America's immortal Founding Fathers, with the use of so- called executive orders. CAUSE FOR ALARM Americans should be deeply alarmed that those presidents have signed a series of executive orders (EOs) which, under the guise of any national emergency declared by the president serving at the time, can virtually suspend the Constitution and convert the nation into a virtual dictatorship. Dissent, peaceful or otherwise, is eliminated. Those backing efforts to circumvent the Constitution may have gotten the idea from President Abraham Lincoln, whose use of various extraordinary powers of his office -- which many Constitutional scholars still insist was illegal -- suspended various civil rights to curb such problems as draft riots during the Civil War. In 1862, Congress enacted the Enrollment Act to allow the drafting of young men for the Union Army. The act was rife with inequities, such as the provision which allowed a man to pay $300 or hire a substitute to take his place. This hated "Rich Man's Exemption," as it was called, angered the average American of military age and in particular young Irish immigrants in New York City. A riot erupted in New York in 1863, and it resulted in Lincoln using some extraordinary powers of his office to keep the Union from falling apart from within. But over the years, presidents have used these powers for purposes never intended by the Founding Fathers. INDIANS VICTIMIZED President John Tyler used such powers in 1842 to round up Seminole Indians in Georgia and Florida and force-march them -- men, women and children -- to Arkansas. This was probably the first use of internment in America to deal with unpopular minorities. It was not the last. In 1886, the Geronimo Chiricahua Apache Indians surrendered to U.S. troops in the West, were rounded up by order of President Grover Cleveland, and shipped to internment in Florida and Alabama. Earlier, during the War Between the States, Sioux Indians in Minnesota, when there was a delay in paying them their yearly allowance, began attacking nearby white settlements. Lincoln sent in a hastily raised force of volunteers under Col. H. H. Sibley. Little Crow, leader of the Kaposia band, was decisively defeated by the Union troops on September 23, 1862, and more than 2,000 Sioux were taken captive, although Little Crow himself and a few followers escaped. Through the process of a military tribunal, sanctioned by Lincoln, 36 Sioux leaders were publicly hanged. Whether the Sioux executed were innocent or guilty was apparently immaterial. The revolt was quelled, and the Minnesota Sioux were all moved to reservations in Dakota. These instances of the nation's executive branch taking extraordinary measures to confine, or intern, American Indians are just a few of many examples. More recent examples of interning minorities by executive order occurred during World War I and World War II. During World War I, an unknown number of German-Americans were rounded up by federal authorities and interned until after the war. In addition, regardless of the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and of the press. German-language newspapers, published within German-American communities in the United States, were banned. WW II INTERNMENTS After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, within days the FBI rounded up tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans, guilty only of being of Japanese ancestry, under the authority of an executive order issued by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The lists of those to be apprehended had been drawn up months earlier, before the war. Held in concentration camps, the perimeters guarded by U.S. soldiers armed with machine guns, the mostly innocent and patriotic Japanese- Americans were not released until after the war. Congress has recently passed legislation extending the nation's apologies to the Japanese-Americans and extending them compensation for their years of confinement. However, no apology or compensation has ever been extended to the more than 8,000 German-Americans who were confined in dozens of jails and camps across the United States, also by order of Roosevelt. Many were not released until 1947, a full two years after the end of the war, in total violation of the Geneva Conventions. "What happened to me and thousands of others is old history," said Eberhard Fuhr of Cincinnati, who was interned at 17 years of age, "but the next time it could be any other group, which is then not politically correct, or out of favor for any other reason (SPOTLIGHT, May 20, 1991). Fuhr's warning, of course, had already been proved correct just several months earlier when, under orders of Bush, the FBI hounded thousands of innocent Arab-Americans as the U.S. prepared for the Persian Gulf conflict. Only the efforts of a handful of irate U.S. Congressmen halted the harassment but not until after a number of U.S. military bases were selected as sites of internment camps for Arab-Americans and war dissenters. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Series Title: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY ... FEMA vs. Your Constitutional Rights [This series of texts is reproduced with permission from a special supplement to _The Spotlight_, May 25, 1992. The SPOTLIGHT 300 Independence Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20003 This text may be freely reproduced provided acknowledgement to The Spotlight appears, including the above address.] HELP BUNGLED AND DISORGANIZED By Martin Mann and George Nicholas Exclusive to The SPOTLIGHT Washington, DC -- One after another, two violent, cataclysmic disasters struck the United States in the fall of 1989. Hurricane Hugo roared through the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and the Carolinas in September. Within weeks, northern California was shaken by the Loma Prieta earthquake that left hundreds of thousands of victims and billions of dollars in damage in its wake. Having spent "over $25 billion on setting up FEMA," American taxpayers were entitled to expect "quick and efficient help" from it in the face of such shattering calamities. But the response by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to these upheavals was "bungled" and "disorganized," says Ray Groover, who reported on the hurricane for a San Juan, Puerto Rico, newspaper and is now studying for a graduate degree in journalism at Columbia University in New York. Since the Disaster Relief Act of 1988, FEMA has been responsible for coordinating the "[disaster] preparedness, response and recovery actions of state and local governments." Unable to live up to these responsibilities during the 1989 crisis, the agency drew sharp criticism from the press and from Congress, whose leaders assigned the General Accounting Office (GAO) to conduct the first-ever detailed investigation of FEMA. For a year, GAO field examiners interviewed hundreds of disaster victims, state and local relief workers, journalists and other witnesses. The agency has assembled a 71-page report on U.S. relief operations. WATCHDOG AGENCY RATES FEMA Having obtained an advance copy of that survey, a team of SPOTLIGHT reporters found that the congressional watchdog agency rated FEMA's ability to deal with natural disasters as being "inefficient," "weak" and "dilatory." Noting that "emergency management includes three phases: preparedness, response and recovery," GAO probers warned that FEMA failed to operate "as efficiently as possible" in all these areas. There was evidence of "inadequate planning ... inadequate or no standard operating procedures ... [and a] lack of coordination" wherever FEMA's bureaucrats intervened, the GAO report concluded. Among the results of these botched relief attempts were "delays in providing disaster assistance and duplicate payments for some [of FEMA's] activities," the congressional overseers discovered. One example of FEMA's failure cited by the GAO survey team involved 4,000 low-income units wholly destroyed in California's devastating October 1989 earthquake. "Thirteen months later, only 114 units had been processed and approved for [rehabilitation] funding," the report reveals. Similarly, 10 months after Hurricane Hugo, most of the families left homeless "had not yet been provided with housing assistance from FEMA." DIRECTORS SHELL GAME Warned that the GAO report will expose FEMA as incompetent and wasteful, President George Bush fired agency Director Julius Becton, an elderly three-star general, whose principal qualifications for flag rank was Henry Kissinger's wish to promote "minority" officers, Defense Department sources say. Becton was replace by Wallace Stickney, a former New Hampshire state official whose colorless and low-profile reputation is expected to dampen the fireworks the GAO report might otherwise touch off about the inadequacy of federal relief operations. But simply shifting directors "does not answer the real question: If [FEMA officials] seem uninterested and negligent when it comes to disaster response, what are FEMA's thousands of bureaucrats working on?" asked Groover. The answer, a SPOTLIGHT investigation has found, is that FEMA's leadership is developing programs that will not merely "[ensure] the continuity of the federal government in any national emergency-type situation," as decreed by President Gerald Ford in Executive Order 11921, but REPLACE the nation's Constitutional statecraft with a centralized "command system." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- As you can see, the federal government has taken steps to "insure" that the "will of the people" is ignored and that their monopoly on power can't be revoked, even by a mandate from the masses. I would like to thank the people who researched this topic and originally brought this information to light. [EOF]