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June 22, 2002
By
Jon Christian Ryter
Copyright 2002 - All Rights Reserved
To distribute this article, please post this web address or hyperlink
rior
to the creation of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal (1934-1945) the
unconstitutional fourth branch of government—the bureaucracy—did
not exist except for the illegally created Federal Bureau of Investigation
that was created by Woodrow Wilson’s Justice Department to ferret
out nonexistent German and Bolshevik third columnists during World War
I.
The FBI—originally created as a very
low profile adjunct arm of the Justice Department—was
created specifically and exclusively to investigate “white collar”
federal crimes (usually related to tax evasion, securities fraud or violations
of antitrust laws) as well as violations of a handful of other federal
trade or commerce laws in effect prior to 1920. The investigative arm
of the Justice Department was called the Bureau of Investigation. The
handful of “agents” employed by the Justice Department were
largely accountants whose sole function was to audit the books of those
suspected of tax fraud or pyramid schemes. (BI agents were unarmed since
the Constitution made no provisions for the Executive Branch to create
its own police force.) Already in existence was the US Marshal’s
Service which was created in 1787. US Marshals were appointed by the federal
courts to enforce federal law. Their activity was controlled by the Judicial
Branch not the Executive Branch.
A low-ranking Justice Department statistician
named John Edgar Hoover convinced his supervisors in the Justice Department
that the Bureau of Investigation could be used to roundup draft dodgers
(called “slackers”), German spies (which Hoover insisted were
in every neighborhood of America) and communist instigators who had infiltrated
the labor movement and were causing civil unrest by calling for general
strikes as America prepared for war.
The Wilson Administration fanned the fears
of the American people by insisting there was an active German third column
operating in the United States that would, at any moment, engage in sabotage
by blowing up industrial plants that were supplying war materials to our
allies in Europe. Advocates of an Executive Branch federal police force
used the “war scare” to legitimatize the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
By the end of the World War, the Federal Bureau of Investigation existed.
Nobody questioned its legitimacy because it was created during the “needs”
of war—when the American people were most susceptible to an inherent
fear of being killed by foreign terrorists—and most open to surrendering
a limited amount of liberty for a renewed sense of security.
It was during World War I that the federal
government of the United States learned it could successfully abrogate
the Constitutional rights of the American people with impunity—providing
they kept the people frightened enough. The media of the United States,
which was now controlled by America’s wealthiest families, fueled
the fire. Hoover, given expanded authority by the Justice Department after
the passage of the Espionage Act of June 15, 1917 (and later, the Sedition
Act of May 15, 1918), concocted a scheme that would greatly expand the
intrusive reach of the Bureau of Investigation by convincing Assistant
Attorney General John L. O’Brien to “deputize” a mail order
private detective agency, the American Protective League, as an adjunct
investigative arm of the Justice Department. APL members were “mail
order detectives” without any training whatsoever. Officious-looking
badges were issued to the APL “detectives” by the Justice Department
and the “free labor” was encouraged to infringe on the civil
rights of their neighbors in order
to ferret out the “spies” and “third columnists” that
Hoover knew had infiltrated America. (The American Protective League used
their special relationship with the Justice Department to recruit new
“detectives” who paid 75¢ for the Justice Department-issued
APL badge. By 1918, the American Protective League boasted that it had
100,000 members—all of whom were eager to infringe on someone else’s
Constitutional rights in order to create a little excitement in their
own boring lives.)
During the Slacker Raids of 1917 in which
APL “detectives” were promised a reward of $50 for any draft
dodger they “arrested,” overzealous, untrained members of Hoover’s
civilian goon squad took over 50,000 innocent American citizens into custody.
Those arrested were sometimes beaten into submission. All were jailed
until they—or their families—could produce sufficient proof
that they were not slackers. In all, less than 50 genuine draft dodgers
were apprehended in the dragnet even though almost 5,000 draft age “suspects”
were inducted based on their arrests during the roundup (A Congressional
investigation proved that the inductions were done to make it appear to
the media that the dragnet had netted 5,000 slackers.) The federal government
paid less than 
$2,500
in bounty money to the APL detectives. Concealed within the Slacker Raids
was a Justice Department raid on the International Workers of the World
(the Wobblies, a communist-infiltrated labor union) [the IWW]. The Justice
Department had been given instructions by the Executive Branch to break
up the union which was causing America’s industrialists too many
problems. Under the guise of the “Red Scare,” Hoover’s
Bureau of Investigation raided the IWW in September, 1917, crushing the
union. Those arrested were denied the right to an attorney. Hoover confided
to one of his deputies that it was stupid to tell people they had a right
to have an attorney present while they were being questioned since, if
they got a lawyer, they wouldn’t confess.
The outrage should have brought about the
forced resignation of O’Brian, Attorney General Thomas W. Gregory
and J. Edgar Hoover. However, the mainstream media, which had been controlled
by the nation’s wealthiest families since 1908, argued that the existing
“national emergency” demanded extreme measures and gave the
government a “pass.” The outcry that should have occurred along
main street America as a result of the Slacker Raids did not happen because
those protesting would very likely have been arrested for sedition due
to the “national crisis” that existed at the time.
Broad-reaching federal excesses of power
were temporarily curbed at the end of the Great War as the Roaring 20s
kicked into high gear. Prohibition, the social experiment that would usher
in the era of the gangsters, flappers and bathtub gin also brought a new
national emergency—crime. Bootleggers, gang wars, and a national
epidemic of bank robberies in the Midwest led to brand new federal abuses
of power—this time by the Justice
Department and J. Edgar Hoover’s brand new Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Hoover, who was a stalwart of Constitutional rights in public, privately
usurped them whenever he could in order to expedite justice. And, because
rampant crime in America was pandemic during the Depression years, the
end justified whatever means were needed to get mobsters like Al Capone
and Frank Netti, and career bank robbers like Ma Barker, John Dillinger,
Baby Face Nelson, Alvin Karpis and Machine Gun Kelly off the streets and
into coffins.
Hoover preferred ‘tommy gun” justice
to the courts since the verdicts, and the sentence, was always swift—and
final. There were no plea bargains, and no mob lawyers waited with bail
money in hand to spring the mobster or bank robber after they were booked.
During the Depression years the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms—originally
a tax assessment division of the 
Treasury—added
substantially to the slowly growing bureaucracy. During the same period,
the newly-organized FBI grew from a force of about 100 accountants to
over a thousand law enforcement officers as it became a wholly-independent
entity within the Justice Department, doubling in size every two or three
years as more crimes were federalized under the commerce clause of the
Constitution.
The father of the American bureaucracy was
Franklin D. Roosevelt. The bureaucracy was born out of wedlock from a
triangular illicit affair between the Wall Street investment bankers,
the international banking houses that shared ownership of the Federal
Reserve, and a very power-hungry Franklin D. Roosevelt manufactured a
“national emergency” from the Stock Market collapse in October,
1929. The New York Federal Reserve used an engineered disaster to create
a major currency crisis during the national election campaign season in
1932 because the Federal Reserve wanted to remove the American currency
of the gold standard in order to create a truly elastic monetary system
which they could completely control. Since the bankers knew that it is
always the men who control the supply
of currency, not the politicians who are pawns to it, that actually control
the government, the invisible money barons were delighted when Roosevelt
decided to expand the bureaucracy in order to better control the Congress
since they knew that as FDR enlarged the size of government he would have
to borrow the money for his grandiose societal experiment from them.
Roosevelt, like Lyndon B. Johnson, Bill
Clinton and George W. Bush (who wants to increase the size of the bureaucracy
by 10% by creating another completely unnecessary department that will
further abrogate the liberties of Americans under the guise of protecting
them), believed government was the ultimate protector of mankind. By 1935,
every New Deal piece of legislation that had heretofore been enacted into
law came under the scrutiny of the Hughes Supreme Court and—until
Roosevelt threatened to force the Justices into involuntary retirement—almost
all of them were found to be unconstitutional because the laws, almost
without exception, violated the Constitutional precepts of separation
of power.
Roosevelt was assuming for himself—and
the Executive Branch departments he had illegally created by Executive
Order—the power to legislate, the power to adjudicate guilt, the
power to arrest those who violated his regulations—and FDR gave himself
the power to assess fines or incarcerate the guilty. Roosevelt bequeathed
himself the powers of a dictator. The Executive Branch of government constitutionally
possesses none of these prerogatives. His Executive Orders and the New
Deal laws notwithstanding, the President did not legally possess those
powers in 1935, and he does not possess them today. Every New Deal law
signed into law between March, 1933 and February, 1935 was ruled unconstitutional
by the Hughes Court. Then fearing that Roosevelt had amassed enough power
to force them to retire prematurely, the high court reversed itself and
using the “commerce clause” of Article I, Section 8, decided
that many of the laws they had found unconstitutional just might be constitutional
after all.
They weren’t—and the high court
knew it.
Nine old Tories wanted job security.
And, they were willing to sacrifice the
Constitution to keep their jobs.
During the New Deal years, Congress legislated
the slight-of-hand that illegally abrogated the superior status of the
States over the federal government; and the fourth branch of government—the
unelected bureaucracy—exploded like a well-encrypted computer virus
that is allowed to run rampant inside the hard-drive of your computer,
feeding on its components until the hard drive is consumed and the computer
no longer functions properly.
During the Roosevelt decade, the federal
government multiplied itself ten times over. The District of Columbia
was no longer able to contain it, and the bureaucracy blossomed out into
Arlington, Fairfax and Alexandria, Virginia and into Silver Spring, Chevy
Chase and Rockville, Maryland. And with the multiplicity of people came
a myriad of new federal rules and regulations that restricted not only
the civil rights of the common people of America,
but placed a restrictive lid on small corporations down to the mom and
pop family businesses that employ half of the working class people in
the United States.
Big Brother had arrived, but due to one
national emergency after another during the Cold War, few America’s
noticed that the federal government had usurped the supra-authority of
the States. Today, the United States Supreme Court upholds the notion
that the federal government, due of its size, is superior to the States.
The Founding Fathers, however, did not create that authoritarian hierarchy.
The States were created as the superior authority. The central government
was created subservient to the States.
In 1935, the illegally-created unelected
bureaucracy assumed the superior role of governance by simply assuming
the authority to legislate and adjudicate the laws passed by Congress.
The Roosevelt Administration used the Depression to promulgate the gold
crisis of 1933 into a decade-long national emergency that did not really
exist (that allowed him to enact unconstitutional laws that were deemed
“necessary” due entirely to the nonexistent“national emergency.”
Every president since Roosevelt kept alive
FDR’s “national emergency,” adding new “emergencies”
in order to keep the extraordinary powers granted to Presidents by the
Constitution in times of national crisis. During the Administration of
Lyndon B. Johnson, Congress used Article I, Section 8 to create a whole
new generation of laws that blatantly assumed the superiority of the federal
government over the States. These new laws granted the bureaucracy with
the right to add new rules (legislate) whenever the need arose, determine
guilt (adjudication) and, assess fines, including the seizure of property
without due process (a violation of the 4th Amendment). To make certain
that the federal courts, which ruled the New Deal unconstitutional, did
not get a chance to dull the sharp teeth the bureaucracy gave itself,
the bureaucracy was unconstitutionally allowed to establish administrative
courts (whose judiciary was comprised of active members of that Executive
branch department, to hear and rule on its own cases). Clearly, no citizen
appearing
before one of these administrative courts could never get a fair and impartial
hearing. Victims of these kangaroo courts would be buried under so much
expensive red tape and administrative procedures they had to go through
before being allowed to appeal to the traditional federal court, that
most would be bankrupt long before their day in a regular court was allowed.
Feeding
the federal government
Our federal government, like a leech, feeds—and
grows—on adversity and tragedy. With every national emergency—from
Vietnam and the Civil Rights Crisis of the mid-1960s to the bombing of
the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City to the 9-11 tragedy. The government
used each tragedy to frighten the American people to expand its authority
over the people of the United States by legislating new laws that
violate the Constitution of the United States. The government argues that
they have a compelling interest, under the 9th Amendment, to protect the
American people. Thus, minor infringements of the Bill of Rights are in
the best interests of the United States.
From within each of these tragedies there
exists strange anomalies that have given rise to the “conspiracy
theories” of the far right which have been poophahed not only by
the left but by the “conservative” Bush Administration as well
(which has used the 9-11 Tragedy to almost completely abrogate the Bill
of Rights—as the Clinton Administration tried to do when it sponsored
the Comprehensive Anti-Terrorist Act within days of the Oklahoma City
bombing on April 19, 1995).
Several unexplained anomalies color the
9-11 tragedy and raise valid questions that have yet to be answered by
the federal government. First, while we have an audio record of Solicitor
General Ted Olson’s wife—conservative writer Barbara Olson—talking
as Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Yet, a few hours later when photographers
took both stills and videos of the Arlington and Fairfax firefighters
battling that blaze, there was no airplane fuselage protruding from the
Pentagon. One hundred eighty-nine Americans died at the Pentagon—most
of them were on Flight 77; yet Flight 77 appears to have vanished after
the initial impact—giving rise to speculation that the Pentagon blast
was caused by well-placed C-4 charges rather than an airline crash which
was actually witnessed by hundreds of commuters on US Rte 50 who saw Flight
77 nosedive into the Pentagon.
At the same time the passengers of Flight
93 (that had been hijacked and was on route back to Washington where it
was to be crashed into either the White House or Congress) heroically
decided that since they were going to die anyway, they had nothing to
lose in attempting to recapture the plane. The plane went down in a field
in western
Pennsylvania near Shanksville. The American people were led to believe
that heroic Americans fought with the hijackers over control of the plane,
and the hijackers managed to crash it.
The field of debris from the crash—extending
eight miles behind the crash site—suggests that a completely different
scenario may have played out in the skies over Pennsylvania as the eyes
of every American in the nation was transfixed on their television sets
as the first and then second towers of the World Trade Center came crashing
to the Earth.
In the minutes following the World Trade
Center catastrophe it became clear to the public—and the government—that
the crash into World
Trade Center and the Pentagon was not an accident, President George W.
Bush did two things. First, he grounded all flights—public and private,
commercial and noncommercial—everywhere in the United States. This
action aborted 16 other hijackings in the United States (confirmed by
ground maintenance crews at one of the two airlines used in the initial
attacks, who found box cutters in the “pouches” on the backs
of the seats where the emergency instructions are found). Second, Bush
scrambled jet fighters over all of America’s metropolitan areas.
Air traffic controllers watched United Airlines Flight 93 turn around
and head back to the Washington-Baltimore area as it dropped in altitude.
There was no doubt, as it dropped off the air traffic controllers’
radar scopes and the radar screen at Andrews Air Force Base, that the
plane had been hijacked. Because of the national emergency that now existed,
the USAF and Air National Guard pilots were ordered to “shoot-down”
any rogue flights. Based on cell phone
conversations between a handful of the 49 passengers and crew members
on Flight 93 and their families, it was clear that the 757 was headed
back to the Washington Metro area where its likely target was going to
be the White House or perhaps Congress.
Had the passengers successfully wrested
control of Flight 93 from the hijackers, or had their battle with the
terrorists resulted in the plane crashing, the debris field would be spread
out in front of, rather than behind, the plane since that debris would
have been propelled in the same direction the plane was flying as it collided
with the earth. Furthermore, the debris pattern would have been confined
to a much smaller area. The debris pattern was a line eight miles long—but
it stretched out behind the path of Flight 93. What that suggests is that
the initial point of impact occurred in the air not on the ground. That
clearly suggests something—like a missile—struck the plane while
it was still in flight. It happened approximately eight or nine miles
west of the impact zone at Shanksville. Whether or not Flight 93 was struck
by a missile could easily be determined by examining the torn hull of
the wreckage for traces of explosives, and by examining ruptures in the
plane’s steel skin to determine if the damage to the hull was consistent
with tears due to the body of the plane skidding along the ground, or
if it is more consistent with an explosion caused by a conventional warhead
on a missile.
We will likely never know for certain since
it is not in the “best interests” of the United States government
to acknowledge that it shot down an American plane on a domestic flight
which contained American passengers—if, in fact, it did. And, the
debris field suggests they did. Clearly, if that is what happened, it
was a tough call for the Administration to make since Flights 11, 175
and 77 took a terrible toll in lives. According to the latest tally, 2,834
Americans (after deleting all duplicated names) lost
their lives on September 11, 2001.
As far as “history” is concerned,
Tom Burnett, Todd Beamers, and the other passengers on Flight 93 who decided
to try to take back the plane, are truly heroes regardless of what brought
Flight 93 to the ground since they made the decision to drive the plane
into the ground before allowing Muslim terrorists to use their plane—and
the passengers of Flight 93—as a guided missile to kill other Americans.
And, that’s how it should be.
Using
9-11 to abrogate liberty in the name of providing more security
Within four weeks of the bombing of the
Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, the Comprehensive
Anti-Terrorist Act of 1995 was making its way through the committees of
Congress. S.735 cleared the Senate with a 91-8 vote. H.R. 666 was churning
through the House Judiciary Committee with the same speed. Swift passage,
without any debate, was virtually assured. Suddenly the bill was derailed
by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Competitive Enterprises Institute,
the Free Congress Foundation, Gun Owners of America, the National Black
Police Association and the National Rifle Association.
It turns out in their “zeal” to
provide security for the American people, the
United States Senate decided it was necessary to abrogate freedom of speech,
freedom of
religion, the right to petition, and under extraneous circumstances, freedom
of the press under the tenets of the 1st Amendment. Congress also decided
that no American needed to possess firearms so the Comprehensive Anti-Terrorist
Act outlawed the private ownership of guns in the United States—even
though this right is guaranteed under the 2nd Amendment. Ignoring the
3rd Amendment, the Comprehensive Anti-Terrorist Act provides for the military
to assist local police officials. Then, to expedite arrests, the Anti-Terrorist
Act conveniently sidestepped the privacy issue by allowing any form of
search to be taken place without a warrant. Also violating the 4th Amendment,
the Anti-Terrorist Act repealed habeas corpus, and also eliminated due
process under the 5th Amendment. Adding insult to injury, the Act also
denied the accused the right to face his or her accusers. These
abrogations will allow the government to hold anyone indefinitely—much
the way they are now holding Jose Padilla, the American Al Qaeda terrorist
who is currently being held as an enemy military combatant.
When the ACLU and their conservative allies
revealed the abrogations of the Bill of Rights contained within the Comprehensive
Anti-Terrorist Act of 1995 there was an angry outcry
heard all around the United States. The House version of the bill, H.R.
666 could not get out of committee and onto the floor for a vote. The
House introduced four other watered-down versions of the same bill over
the next six months with each ensuing bill a little more benign than the
last: H.R. 896, 1635, 1710—and the bill that finally passed on March
7, 1996 and was signed into law—H.R. 2703.
When Mohammed Atta and his flying circus
of American-trained suicide pilots crashed into the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon exploded into flames, Congressmen and Senators scrambled
to dust off the original versions of H.R. 666 and S.735, slapped a new
name on it—The USA Patriot Act—and ran it up the flag pole to
see how many conservatives would salute.
Enough apparently did.
Almost before anyone (who could actually
remember the words) could recite the “Pledge of Allegiance”
to the flag, and without anyone realizing that Bush’s USA Patriot
Act was the same unconstitutional legislation offered by Bill Clinton
as the Comprehensive Anti-Terrorist Act of 1995, the USA Patriot Act made
its way through both Houses of Congress and was signed into law by George
W. Bush will much patriotic fanfare. And Conservative America, which was
ready to take up arms to prevent Bill Clinton from stealing their Constitutional
rights, handed them to Bush on a silver platter.
One would almost imagine that the passage
of the USA Patriot Act was a victory for liberty when in fact a faint,
muffled drum beat accompanied by an eerie strain of “Taps” could
be heard in the distance as the Bill of Rights faded ever so slowly into
political oblivion.
Adding
170 thousand new bureaucrats
Facing the United States Congress today
is a piece of legislation submitted by President
George W. Bush calling for the creation of a new cabinet position—Secretary
of Homeland Security. It is unlikely that position will be filled by Homeland
Security Czar Tom Ridge who is personally convinced the Democratically
controlled Senate would never approve him for the job.
Nevertheless, Ridge presented the draft
submitted by Bush, calling for a new bureaucracy that will add 170 thousand
jobs to the federal
payroll over the next five years—and consume at least $37 billion
per year. Many of these “new” employees will be transferred
from other departments—such as the Federal Emergency Management Administration
[FEMA], the Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS], U.S. Border
Patrol—and the United States Coast Guard. Even before the new department
is approved by Congress, a battle is already raging between US Transportation
Secretary Norman Y. Mineta and Ridge over control of the US Coast Guard,
which is currently under the control of the Transportation Secretary—and
Mineta has made it very clear that he will not surrender the Coast Guard
without a fight.
Under the proposed departmental structure,
the Department of Homeland Security will control border and transportation
security (an additional infringement of Mineta’s turf) and the Coast
Guard and Border Patrols to monitor border activity to prevent illegals
from entering the country (inside of merely patrolling the borders for
smugglers and drug runners). The new department is also charged with the
responsibility of protecting the infrastructure from sabotage by terrorists.
Clearly, since this requires law enforcement or at least investigative
teams, the need suggests that the Homeland Director—of the Secretary
of Homeland Defense—would need to have senior level involvement with
the Federal Bureau of Investigation [CIA], the National Security Agency
[NSA], and the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] and very likely, the
intelligence arm of the Department of Defense [DoD] and the Secret Service.
To secure international cooperation, the Secretary of Homeland Security
would also need to invade the turf owned by the State Department. Then,
because the new Secretary would have to be concerned about bioterrorism,
he would have to have access to the vast bureaucracy known as the Department
of Health and Human Services’ Center for Disease Control [CDC] and
HRSHA which controls the vaccination programs in the United States.
Clearly, what is envisioned by the Bush
Administration is the creation of a supra-Secretary and a supra-department
that must have the authority to transition all other cabinet departments.
Bluntly speaking, it is an impossible task. The bureaucracy mindset that
permeates the Washington culture will not allow that type of cooperation—even
during a national crisis. One needs look no farther than the lack of information
sharing that took place between the FBI, the NSA (which intercepts 2 million
transmissions an hour via the Echelon satellite spy system), and the CIA,
in the weeks and months before 9-11. Among the traffic intercepted by
the NSA ion September 10 was a message from Muslim extremists noting that
September 11 was “zero day.” A new message received by NSA states
that terrorists will hit “...the city of gambling on freedom day...”
suggesting that terrorists will hit either Atlantic City or Las Vegas
on July 4.) (Due to the traffic the NSA was receiving, extremely overworked
intelligence officers did not get to the message until September 12.)
Furthermore, the sparks that flew between Mineta and Ridge when the Transportation
Secretary learned that the proposed Department of Homeland Security would
rob the Department of Transportation of its role as the head of the US
Coast Guard. In the bureaucracy, the internal VIP pecking order is determined
by who controls what—and how many bodies each Secretary “bosses”—and
how important those “bodies” are in the general scheme of government.
The immensity of what needs to be done to
provide tighter security for the United States tells you that it cannot
be achieved by either passing new laws that further infringe upon the
liberty of Americans nor can it be accomplished by creating a new cabinet
level position—particularly when that cabinet position will create
a massive amount of private infighting between the various secretariats
over not only turf, but the pecking order within that turf—and who
has the most direct access to the President.
Congressional
Fears
Congress—particularly the Democratic
Congress—would prefer not to give Bush what he wants, but they don’t
know how to deny him and get re-elected. With an 80% overall popularity
rating, the Democrats—even the socialist liberals—have been
forced to jump on Bush’s bandwagon and pretend they are as patriotic
as the rest of us. While Congress—on both sides of the aisle—have
no objection to expanding the bureaucracy, there is solid Democratic opposition
to the “accountability” portion of the Bush plan which must
exist if the plan is to have any chance of accomplishing anything other
than promulgating
the bureaucracy.
The Democrats—in particular Senate
Majority Leader Tom Daschle—don’t like the language in the bill
since it will make government employees totally responsible for their
actions (or lack of action). Those who don’t do their jobs, like
the rest of us in the private sector, can and will be fired. Daschle argued
that the plan, as proffered, could “...circumvent civil service law,
weaken job security...threaten benefits and jeopardize workplace rights.”
Daschle also argued that the new regulations would muzzle whistle blowers
Daschle doesn’t seem to realize that
the biggest problem that exists within the bureaucracy is that they can’t
be fired for not working. If the Executive Branch cannot fire an employee
for malfeasance, what incentive does that worker have for “busting”
his or her butt? None. That is precisely why the private sector functions
more cost effectively than the public sector. Those working in the private
sector are fired when they fail to perform.
Democrats also argue that the plan submitted by the Bush Administration
exempts the media or political advocacy groups from gaining information
about terrorist groups or suspected terrorist organizations under the
Freedom of Information Act, thereby weakening freedom of the press. It’s
rather ironic that the Democrats would throw out that argument since the
Democratically-controlled Senate passed the USA Patriot Act while the
House was still debating it—and one of the key tenets of that legislation
was the abridgment of the 1st Amendment in times of crisis or declared
states of emergency.
But even with the nitpicking on semantics,
there is broad bipartisan support for the Bush proposal. Jumping on the
GOP’s red, white and blue soapbox, former Gore running mate
Senator Joe Lieberman [D-CT] declared that “...[s]lowly and surely
won’t do it in this case. We must proceed swiftly but surely.”
Senator Carl Levin [D-MI] argued in a Senate hearing on Thursday, June
20 that the new department might find that it is receiving “sanitized”
reports that have been thoroughly “scrubbed” by the CIA, NSA
or FBI—something that happens today as the spook agencies protect
not only their turf but their covert operatives who could be exposed and
killed if a name was carelessly dropped in a public hearing, or if a Congressman
or Senator leaked information to “friends” in the media.
Because, security aside, the “game”
of politics is just that—a game in which the contest is held every
two, four or six years when the contestants (the Congressmen or women,
Senators or Presidents) are forced to run for reelection. And Congressmen,
Senators, and Presidents “buy” media loyalty by feeding reporters
with leads or “scoops” in exchange for quid pro quos during
election years. Sometimes those “leaks” provide reporters with
classified information that should never see the light of day. It is that
fear that makes the spooks reluctant to feed too much information to politicians—you
simply can’t trust them.
Making
Homeland Security Work
There are two problems with President Bush’s
proposal. First, because the job description of this cabinet level job
requires a supra-Secretary, it won’t happen. A cabinet level job
will be created, and someone—not Tom Ridge—will be confirmed
to head it, it will be equal, but not superior, to the other cabinet positions.
That being the case, it will quickly become another executive branch “black
hole.” It will suck in tons of data that will inundate the analysts
and investigators assigned to assimilate it, and as a result, little of
value will come out. This was Senator Fred Thompson’s [R-TN] fear:
the lack of a sufficient “firewall” between the massive amounts
of intelligence collected and the ability of the new department to assimilate
it. Further will be the propensity of related departments feeding Homeland
Security too much innocuous information that will merely muddy the water
for two reasons: First, they will inundate Homeland Security with truckloads
of meaningless data on the fear that something within that truckload might
be key, and nobody wants to be caught holding data that would have circumvented
another September 11. Second, since every cabinet department fights for
funding, they want to make sure they get their fair share of the budget
allocations. For that reason, there will be a propensity to bury the Homeland
Security task forces under tons of worthless data, making them no more
effective—or valuable—than any other cabinet level department.
The
simple reality is, the President does not need to create a new cabinet
level position since that job description requires more authority than
any current cabinet Secretary—including both Secretary of State and
Secretary of Defense—currently possesses.
The Vice President of the United States
has always been the most worthless job in government. While he is theoretically
the second most powerful man in the world because he is a “heartbeat”
away from the presidency, in reality the Speaker of the House is the second
most powerful man in America, and the Senate Majority leader is the third.
In reality, the Vice President is the head of the United States Senate.
He has more power than any cabinet member and, is you might say, the only
supra-official in the United States government other than the President
since he, like the President, is elected by all of the people—and
all of the States.
Technically, all cabinet officials theoretically
report to the Vice President as they report to the President. As the elected
“partner” of the President the Vice President is the logical
choice to head the Homeland Security. Rather than attempting to rearrange
the government and create a supra-Secretary who will generate more secret
envy and/or animosity than cooperation from his or her “peers”
in the Administration, the Vice President should be designated as the
“head” of Homeland Security with legislation providing that
specific authority to him. That legislation should authorize the creation
of an Assistant Secretary for each of the existing cabinet positions,
and an Assistant Director of the FBI, CIA, NSA, FEMA, ATF, INS, and a
Deputy Chief of Staff for each military branch—including the Coast
Guard—who are designated as “Assistant Secretary of Transportation
for Homeland Security,” or “Assistant FBI Director for Homeland
Security,” or in the military, “Deputy Chief of Staff for Homeland
Security.”
While these Assistant Directors, or Assistant
Secretaries would have access to all significant data streams funneling
into their respective departments, each of those individuals would report
not to the Secretary or Director, but to the Vice President, and would
be part of the permanent Homeland Security Task Force. Further, as a team,
these sub-directors and sub-secretaries would report directly to the Vice
President. Also under the Vice President would be a data analysis team
headed by a Homeland Security Director (most likely Tom Ridge). Ridge’s
staff should consist of criminologists, computer specialists, military
strategists, and criminal investigators, linguists, and experts in terrorism.
Their “job,” would be to sort through and analyze the tons of
data provided by each of the Homeland Security heads for the various cabinet
departments.
Unlike the Bush plan which entails creating
a new cabinet position that will require one or two years before it is
up and running effectively, by assigning the task of Homeland Security
to the Vice President, and adding a key Homeland Security specialist to
each cabinet department immediately, the task force can be up-and-running
within 90 days. As Senator Lieberman said, whatever we do, we need to
do it “...swiftly but surely.”
Copyright © 2009 Jon Christian Ryter.
All rights reserved.