Minutemen ‘expose’ Bush’s ’shadow government’

Ron Brynaert

A major anti-immigration group is accusing the Bush Administration of creating a “shadow government,” by “engaging in collaborative relations with Mexico and Canada outside the U.S. Constitution,” RAW STORY has learned.

The Minuteman Project sent out a press release late Tuesday evening hyping their Web site, which is showcasing 1,000 documents allegedly obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) by World Net Daily columnist Jerome Corsi. Most widely known for his longtime attacks on Democratic Senator John Kerry’s military record, Corsi also co-authored a book about the Minuteman “battle” to secure America’s borders.

SPP was launched in March of 2005 as a trilateral effort by the United States, Canada and Mexico to increase the security and improve the quality of life of North Americans through greater cooperation and information sharing. Many conservative critics view the trilateral initiative as a threat to U.S. sovereignty.

“The documents give clear evidence that the Bush administration has created a ’shadow government,’” Corsi said in the press release.

Corsi claims to have “hundreds of pages of e-mails from U.S. executive branch administrators who are copying the e-mail to somewhere between 25 to 100 people, a third of whom are in the U.S. bureaucracy, a third of whom are in the Mexican bureaucracy and a third of whom are in the Canadian bureaucracy.”

“They are sharing their laws and regulations so we can ‘harmonize’ and ‘integrate’ our laws into a North American structure, not a USA structure,” Corsi said.

The documents can be viewed on the Minuteman Project’s Stop the Security and Prosperity Project page, but there’s no mention of any particular “smoking gun” which could proves the contention that the White House has created a shadow government. The anti-immigration group appears to consider the mere existence of communications among bureaucrats from the three countries as proof of their assertions.

One series of letters show U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez writing to North American Steel Association leaders in all three countries thanking them for their “suggestions on enhancing the competitiveness of the steel industry” in North America (pdf file).

“The North American industries’ recommendations for launching a North American steel strategy were well received and formed the basis for the Committee’s discussions on a program of work going forward,” Gutierrez wrote to assorted Steel Association chairmen and presidents.

A RAW STORY examination of documents related to the “steel strategy” as presented at the Minuteman Web site did not turn up anything untoward.

But Corsi maintains that the “documentation he received is missing key pieces.”

“We received very few actual agreements, though many are referenced,” Corsi said. “Many of the work plans described lack the work products which the groups say they produced.”