The Emerging American Police State

Gerard Keenan

The idea of the rule of law is to protect the people from the anti-social behavior of those who would endanger life, property, and the common good. But by the mid-20th century various agendas began creeping into the law books.

These evolved into what we now know as political correctness; and it has reached epidemic proportions, but Americans have become so accustomed to the government telling us what’s good for us, and passing laws to make criminals out of law abiding citizens, that it is accepted without question.

We are facing the greatest threat to our country, our security, and our way of life that we have ever faced. Yet our politicians and lawmakers are totally oblivious and continue on the path of total control of every aspect of the lives of every individual in this nation and completely ignore the real dangers � themselves and terrorism.

Instead of seeking ways to protect us they waste their time, energy, and the tax-payers’ money looking for ways to criminalize the innocent.

John Pomfret, in the March 27th issue of the Washington Post, provides an excellent example of this in Texas.

While the requirements of Homeland Security have put increased demands on already strained law enforcement agencies, police forces continue to see a steady decline in recruits. According to Mr. Pomfret at least 80% of the nation’s 17,000 law enforcement agencies have vacancies they can not fill.

The shortage in Texas is so great that there is a bidding war for veteran cops between the cities of Dallas, Houston and Austin, with Houston recently offering a signing bonus of $7,000.00

Yet despite this critical shortage the Texas legislature considers it far more important to control the private lives of ordinary citizens by redefining the term “public drunkenness”.

On March 30th, a few days after Pomfret’s article appeared, NBC’s “Today Show” aired a video report of this folly.

Public drunkenness once meant if a cop saw you staggering down the street he would take you into custody, toss you in the drunk tank to sleep it off and, in the morning, you would either be set loose, or made to pay a nominal fine and then released. Rarely was a person even charged with a misdemeanor.

But in Texas a police officer can now arrest anyone, anywhere who, in his subjective opinion, he considers “drunk”; including innocent tourists at the bar of their hotel.

The NBC report showed police arresting tourists and the bartenders for having “over-served” the hotel guests.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Or the police state tactics of Hitler’s Brown Shirts?

“To protect and to serve?” Or “To subdue and control?”

The already over-extended and diminishing resources of law enforcement would be far better utilized in protecting Americans than in subjugating, controlling, and criminalizing them.

But the Police State mentality extends deep into the federal government as well.

In the April 13th issue of Newsweek Mark Hosenhall, in his article “America’s Secret Police?” shows how the Department of Defense (DoD) is working toward this end.

The Defense Security Service (DSS) has been around for many years. Its mission included conducting background investigations on defense contractors’ employees and on-site inspections of facilities to ensure compliance with DoD security requirements and standards.

A second agency, far more secretive and lesser known, is the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) created in 2002 with the responsibility of making DoD counterintelligence efforts more effective and, according to its own officials, is limited to analysis of counterintelligence data from other agencies.

While there have been occasional “lapses” and leaks in the DSS, those in the CIFA are far more worrying.

CIFA has already overstepped its charter by putting together a database of peace activist, anti-administration and anti-war protestors and demonstrators.

The Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) has recommended the disestablishment and consolidation of the DSS and CIFA. Officially it is being called a merger. In reality it is a CIFA attempt to take over the DSS whose assets include more than 4.5 million defense contractor employees’ background investigations. CIFA has already requested access to these files on many occasions in the past � without justification or explanation � and was turned down.

This merger will eventually give CIFA access to these files as well as control of DSS’s 280 field investigators � giving it a capability it currently claims it does not have.

According to defense analyst and washingtonpost.com blogger Bill Arkin, who first brought CIFA’s domestic spying to light, “we are creating an American military secret police that is clearly acquiring way too much information and way too much power”.

Texas believes that deploying its already thinly spread police to arrest tourists for having a drink is more important than dealing with the constant, increasing tide of illegals crossing its border with Mexico every day, the terrorist sleepers already known to be established in this country, or keeping an eye on our own home-grown terrorist groups, anti-government militias, white supremacists, and various other hate groups.

The CFIA/DSS merger indicates that the DoD is similarly short-sighted and this merger will greatly expand DoD’s domestic spying capabilities.

Some say this is for our own safety and security, and for national security.

Where is the safety and security issue in raiding a hotel bar and arresting a harmless, innocent tourist who may have had one too many when those police officers should be on the street preventing crime, meeting their responsibilities in Homeland Security, and living up to their motto “to protect and to serve”?

Where is the DoD’s justification for domestic spying under the guise of national security? There can be no legitimate reason for CFIA to have access to the DSS security files of people who have already been thoroughly investigated for various levels of security clearances and Special Access Programs (SAP’s).

DoD would only be wasting more time, money, man-hours and resources by duplicating what the National Security Agency (NSA) has already been doing for years.

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USN Retired & civilian Security Ass’t to Cdr. US Naval Forces Europe. Lived & worked in Europe/Middle East/N. Africa for 23 years. Currently military and terrorism research specialist & terrorism research specialist/correspondent for Western Defense Studies Institute, Rome, Italy.