August 23, 2011
ARCHIVES: Counter Terrorism Under Reagan-Bush I 

Reagan Launches Explicit Policy Using “Terror“ as Pretext for Repression

By S. Brian Willson*

S.B. Willson

**July 22, 1982, NSSD-47, “Emergency Mobilization Preparedness,” authorized “relocation of large numbers of people” [detention] and an “intensified counterintelligence effort” during major domestic or national security emergencies.

**July 28, 1983, NSSD-100, “Enhanced U.S. Military Activity and Assistance For the Central America Region”, ordering U.S. military operations in the area “significantly increased.”

San Francisco Examiner, October 5, 1988, “Reagan Loosened CIA Leash, Order Could Have OK’d Assassinations”).

**January 20, 1986, NSDD 207, “The National Program for Combating Terrorism,” created a National Security Council (NSC) coordinator of counterterrorism, also chaired by Oliver North, to develop more effective measures for apprehending, extraditing, and prosecuting terrorists.

**July 18, 1986, FBI presents “counter intelligence/counter-terrorism operations plan” at a meeting of the OSG-TIWG (see above) to initiate active FBI domestic surveillance.

The following evidence suggest how intensely President Reagan pursued surveillance, especially under the new rationale of investigating and preempting “terrorist” incidents.

Professional anti-communist and smug phony Ronald Reagan: One of the vilest figures in American history, and faithful servitor of the superrich. You can gauge a man's lucidity and moral compass from his attitudes toward Reagan.

1. Reagan Executive Order 12333, signed December 4, 1981. This Order allows the CIA to collect foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence within the U.S., to conduct covert operations in the U.S., and allows physical surveillance by the CIA of a person abroad to obtain foreign intelligence. The Order allows warrantless, unconsented physical searches, mail surveillance, monitoring, and similar techniques if “there is probable cause to believe that the technique is directed against a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.” (The 1947 National Security Act that created the CIA prohibits the CIA from “internal security functions.”)

2. National Security Decision Directive #2 was signed by President Reagan on January 12, 1982. This NSDD reorganized the National Security Council (NSC) and set up interagency groups on (1) foreign policy, (2) defense policy, and (3) intelligence to “undertake such other activities as may be assigned to the NSC.” NOTE: In effect, this Directive states that the NSC will set policy, and will participate in operational roles. It shifts NSC from adviser to the actual running of covert campaigns.

3. National Security Decision Directive #22 was signed by President Reagan on January 29, 1982. This NSDD authorized the CIA Director to request the FBI to collect information for the CIA in the United States. (The 1947 National Security Act prohibits the CIA from “internal security functions.”)

4. National Security Decision Directive #47 was signed by President Reagan on July 22, 1982. This NSDD was entitled “Emergency Mobilization Preparedness” and provided for wage and price controls, the “relocation of large numbers of people” and an “intensified counterintelligence effort” during major domestic or national security emergencies.

5. National Security Decision Directive #100 was signed by President Reagan on July 28, 1983. This NSDD was entitled “Enhanced U.S. Military Activity and Assistance for the Central America Region” and it ordered U.S. military operations in the area “significantly increased.”

7. There was (and is) a FBI Anti-Terrorist Task Force (Ref. Agents George Kiszynski and Kevin Currier relating to Jack Terrell).

8. A July 28, 1986, memorandum from Poindexter of the NSC (memo prepared by Col. North) addressed to President Reagan identifies the Operations Sub-Group (OSG) of the Terrorist Incident Working Group (TIWG) of the NSC. This Group made available to the FBI all information from other U.S. agencies relating to Terrell in early 1986.

October 31, 1986, a four-page FBI message addressed to the Director and All Offices of the Bureau from the Chicago office, SUBJECT: “Domestic Security/Terrorism Sabotage”, including the launching of an October 30 investigation of the “Plowshare” group, and group called the Veterans Fast For Life, as part of “an organized conspiracy to use force/violence to coerce the United States Government into modifying its direction“.

Ron Kovic (l) and Willson

December 14, 1987, FBI Director William Sessions sends 3-page response letter to Congressman Don Edwards’ (D-CA) inquiry of October 6, 1987, admitting that six individuals from two organizations, “Silo Plowshares”, and “Veterans fast For Life”, “were developed as suspects“, and that the FBI conducted a “preliminary inquiry….under the domestic security/terrorism caption“.  From the pattern of conduct “it was reasonable to conclude a political motive, by two or more persons engaged in activities in violation of Federal law…..Such investigations are initiated when the facts or circumstances reasonably indicate that two or more persons are engaged in an enterprise for the purpose of furthering political or social goals, wholly or in part, through activities that involve force or violence and a violation of the criminal laws of the United State”.  The letter indicated that the preliminary inquiry was closed on April 28, 1987.

Brian Note #1: The FBI response does not indicate whether there have been any other investigations, official or unofficial, for any other reasons, and whether the initial inquiry remains part of the historical record or whether it has been physically eliminated. A wave of break-ins (see Brian Note #3 below) at offices of political opponents to Reagan’s foreign policies suggest government behavior has systematically been involved directly or indirectly in violation of the law and civil liberties, going far beyond surveillance and investigations.

Brian Note #3: As of January 1988, the Movement Support Network of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York had recorded 90 burglaries and break-ins with apparent Central American-related political motives since 1983.  From November 1984 through June 1986, the offices sharing space in the basement of the Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Cambridge, MA were broken into eight times.  The targets included: The New England Central American Network (NECAN), Central American Solidarity Association, Central American Information Office, Educators in Support of ANDES (the Salvadoran teachers union) and New Institute of Central America (NICA), the latter of which sent Brian to their language school in Esteli, Nicaragua on a scholarship as a military veteran, Jan.-Feb. 1986.  The Church itself had become a sanctuary for Central American refugees the week before the first break-in.  On May 15, 1987, the NICA office experienced another break-in.  Burglars poured muriatic acid on computer discs.  NECAN was broken into again on May 3, 1988. (Sklar, pp. 351-52).

Break-Ins at Sanctuary Churches and Organizations Opposed to Administration Policy in Central America: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, 100th Congress, 1st Session, February 19-20, 1987].

In addition, the VFFL Christic house was broken into in early October 1986 in Wash., DC.  And Daniel Sheehan, director of Christic was investigated by the FBI as well.

BW Note #1: In former CIA officer John Stockwell’s book, The Praetorian Guard, The U.S. Role in the New World Order. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. (1991), pp. 105-106, he reports that in September 1988, FBI Director William Sessions announced the disciplining of FBI officers who had improperly targeted the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) and 160 other civic organizations, many of which were critical of the Reagan administration’s policy in Central America. During the summer of 1989, Congress discovered that a total of 1,600 groups had been improperly targeted by the FBI.

August 31, 1988, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, “Political Break-ins: A Disturbing Whodunit”: Citing a Knight-Ridder story by their Washington, D.C. reporter, Alfonso Chardy, “The CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency have cooperated in a three year operation aimed at monitoring the activities of U.S.-based opponents of Reagan’s Central America policies.”

F.B.I. Is Willing To Erase Names From Its Records,” by Philip Shenon: “The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, William S. Sessions, indicated today that the bureau was willing to expunge the names of people and organizations identified in files of a bureau surveillance campaign aimed at opponents of the Reagan Administration’s policies in Central America.

Brian Note #1: Brian’s name?

Brian Note #2:  Reagan’s Office of Public Diplomacy had applied techniques from the Public Relations industry as well as utilizing intelligence shenanigans, coordinating its efforts with Western Goals, a private intelligence computerized data gathering agency closely connected to the John Birch Society, to create a data-base cataloguing the names and personal information of activists in the nuclear freeze and Central American solidarity movement.  The information was turned over to the FBI.  The OPD worked hand-in-glove with the State Dept., the Defense Dept., the CIA, the NSC, and a vast private network of right-wing individuals and organizations. Retired General John Singlaub was on the Western Goals board [The New Right Humanitarians, The Resource Center, Albuquerque, NM, 1986, pp. 39-40].

, Washington: Center for national Security Studies, 1988, p. 2].

Boston Globe, June 18, 1988].

NOTE: In 1988, FBI director William Sessions finally admitted to the Library Awareness Program in which librarians were asked to report on the reading habits of people with foreign accents or funny sounding names (Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, p. 759).  The Washington Monthly published a January 1989 article, “Ma’m, What You Need Is a New, Improved Hoover,” by Mathew Miller, in which he humorously points out that if this standard were applied, “Zbigniew Brzenski could be busted any day in the Columbia stacks.”  Actually the Library Awareness Program predated Sessions by many years, having been established by J. Edgar Hoover in 1962 in efforts to solicit librarians as informants (Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover, p. 760).

September 1990, “International Terrorism, FBI Investigates Domestic Activities To Identify Terrorists,” prepared by the U.S. General Accounting Office, Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee On Civil and Constitutional Rights, Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives (Rep. Don Edwards), that reveals between January 1982 and June 1988, the FBI opened 18,144 cases because of suspicion that individuals or group were involved in terrorist activities, of whom 6,895 were “U.S. Persons” (U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens). Congressman Don Edwards (D-10th Congr Distr/San Jose) initiated the inquiry. William Webster had been director of the FBI, February 23, 1978 – May 25, 1987.  He was succeeded by William S. Sessions, director from November 2, 1987 – July 19, 1993.  John E. Otto was the Acting Director, May 26, 1987 – November 2, 1987 at the time Brian was struck.

GAO Report: “The FBI redacted the closed files before we reviewed them…We were limited in our ability to develop overall conclusions regarding the FBI’s international terrorism program.  The questionnaire and case file data clearly demonstrated that the FBI did engage in monitoring of First Amendment-type activities during its international terrorist investigations”.

Brian Note #1: There is no way of knowing the veracity of any FBI statements.  Information is blacked out (redacted) preventing any accountability as to who was investigated, and whether their names are still on a watch list.

Brian Note #2: See: Ross Gelbspan. (1991). Break-ins, Death Threats and the FBI, The Covert War Against the Central America Movement. Boston: South End Press, p. 150: The “hook” in the FBI Guidelines that permitted investigations of various individual U.S. citizens, including Congress people, was because of their “contacts with representatives of foreign governments”.

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*A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR (Thank you, WiKipedia)

S. Brian Willson (born July 4, 1941) is a prominent American anti-war activist. 

U.S. Constitutional and international laws prohibiting aggression and war crimes,” Willson has been an educator and activist, teaching about the dangers of these policies. He has participated in lengthy fasts, actions of nonviolent civil disobedience, and tax refusal along with voluntary simplicity.

Reagan‘s anti-terrorist task force provisions and that the train crew that day had been ordered not to stop the train to prevent any Hijacking attempts. Willson filed a law suit contending that the Navy and individual supervisors were given ample warning of their plan to block the tracks, and that the train crew had time to stop—which the subsequent official Navy report confirmed. The train crew filed a law suit against Willson, requesting punitive damages for the “humiliation, mental anguish, and physical stress” they suffered as a result of the incident, which was dismissed. Willson later agreed to settle his lawsuit against the Government and train crew for $920,000. Willson now walks with prostheses.

Willson’s blog is at http://www.brianwillson.com/.  His site, in his words, packs essays, “describing the incredible historic pattern of U.S. arrogance, ethnocentrism, violence and lawlessness in domestic and global affairs, and the severe danger this pattern poses for the future health of Homo sapiens and Mother Earth. Other essays discuss revolutionary, nonviolent alternative approaches based on the principle of radical relational mutuality. This is a term increasingly used by physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists to describe the nature of the omnicentric*, ever-unfolding universe. Every being, every aspect of life energy in the cosmos, is intrinsically interconnected with and affects every other being and aspect of life energy at every moment.”

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Dear EarthTalk: Some friends of mine were talking about a book called “Plan B” that proposes a plan for rescuing the environment and ending poverty around the world. Is it a realistic plan or just some utopian pipe dream?                                      — Robin Jackson, Richmond, VA

Lester R. Brown's "Plan B" is an integrated program with four interdependent goals: drastically cutting carbon dioxide emissions, stabilizing population, eradicating poverty, and restoring the Earth’s natural systems. Pictured: Mr. Brown and the first Plan B book, published in 2003. There have been three subsequent editions. (Earth Policy Institute)

What started as a book has grown into a movement known as “Plan B” which presents a roadmap for achieving worldwide goals of stabilizing both population and climate. According to Lester Brown, author of the 2003 book, Plan B (and three subsequent updates) and founder of the non-profit environmental think tank, Earth Policy Institute, the plan is based on replacing the fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy with a new economic model powered by abundant sources of renewable energy.
Brown argues for transportation systems that are diverse and aim to maximize mobility, widely employing light rail, buses and bicycles. “A Plan B economy comprehensively reuses and recycles materials,” he says. “Consumer products from cars to computers are designed to be disassembled into their component parts and completely recycled.”

Brown even proposes a budget for eradicating poverty, educating the world’s youth and delivering better health care for everyone. “It also presents ways to restore our natural world by planting trees, conserving topsoil, stabilizing water tables, and protecting biological diversity,” says Brown. “With each new wind farm, rooftop solar water heater, paper recycling facility, bicycle path, marine park, rural school, public health facility, and reforestation program, we move closer to a Plan B economy.”

Plan B is an integrated program with four interdependent goals: cutting net carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2020, stabilizing population at eight billion or lower, eradicating poverty, and restoring the Earth’s natural systems. Where Plan B really hits home is in the numbers: Brown puts realistic dollar values on the various aspects of his plan, and compares these costs with current military spending. Needless to say, restoring the environment and economy looks like a bargain when viewed against what the developed nations of the world spend on being ready for battle.

The beauty of Plan B is that it is feasible with current technologies and could well be achieved by 2020 with a concerted international effort. Brown reportedly wrote the latest incarnation of Plan B as a warning call for leaders of the world to begin “mobilizing to save civilization” given that time is more than ever of the essence. Luminaries from Bill Clinton to E.O. Wilson to Ted Turner have spoken highly of Plan B, and at least one university (Cal State at Chico) has made the latest version of the book (Plan B 4.0) required reading for all incoming freshmen.

Those looking for more up-to-date information on the evolution of the Plan B model and progress toward its goals should tune into the website of the Earth Policy Institute, the think tank started by Brown in 2001 and currently used as a central node in the growing network of thousands of entities and individuals around the globe supportive of making Plan B into reality. Prior to founding Earth Policy Institute, Brown was well known in environmental and policy circles for his work with the Worldwatch Institute, a pioneering environmental think tank he launched back in 1974.

CONTACT: Earth Policy Institute, http://www.earth-policy.org. 

www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

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By Diane Gee Mon Sep 19, 2011

I WENT TO BED thinking of a comment I made on Mishima’s video below. I was born in 1963, which made me 6 the summer of love, 9 – 11 during Watergate. I was 12 when Vietnam ended. We (and most families around us) didn’t get cable until I was 14. I was 19 the first time I saw an MTV broadcast. All of my formative years were Cold War years. What happened to us?

It never, ever made sense to me. Yet I lacked the vocabulary, if not the bravery to make the argument to them. What I did believe in was the science, was the leaps of understanding we were making, and most of all, the miracle of the technology that would allow us all to get to know one another and no longer be disconnected strangers. The realization that the environment was in trouble and the absolute thrill that we could join together to prevent this, heal it, moved me. DDT was banned. Eagles were coming back. We had finally figured out the implications of radioactive waste, chemical toxicity, rationing water. [The EPA was created under Nixon!] It was being taught in schools. Surely, I thought this awakening of responsibility would create a generation in which the environment, at the very least, would be one thing I would never have to worry about as an adult. We recycled. We had standards, air testing, scrubbers and all wanted to work towards renewable energy. Surely, with the leaps in science we could accomplish all these things. We cared. We were enlightened. We now could test and see what we were doing harmful and prevent it. We could save the world. What happened to us? We KNOW better now, and still do nothing about the fact we know we are poisoning ourselves and the Earth. Forgive the long quote below from Wiki. I REALLY want to make my point, and anything less diminishes it. [edit] 1980-1989 [edit] 1990-1999 [edit] 2000-2009 [RL30172]    2004-present: Drone attacks in Pakistan [edit] 2010-Present Jesus. Fucking. Christ. We are in permawar now and suddenly allowing ourselves being whipped up into supporting it. Where did our rationality go? Where did our moral code go? Where did the gut level knowledge that war kills innocents and creates more enemies rather than allies go?  Not to mention Truth, as they say, the first casualty. I fully understand why the Kleptocracy, the American ruling class, sells wars, but I thought we were long over being the buyers. Cartoon on the May 22, 1902 cover of Life magazine depicting American application of the "water cure" to a Filipino insurgent while European colonialists watch. The caption reads: "Chorus in background: 'Those pious Yankees can't throw stones at us anymore.'" And now? We have become torturers. Torturers. (Actually, we were torturers already, for example in the total amnesia time of the so-called fully “innocent” America 100 years ago when we set out to conquer Puerto Rico and the Philippines, the latter the site of the first great anti-American insurgency and genocidal counter-insurgency war, with waterboarding and all*). And we have people, popular people, as candidates who wish they had “someone like Cheney” the defender of all American torture programs, if not the actual author of the program, as their running mate. We had so much potential. We were children awakened. Our intellect and morals were catching up with our technology. We had the capacity to become so much more and we, WE, we ourselves wasted it. We cannot just point upward anymore. We now have one last tool, that has not been co-opted in its entirety. It is the medium upon which you read these very words. We have to finish what our little corner of society embarked on those many years ago in my naive childhood. We have to connect directly to the people of the world, without prejudice or preconceived notions and listen to one another. We have to strive once again for the things we expected of ourselves in our idealistic younger years. To use science as a tool to improve the world. To use the media as a tool to educate the world. To become stewards of our Earth not its own cancer. To use our intelligence to create renewable energy that can be available to all for what amounts to free. We can cure disease. And we certainly can stop killing our brothers and sisters in the name of the profits of the few. Only we can do it. I have some real doubts if the people can awaken in time. All I know is that I had a dream, a dream I saw crushed. All I know is that I had faith, and that faith has been betrayed. All I know is that people have to be the answer and remember our common dream. There can be enough for everyone. There can be lasting peace. There can be an end to poverty and disease. We must again dream what we know to be true into being. And, I have studied enough comparative religions to know one thing. If any of us ever listened to the ideas in them, we would all be better off. We can no longer let men use and corrupt the messages as vehicles of power over others, or excuses to preach capitalism which goes against every religion. Communism is the only way. Socialism is the only way. Uniting globally is the only way. It is end game time. We either wake together or die as prisoners alone. Being One is the Only Way. We are all connected, including the multifarious creatures whose fate hangs on our whim. The choice is clear: We must look after one another.

DIANE GEE is a Senior Contributing Editor with The Greanville Post. She maintains a personal blog at The Wild Wild Left , where this piece also ran. Her page on Facebook, The Wildly Left, is a lively and thought-provoking forum for people resisting and fighting the status quo, but a robust iconoclastic personality is required to fully enjoy the repartee. 

* Re the ancient “water cure” see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cure_(torture)

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IF YOU THINK THE LAMESTREAM MEDIA ARE A DISGRACE AND A HUGE OBSTACLE
to real change in America why haven’t you sent at least a few dollars to The Greanville Post (or a similar anti-corporate citizen’s media?). Think about it.  Without educating and organizing our ranks our cause is DOA. That’s why our new citizens’ media need your support. Send your badly needed check to “TGP, P.O. Box 1028, Brewster, NY 10509-1028.” Make checks out to “P. Greanville/ TGP”.  (A contribution of any amount can also be made via Paypal and MC or VISA.)

THANK YOU.
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By Medea Benjamin

Medea Benjamin

more than half of U.S. income taxes are funneled, not to welfare mothers and underprivileged youths, but to what President Eisenhower called the“military-industrial complex.”  

Yet despite the riches it receives courtesy of the American taxpayer, no group feels more entitled than military contractors and their intellectual mercenaries on Capitol Hill fighting for ever more handouts, fear-mongering talking points in hand. War profiteers have even banded together to safeguard the money they make from death and destruction, forming the group “Second to None” to counter the “threat” of military spending cuts. 

some estimates – that it now roughly equals what the rest of the world spends on bombs and tankscombined. But that trillion-dollar-a-year entitlement is not the one lawmakers are talking about cutting.

MomsRising, is even urging the nation’s mothers to sign a petition preemptively praising Murray’s work on the panel, promising to “deliver a real superhero cape, tennis shoes with wings, and your signatures directly to Senator Murray.” 

93 children. Yet Murray has provided the administration a blank check, only meekly repeating boilerplate platitudes such as the need to “ask tough questions” and “insist on a clear plan,” which we suspect doesn’t mean a whole lot to any Afghan mothers. 

committing bribery, which is illegal when it involves government procurement officials but not, so it seems, politicians. It’s hard to find a better example of the endemic corruption in Washington than a corrupt lawmaker helping a corrupt company get a contract it gained – and at one point, lost – because of corruption.

the Associated Press, the six Republicans and six Democrats on the debt panel “represent states where the biggest military contractors – Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics Corp., Raytheon Co. and Boeing Co. – build missiles, aircraft, jet fighters and tanks while employing tens of thousands of workers.” That means they’re even more anxious to please the military establishment and weapons manufacturers than your average politician. Collectively, members of the committee tasked with cutting $1.2 trillion in federal spending have, since 2007, taken in around $1 million in campaign contributions from military contractors. 

Sen. Max Baucus (D): Montana's poisoned gift to the world, and one of the greatest scumbags anywhere. 200 pounds of walking pus.