Martial Law in America?

Rex 84

The Readiness Exercise of 1984 was a secret nation-wide exercise led by FEMA and involving 34 other federal agencies to prepare for anticipated emergencies in any time of increased international tension or economic or financial crisis. Lt. Col. Oliver North and FEMA developed this plan to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, and use U.S. Military for domestic law enforcement. Under Rex 84 the military was to detain 400,000 immigrants in the United States and hold them in 10 detention camps in the U.S. Rex 84 was first exposed during the Iran-contra hearings in 1987 when Rep. Jack Brooks questioned Oliver North's involvement in the plan and expressed his concern about the U.S. Constitution being suspended.

Rep. Jack Brooks said he read about the plan in a Miami newspaper when he questioned Oliver North about the existence Rex 84. The newspaper clipping from The Miami Herald July 5, 1987 is available to view or download here.

Rex 84 laid the groundwork so that FEMA could legally conduct this exercise suspending the Constitution and rounding up hundreds of thousands of people to be placed in internment camps. It is concerning, to say the least, that something like this could be implemented without martial law or without some very dramatic crisis. The facts about Rex 84 show that it can, and has been done without a legitimate crisis to justify it. Rex 84 was only an exercise, it was supposed to be practice, this begs the question: Practice for what?

If memory serves us correctly, it takes an act of Congress to pass a law through a majority vote and then it must be signed by the President. If the President decides to veto the bill it gets kicked back to congress where it has another chance to be passed after the presidential veto. This process can take months or years. The President however, can issue executive orders which carry the same weight as any other law and do not originate in congress.

Not long after FEMA was created by executive order 12127, President Carter enacted executive order 12148 in 1979 which consolidated federal agencies dealing with emergencies and civil defense into FEMA, an independent agency free of Cabinet interference, with authority as the lead federal agency in a presidentially-declared disaster.

There are several executive orders in place that can be initiated as the President sees fit and would empower the government to do things most of us have have not or can not imagine happening on American soil. These executive orders would be necessary for a plan like Rex 84 to be carried out and considering what these orders could allow to happen is alarming.

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990

  allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995

  allows the government to seize and control the communication media.

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997

  allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998

  allows the government to seize all means of transportation, including personal cars, trucks or vehicles of any kind and total control over all highways, seaports, and waterways

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 10999

  allows the government to take over all food resources and farms

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000

  allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001

  allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002

  designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003

  allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004

  allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005

  allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051

  specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310

  grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049

  assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921

  allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has broad powers in every aspect of the nation. General Frank Salzedo, chief of FEMA's Civil Security Division stated in a 1983 conference that he saw FEMA's role as a "new frontier in the protection of individual and governmental leaders from assassination, and of civil and military installations from sabotage and/or attack, as well as prevention of dissident groups from gaining access to U.S. opinion, or a global audience in times of crisis."

Operation Garden Plot

Operation Garden Plot is a declassified document detailing the plan to mobilize US Armed Forces and UN Troops against US Citizens. It defines tax protesters, militia groups, religious cults, and general anti-government dissenters as terrorists. It calls for deadly force to be used against any extremist or dissident perpetrating any and all forms of civil disorder. (Annex A, section b of Operation Garden Plot)

The problem with Operation Garden Plot is not so much as a contingency plan to restore order after "civil unrest", but the fact that the government can define "civil unrest" however it wants. Similar to the way the government has defined U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan as "terrorrists" it can define a peaceful protest to unconstitutional laws as "civil unrest". A frightening example of this is the Battle in Seattle, the protests which took place in Seattle in 1999 and succeeded in blocking the WTO conferences.

Garden Plot was last activated (as Noble Eagle) to provide military assistance to civil authorities following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The Pentagon also activated it to restore order during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.

Download the PDF format Garden Plot documents obtained by exercising the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) below.

DA Civil Disturbance Support Plan Garden Plot 1968
U.S. Coast-Civil Disturbance Support Plan
DA Civil Disturbance Support Plan Garden Plot 1978
DA Civil Disturbance Support Plan Garden Plot 1991

The planning and involvement of the military in these operations occur despite the Posse Comitatus Act, Latin for power of the country, which forbids military or national guard to be used for law enforcement purposes. But as we all should know by now, it seems there is a clever loop-hole to everything.

National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive

According to wikipedia, The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51/Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-20, sometimes called simply "Executive Directive 51" for short), created and signed by United States President George W. Bush on May 4, 2007, is a Presidential Directive which claims power to execute procedures for continuity of the federal government in the event of a "catastrophic emergency". Such an emergency is construed as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."

The presidential directive says that, when the president considers an emergency to have occurred, an "Enduring Constitutional Government" comprising "a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government, coordinated by the President," will take the place of the nation's regular government, presumably without the oversight of Congress. Conservative activist Jerome Corsi and Marjorie Cohn of the National Lawyers Guild have said that this is a violation of the Constitution of the United States in that the three branches of government are separate and equal, with no single branch coordinating the others. The directive, created by the president, claims that the president has the power to declare a catastrophic emergency. It does not specify who has the power to declare the emergency over.