Directive outlines Obama’s policy to use the military against citizens

Directive outlines Obama’s policy to use the military against citizens


"Other agencies with SWAT teams reportedly include the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Education Department."



http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...ge=all#pagebre

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“Federal action, including the use of federal military forces, is authorized when necessary to protect the federal property or functions,” the directive states.

Military assistance can include loans of arms, ammunition, vessels and aircraft. The directive states clearly that it is for engaging civilians during times of unrest.

A U.S. official said the Obama administration considered but rejected deploying military force under the directive during the recent standoff with Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his armed supporters.

Mr. Bundy is engaged in a legal battle with the federal Bureau of Land Management over unpaid grazing fees. Along with a group of protesters, Mr. Bundy in April confronted federal and local authorities in a standoff that ended when the authorities backed down.

The Pentagon directive authorizes the secretary of defense to approve the use of unarmed drones in domestic unrest. But it bans the use of missile-firing unmanned aircraft.

“Use of armed [unmanned aircraft systems] is not authorized,” the directive says.

The directive was signed by then-Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn. A copy can be found on the Pentagon website: http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/c...df/302518p.pdf.

Defense analysts say there has been a buildup of military units within non-security-related federal agencies, notably the creation of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams. The buildup has raised questions about whether the Obama administration is undermining civil liberties under the guise of counterterrorism and counternarcotics efforts.

Other agencies with SWAT teams reportedly include the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Education Department.

The militarization of federal agencies, under little-known statues that permit deputization of security officials, comes as the White House has launched verbal attacks on private citizens’ ownership of firearms despite the fact that most gun owners are law-abiding citizens.

A White House National Security Council spokeswoman declined to comment.

Over 70 federal agencies have armed divisions, arrest authority over citizens

http://freepatriot.org/2013/09/15/70...rity-citizens/

Few would argue certain non-military agencies would require armed officers with arrest authority, such as the FBI, Secret Service and the U.S. Marshals. But other governmental entities such as the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, the Library of Congress and the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board employing armed officers have more than a few asking why the federal government has employed roughly 120,000 armed law enforcement officers, as reported by Fox News on Sept. 14, 2013.

In the wake of a dizzying alphabet soup of governmental agencies ordering heavily armed and body armored-clad officers descending on greater metropolitan Chicken, Alaska (population 17) for a possible violation of The Clean Water Act, it has been brought to light that well over seventy different non-Department of Defense federal agencies have armed divisions, all of them with arrest powers over American citizens,

Alaskan elected officials are demanding answers as to why it members of the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Criminal Investigation Division as well as the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Office of Law Enforcement & Security, working in conjunction with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s (ADEC) Environmental Crimes Unit to conduct a raid on a legally operated gold mine that was suspected of fouling the water.

Despite no violations found nor arrests made, the only response Alaskan lawmakers received from the EPA was a statement which stated in part:

Environmental law enforcement, like other forms of law enforcement, always involves the potential for physical, even armed, confrontation.

In the meantime, Fox News cited a recent Department of Justice (DoJ) report which cited a full 73 federal agencies who employ full-time armed officers.

The number of individual agencies pistol packing police range from the chart topping U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency with 36,863 armed officers to the least on the list, the Library of Congress and their two full-time FLEOs (Federal Law Enforcement Officers).

Per the DoJ report, the following federal entities maintain armed divisions:

Federal agencies employing 250 or more full-time personnel with arrest and firearm authority

U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Federal Bureau of Prisons
Federal Bureau of Investigation
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
U.S. Secret Service
Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts
Drug Enforcement Administration
U.S. Marshals Service
Veterans Health Administration
Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
U.S. Postal Inspection Service
U.S. Capitol Police
National Park Service – Rangers
Bureau of Diplomatic Security
Pentagon Force Protection Agency
U.S. Forest Service
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
National Park Service – U.S. Park Police
National Nuclear Security Administration
U.S. Mint Police
Amtrak Police
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Bureau of Land Management

Federal agencies employing fewer than 250 full-time personnel with arrest and firearm authority

Bureau of Engraving and Printing
Environmental Protection Agency
Food and Drug Administration
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Tennessee Valley Authority
Federal Reserve Board
U.S. Supreme Court
Bureau of Industry and Security
National Institutes of Health
Library of Congress
Federal Emergency Management Agency
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Government Printing Office
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Smithsonian National Zoological Park
Bureau of Reclamation

Offices of inspectors general employing full-time personnel with arrest and firearm authority

U.S. Postal Service
Department of Health and Human Services
Department of Defense
Department of the Treasury, Tax Administration
Social Security Administration
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Department of Agriculture
Department of Labor
Department of Homeland Security
Department of Veterans Affairs
Department of Justice
Department of Transportation
Department of Education
General Services Administration
Department of the Interior
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Department of Energy
Environmental Protection Agency
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Small Business Administration
Department of State
Office of Personnel Management
Department of the Treasury
Tennessee Valley Authority
Department of Commerce
U.S. Railroad Retirement Board
Agency for International Development
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Corporation for National and Community Service
National Science Foundation
National Archives and Records Administration
Government Printing Office
Library of Congress

The left-of-center news portal POLITICO reported on June 12, 2013 that the chairman of the House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee, Duncan (R-S.C.) toured a federal law enforcement facility in late May and noticed agents training with the version of the military’s M16A2 rifle, the AR-15 at a firing range.

According to Rep. Duncan, they identified themselves as IRS agents.

“When I left there, it’s been bugging me for weeks now, why IRS agents are training with a semi-automatic rifle AR-15, which has stand-off capability,” Duncan told POLITICO. “Are Americans that much of a target that you need that kind of capability?”

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...swat-john-fund

Regardless of how people feel about Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with the federal Bureau of Land Management over his cattle’s grazing rights, a lot of Americans were surprised to see TV images of an armed-to-the-teeth paramilitary wing of the BLM deployed around Bundy’s ranch.

They shouldn’t have been. Dozens of federal agencies now have Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams to further an expanding definition of their missions. It’s not controversial that the Secret Service and the Bureau of Prisons have them. But what about the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? All of these have their own SWAT units and are part of a worrying trend towards the militarization of federal agencies — not to mention local police forces.

“Law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier,” journalist Radley Balko writes in his 2013 book Rise of the Warrior Cop. “The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop — armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.”

The proliferation of paramilitary federal SWAT teams inevitably brings abuses that have nothing to do with either drugs or terrorism. Many of the raids they conduct are against harmless, often innocent, Americans who typically are accused of non-violent civil or administrative violations.

Take the case of Kenneth Wright of Stockton, Calif., who was “visited” by a SWAT team from the U.S. Department of Education in June 2011. Agents battered down the door of his home at 6 a.m., dragged him outside in his boxer shorts, and handcuffed him as they put his three children (ages 3, 7, and 11) in a police car for two hours while they searched his home. The raid was allegedly intended to uncover information on Wright’s estranged wife, Michelle, who hadn’t been living with him and was suspected of college financial-aid fraud.

The year before the raid on Wright, a SWAT team from the Food and Drug Administration raided the farm of Dan Allgyer of Lancaster, Pa. His crime was shipping unpasteurized milk across state lines to a cooperative of young women with children in Washington, D.C., called Grass Fed on the Hill. Raw milk can be sold in Pennsylvania, but it is illegal to transport it across state lines. The raid forced Allgyer to close down his business.

Brian Walsh, a senior legal analyst with the Heritage Foundation, says it is inexplicable why so many federal agencies need to be battle-ready: “If these agencies occasionally have a legitimate need for force to execute a warrant, they should be required to call a real law-enforcement agency, one that has a better sense of perspective. The FBI, for example, can draw upon its vast experience to determine whether there is an actual need for a dozen SWAT agents.”

Since 9/11, the feds have issued a plethora of homeland-security grants that encourage local police departments to buy surplus military hardware and form their own SWAT units. By 2005, at least 80 percent of towns with a population between 25,000 and 50,000 people had their own SWAT team. The number of raids conducted by local police SWAT teams has gone from 3,000 a year in the 1980s to over 50,000 a year today

“Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book”

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/%E2%...ut_of_control/

Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game — but it wasn’t a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit.

Several months earlier at a local bar, Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. “To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends,” a friend of Culosi’s told me shortly after his death. “None of us single, successful professionals ever thought that betting fifty bucks or so on the Virginia–Virginia Tech football game was a crime worthy of investigation.” Baucum apparently did. After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. Eventually Culosi and Baucum bet more than $2,000 in a single day. Under Virginia law, that was enough for police to charge Culosi with running a gambling operation. And that’s when they brought in the SWAT team.

On the night of January 24, 2006, Baucum called Culosi and arranged a time to drop by to collect his winnings. When Culosi, barefoot and clad in a T-shirt and jeans, stepped out of his house to meet the man he thought was a friend, the SWAT team began to move in. Seconds later, Det. Deval Bullock, who had been on duty since 4:00 AM and hadn’t slept in seventeen hours, fired a bullet that pierced Culosi’s heart.

Sal Culosi’s last words were to Baucum, the cop he thought was a friend: “Dude, what are you doing?”

In March 2006, just two months after its ridiculous gambling investigation resulted in the death of an unarmed man, the Fairfax County Police Department issued a press release warning residents not to participate in office betting pools tied to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The title: “Illegal Gambling Not Worth the Risk.” Given the proximity to Culosi’s death, residents could be forgiven for thinking the police department believed wagering on sports was a crime punishable by execution.

In January 2011, the Culosi family accepted a $2 million settlement offer from Fairfax County. That same year, Virginia’s government spent $20 million promoting the state lottery.

You can go to left, right, alternative and more centered news outlets and it doesn't matter. They all have the same types of stories.

We are over regulated, over controlled. There is a law to make a criminal just about out of everybody.


You hear someone was smoking a joint? send the swat team.
Selling milk to willing buyers, You send the swat team.


I am so sick and tired of hearing the rationalization from people as why we need to regulate everything to protect you from yourself.

Why, To criminalize you and destroy your life and family? It doesn't hold water.

If you aren't hurting anyone else, Leave them alone.

Of course the question that needs to be asked is: Why are they ramping up for a war with their constituents? You know, US?

We are not being allowed to elect people into office that will make any significant changes to the direction this country is going. Point of the matter is that the people of this country cannot wrest back what freedom they have already lost without violating significant laws passed by the very body who has taken away that freedom.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Of course the question that needs to be asked is: Why are they ramping up for a war with their constituents? You know, US?...

They realize that there will come a time to pay the piper for their blatant misbehavior and they are preparing to defend themselves against their victims. Just a wild ass guess...

To paraphrase.... "When freedom is outlawed, only the outlaws will have freedom."