[iwar] Posse Cumatatis!?!? (sp)

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-01-27 20:04:35
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 20:04:35 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [iwar] Posse Cumatatis!?!? (sp)
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Pentagon Plans New Command For U.S.

Four-Star Officer Would Oversee Homeland Defense

By Bradley Graham, The Washington Post,  January 27, 2002

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42765-2002Jan26.html

The Pentagon has decided to ask the White House for approval to set up a

new four-star command to coordinate federal troops used to defend North
America, part of an intensified effort to bolster homeland security,
defense officials said.

The move was prompted by the new domestic security demands placed on the

military after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Bush
administration's declared war on terrorism.

Although the Pentagon has regional commanders in chief, known as CINCs,
who are responsible for Europe, the Pacific, Latin America, and the
Middle East and South Asia, none exists for U.S. forces in the United
States and Canada. The proposed change would give a single four-star
officer authority over such domestic deployments as Air Force jets
patrolling above U.S. cities, Navy ships running coastal checks and Army

National Guard troops policing airports and border crossings.

Before September, military leaders had resisted the idea of a homeland
CINC (pronounced "sink"), reflecting a traditional aversion to -- and
legal limits on -- the use of federal armed forces for domestic law
enforcement. Opposition also existed outside the Pentagon on both the
political left and right, with civil libertarians and right-wing militia

groups alike warning against military forces encroaching on areas
traditionally considered the responsibility of civilian emergency
response, law enforcement and health agencies.

But in recent months, as military air, sea and land patrols pressed into

action by the Pentagon have answered to several four-star commanders,
the Defense Department's top military officers have come to accept the
need for streamlining the chain of command.

Earlier opposition from such groups as the American Civil Liberties
Union has also waned, although concerns persist about possible "mission
creep" and the risk that any military forces deployed around the country

could end up threatening individual rights.

Initially, the military chiefs had argued for assigning the homeland
defense mission to one of two commands already headquartered in the
United States -- either the North American Aerospace Defense Command
(NORAD) in Colorado, which is responsible for protecting U.S. skies, or
the Joint Forces Command in Virginia, which has been charged with
guarding the maritime approaches to North America and the land defense
of the continental United States. The thinking was that setting up an
entirely new command would entail needless additional bureaucracy and
expense.

But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has settled on creating a new
command rather than loading an existing one with additional
responsibilities, according to four officials in different branches of
the Pentagon familiar with the plan. Currently, the general who heads
NORAD also runs the U.S. Space Command, which oversees the nation's
military satellites and computer networks. The admiral who leads the
Joint Forces Command is in charge of developing new ways the different
services can fight together, and he serves as head of NATO's North
Atlantic region.

"All the chiefs and CINCs have seen the plan and have signed on to it,
although it has not yet been briefed to the president," a senior
military officer said yesterday. "Everyone is moving down the track
toward realizing it."

Defense officials also said that the geographic responsibilities of the
new command would likely extend beyond U.S. borders to the rest of North

America. Among other advantages, this would facilitate the transfer of
the air defense mission from NORAD, which is operated jointly with
Canada.

"It's not going to be just a homeland defense command," another official

said. "It's going to be a command that has responsibility beyond
homeland defense."

But many of the details for implementing the new command structure have
yet to be worked out, including where it would be located, what it would

be called, who would lead it and exactly which functions it would take
from existing CINCs.

"There's still the hope this new command can be created without a net
increase in headquarters staff across all the CINC-doms," the senior
officer said.

Another official said: "It's going to take time to work out how you go
about moving responsibilities from this or that CINC to this new
command. This particular review will go ahead and establish the command,

and then we'll lay out a series of considerations over the course of the

next several months to make it all happen."

Responsibility for coordinating federal activities in homeland defense
rests with Tom Ridge, who heads the White House's Office of Homeland
Security, which was set up after the Sept. 11 attacks. While the new
Pentagon command would doubtless have links to Ridge's office, it would
formally fall in a separate chain of authority running from the
president through the secretary of defense to those federal troops
enlisted in the homeland effort.

Historically, Pentagon planning for dealing with the consequences of
terrorist attacks has relied heavily on local and regional organizations

-- including the police, firefighters, medics and hazardous-material
teams -- taking the lead. Only as a matter of last resort were federal
troops to be summoned to help.

Even with the increased domestic role thrust on the armed forces in the
aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
senior defense officials say they would prefer to avoid making federal
troops permanent fixtures at airports and elsewhere.

Pentagon authorities contend that state and local agencies should handle

the bulk of homeland security responsibilities while federal forces stay

focused on trouble spots abroad.

"The problem is concurrency," Army Secretary Thomas E. White said in an
interview last week. "No one has let us out of our obligations in
Kosovo, in Bosnia, in the Sinai, in Korea. The Army is fully deployed in

100 different countries, supporting our regional commanders in chief.
And we are hard-pressed to do that which the Army is principally
organized to do. So we don't need to volunteer for any other tasks."

White said defense officials are hoping to begin pulling National Guard
troops off security duties at the nation's airports in the next 60 to 90

days, turning the work over to the new Transportation Security
Administration.

Roughly 6,000 troops are stationed at more than 400 airports across the
country as part of the effort to deter terrorists and reassure the
public about the safety of air travel.

Defense officials are also evaluating whether to scale back the combat
air patrols over Washington, New York and more than two dozen other
cities now that airports and commercial airline companies have
instituted stronger safeguards.

Legal barriers to sending the armed forces into U.S. streets have
existed for more than a century under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
That law was prompted by President Ulysses S. Grant's use of federal
troops to monitor the elections in the former Confederate states. The
act prohibits military personnel from searching, seizing or arresting
people in the United States.

Some exceptions exist, allowing military forces to suppress
insurrections or domestic unrest or to assist in crimes involving
nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Since Sept. 11, several prominent lawmakers -- including Sen. John W.
Warner (R-Va.), the ranking minority member on the Armed Services
Committee, and Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.), another committee member --
have called for revising the act. But congressional opinion on the
matter is divided, and senior Pentagon officials have expressed little
interest in any fundamental legislative overhaul.

The move to establish a homeland CINC, officials said, is part of a
broader series of geographical and other adjustments being proposed in a

number of regional commands under what the Pentagon calls the Unified
Command Plan. "This does not finish something," a senior official said.
"It actually starts a process of examining how you might" streamline the
commands.

--This communication is confidential to the parties it is intended to serve--
Fred Cohen		Fred Cohen & Associates.........tel/fax:925-454-0171
fc@all.net		The University of New Haven.....http://www.unhca.com/
http://all.net/		Sandia National Laboratories....tel:925-294-2087


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