U.S. AIR FORCE 55-2 - GARDEN PLOT
"The long title of the plan is United States Air Force Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, Employment of USAF Forces in Civil Disturbances. The short title of this document is USAF Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2. The nickname assigned by Department of the Army is GARDEN PLOT." It's dated July 11, 1984.
The plan opens with some basic "assumptions", namely that "civil disturbances requiring intervention with military forces may occur simultaneously in any of the 50 States, District of Columbia, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, US possessions and territories." And like the current situation in Vieques, Puerto Rico, "civil disturbances will normally develop over a period of time." In the event it evolves into a confrontational situation, under Garden Plot, it is a "presidential executive order" that "will authorize and direct the Secretary of Defense to use the Armed Forces of the United States to restore law and order."
According to the Air Force plan, the military will attempt "to suppress rebellion whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impractical to enforce the laws of the United States in any state or territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings (10 USC 332)". Applying its own version of equal protection under the law, the military can intervene "when insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combinations, or conspiracies in a state so hinder or obstruct the execution of the laws as to deprive individuals of their Constitutional rights, privileges, and immunities or when the insurrection impedes the due course of justice, and only when the constituted authorities of the state are unable, fail or refuse to protect that right, privilege, immunity, or to give that protection (10 USC 333)." In other words, the Army makes an offer of "protection" that the citizenry can t refuse.
T.Alden Williams, in a sympathetic 1969 treatment of the Army in civil disturbances, put it this way: "Where officials have not shown determination, or have invited violence by predicting it, violence has developed. Hence, it follows that with few exceptions, serious riots are evidence of police failure and that, implicitly, it is at the point of police failure that states and their cities redeem their national constitutional guarantees and the Regular Army may be asked to intervene."(21) Some redemption.
According to the Air Force plan's "Classification Guidance", the roughly 200 page document "is UNCLASSIFIED and does not come within the scope of direction governing the protection of information affecting national security. Although it is UNCLASSIFIED, it is FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY as directed by AFR 12-30. This plan contains information that is of internal use to DOD and, through disclosure, would tend to allow persons to violate the law or hinder enforcement of the law." Consequently, the plan s "operations orders and operating procedures must be designed to provide the highest degree of security possible." Therefore "the entire staff should identify known or suspected opposition awareness of previous operations and operations plans", while "procedures should be designed to eliminate the suspect sources to the degree possible." And "in the event of organized opposition some sort of advisory intelligence gathering capability should be assumed."
The Air Force document warns, under the heading of "Open Literature Threat", presaging current military discourse on "info-war", that "any information/document, though seemingly unclassified, which reveals information concerning this Plan is a threat to OPSEC (operational security)" This is especially true given the nature of the "Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Threat." Recognizing that, "prior to and during sustained military operations in Support of the Plan, the potential HUMINT threat could be considerable", the plan recommends that "every effort should be made to reduce vulnerability to this threat by adhering to OPSEC procedures and safeguarding Essential Elements of Friendly Information (EEFI)."
Under "Operations to be Conducted: Deployment", the Air Force plan states that "a civil disturbance condition (CIDCON) system which has been established to provide an orderly and timely increase in preparedness for designated forces to deploy for civil disturbances control operations, will be on an as required basis for USAF resources for such operations as aerial resupply, aerial reconnaisance, airborn psychological operations, command and control communications systems, aeromedical evacuation, helicopter and weather support."
0 comments:
Post a Comment