New York Police Training for Catastrophic Terrorism

[Lori Price CLG]

New York Police Training for Catastrophic Terrorism

--by William K. Rashbaum and (GOP lead media whore) Judith Miller

The New York Police Department, working with city health officials, federal authorities and other agencies, has been preparing for a possible attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, perhaps the most daunting threat facing municipalities in a post-9/11 world.

Meeting in secret and conducting complex drills, the department has brought together government agencies in a broad effort for much of the last year. In doing so, it has put together a program that some national security and law enforcement officials describe as unrivaled among American cities.

<snip>

...The city recently changed the health code to allow the city to detain anyone health officials suspect of having being exposed to a deadly infectious pathogen.

[wellstone_democrat]

1. WTO coming to town again is it...?

That seems to be what all police training is these days. Look at Florida and the federal money and training that poured in there. This is all about controlling Americans, not helping them.

[aquart]

2. Republican convention.

They figure there might be some trouble.

Which is why there won't be. RIGHT?

[madrchsod]

3. detaining people

is a very good idea. i remember the red stickers on houses of people with highly communicable diseases. as for the training not a bad idea, i know Chicago has had some truck accidents that had poison gas releases and unfortunately they had to learn the lessons the hard way.. the bit about the convention is what they have been planning since the start..keep everyone away by any means possible. the whole weight of the government will be used to keep protesters away. look what they wanted in england-

[hang a left]

4. Sounds to me like training for marshall law.

Doesn't it to you?

[PaDUer]

5. Yes indeed..

also remember the meeting Ridge had w/ the media concerning another catastrophe on how the media would report it...Something's definitely coming down unless the people join together NOW, we can't afford to let the issue and these goons remain in authority until the election, which will probably never happen.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

8. Do you remember the bill that Junior signed that allows anyone...

...suspected of carrying a communicable disease to be forcibly detained and quarantined? I wonder where the concentration camps are located?

[Vadem]

9. Here are the concentration camps....

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/camps.html

Pretty frightening, eh???

[mobuto]

16. Uh, no

On a list of most threatening government agencies, FEMA would rank somewhere between the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation and the United States Geological Survey.

I'm afraid its time to renew the Thorazine.

[mobuto]

11. You must be joking

That reminds me of the right-wing loonies who're compiling lists of the super secret concentration camps the UN is building to house "patriotic" Americans who might interfere with their diabolical blue-helmet ran New-World-Order.

They're coming to take me away, tralla!

[Vadem]

12. Here is Ashcroft's version:...

http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-turley14aug14.story

[Vadem]

13. Sorry, that URL must be outdated. Here is a copy of the article....

August 14, 2002
Talk about it E-mail story Print

COMMENTARY
Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision
* Attorney general shows himself as a menace to liberty.



Times Headlines


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By JONATHAN TURLEY, Jonathan Turley is a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace.

Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants.

The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties.

The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft's small inner circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see whether this vision could become a reality. The cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held without charges and subject to the arbitrary and unchecked authority of the government.

Hamdi has been held without charge even though the facts of his case are virtually identical to those in the case of John Walker Lindh. Both Hamdi and Lindh were captured in Afghanistan as foot soldiers in Taliban units. Yet Lindh was given a lawyer and a trial, while Hamdi rots in a floating Navy brig in Norfolk, Va.

This week, the government refused to comply with a federal judge who ordered that he be given the underlying evidence justifying Hamdi's treatment. The Justice Department has insisted that the judge must simply accept its declaration and cannot interfere with the president's absolute authority in "a time of war."

In Padilla's case, Ashcroft initially claimed that the arrest stopped a plan to detonate a radioactive bomb in New York or Washington, D.C. The administration later issued an embarrassing correction that there was no evidence Padilla was on such a mission. What is clear is that Padilla is an American citizen and was arrested in the United States--two facts that should trigger the full application of constitutional rights.

Ashcroft hopes to use his self-made "enemy combatant" stamp for any citizen whom he deems to be part of a wider terrorist conspiracy.

Perhaps because of his discredited claims of preventing radiological terrorism, aides have indicated that a "high-level committee" will recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps.

Few would have imagined any attorney general seeking to reestablish such camps for citizens. Of course, Ashcroft is not considering camps on the order of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese American citizens in World War II. But he can be credited only with thinking smaller; we have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable.

We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft's America. Some of his predecessors dreamed of creating a great society or a nation unfettered by racism. Ashcroft seems to dream of a country secured from itself, neatly contained and controlled by his judgment of loyalty.

For more than 200 years, security and liberty have been viewed as coexistent values. Ashcroft and his aides appear to view this relationship as lineal, where security must precede liberty.

Since the nation will never be entirely safe from terrorism, liberty has become a mere rhetorical justification for increased security.

Ashcroft is a catalyst for constitutional devolution, encouraging citizens to accept autocratic rule as their only way of avoiding massive terrorist attacks.

His greatest problem has been preserving a level of panic and fear that would induce a free people to surrender the rights so dearly won by their ancestors.

In "A Man for All Seasons," Sir Thomas More was confronted by a young lawyer, Will Roper, who sought his daughter's hand. Roper proclaimed that he would cut down every law in England to get after the devil.

More's response seems almost tailored for Ashcroft: "And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? ... This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast ... and if you cut them down--and you are just the man to do it--do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"

Every generation has had Ropers and Ashcrofts who view our laws and traditions as mere obstructions rather than protections in times of peril. But before we allow Ashcroft to denude our own constitutional landscape, we must take a stand and have the courage to say, "Enough."

Every generation has its test of principle in which people of good faith can no longer remain silent in the face of authoritarian ambition. If we cannot join together to fight the abomination of American camps, we have already lost what we are defending.

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
LATSIClick here for article licensing and reprint options

[mobuto]

15. As always, conspiracy rants are grounded in a grain of truth

namely that Ashcroft intends to deny American citizens suspected of terrorism their constitutionally-protected civil rights.

That's very wrong and it's a problem.

But that's still very different from what you are saying- that there's a scheme afloat to send vast numbers of dissenting Americans to 600 secret concentration camps. No thinking person believes that.

[Vadem]

19. Oh, yeah??? Well, I am prepared to get myself a gun.... just in

case! I've already researched it, being that I am petite and have small hands. I know the kind I will be getting. Maybe you ought to do a little research.

[mobuto]

21. How about a .50 caliber machine gun?

You'd have to register it with the Bureau of Alchohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, but they know about you already - so what harm would it do?

When they come in black helicopters to take you away, at least you'll be ready for them.

[Vadem]

25. As I said, you make me laugh!!! No, the ATF does not know...

me.... I am not a lawbreaker, being the most timid law abiding person you would ever know; however, maybe it is time to think of different alternatives for what may be coming for all of us if the neocons now in power are not defeated.

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Vadem]

28. Laugh, if you will, Mobuto. However, all the things that have gone...

down have me very scared.

[mobuto]

29. You're being manipulated

by people who use conspiracy theories to exploit the fears of ordinary people and make money.

I knew a right-wing fanatic, now dead, who spent thousands buying pamphlets and books from charlatans who hawked such wares. He had the exact same list of super-secret concentration camps that you cited, as well as irrefutable evidence that Red Chinese armies were massing in Mexico, while the US was massing just across the border in Canada. He had books on how to disappear, how to protect his money from the inevitable financial meltdown, etc.

He was manipulated just as you are, or will be.

P. T. Barnum was right.

[Vadem]

31. Well, nobody is making money off of me, especially. ...

the survivor groups. I am a retired grandmother who is very concerned about where this country is headed under the leadership of Dubya. We must defeat him in the next election and get our country back on the track of jobs, health care, and peace.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

38. Right. None of what we see happening before our own eyes...

...is really happening, is it mobuto?

The economy is just fine, foreclosures/bankruptcies are at normal levels, we're not fighting two wars in the Middle East, we haven't ruined oru relationships with almost every sigle foreign country, and the 2000 election was won fairly by the NeoCons.

And in the world in which you live, mobuto, conspiracies simply do not exist.

And you say we're being manipulated? Who got to you, mobuto, and whay do you believe what you profess to believe?

[mobuto]

40. The economy is lousy, we are fighting two wars

in the Middle East (one of which is totally unnecessary and extraordinarily costly), our international reputation is in a shambles, and George W. Bush may well be the worst President in our nation's history.

With all that being said, there are no super-secret concentration camps. Sorry.

[icymist]

39. Take a look at the discussion

about these same camps on the freepers site back in '98 & '99.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a378bf0d42119.htm
Now let's all calm down, Okay?

[Vadem]

14. Get ready, Mobuto; it's not the right wing loonies they're ...

coming after now--it is the left wingers (loonies, in their minds).

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Vadem]

18. Bullshit! I love pinto beans, being from WV where we called ..

them "miner's strawberries"! We all (coalminer's children) grew up on pintos and cornbread. Nothing better and we all thrived!




\

[mobuto]

20. So much the better!

As a miner's child, you're probably familiar with mine shafts as well - they'll protect you from fallout for up to 90 years.

So again, why don't you move to Idaho, find a mine shaft, and settle down with your pinto beans?

Set up a defensive perimeter, and at least you'll be able to defend yourself when the jackbooted thugs come to imprison us all.

You could even set up a chapter of the Helen Chenowith fan club with similar-minded locals.

[Vadem]

22. Tee hee! You make me laugh!!! No, I'll stay in my urban area, but ....

I need to get prepared for the future and I will!

[mobuto]

24. No, please move out of your urban area

I live in an urban area, and I don't want to be caught in the crossfire when the jackbooted thugs come to get you.

It'd be far easier to set up a defensive perimeter if you had a compound in say Idaho or Montana.

[Vadem]

26. You are so funny!!!.... n/t

[hang a left]

33. Don't even waste your energy. Debunkers are always

around. I bet for some of them it is their day job. If they weren't here for a reason, I would imagine they would find themselves on different threads. Think about it.

[mobuto]

41. Yup

I'm a jack-booted FEMA thug in charge of spreading disinformation throughout our nation's online discussion boards.

Now that we've settled that...

[Media_Lies_Daily]

37. Coal miner steak = baloney. Hadn't thought of that in a while.

[kysrsoze]

34. He/She's not joking

It sounds completely stupid, but FEMA is who would take over in a "dire" situation. Federal Emergency Management Agency - I've heard stuff about the department in the past, but can't remember the circumstances. I'd put them somewhere between ATF and NSA.

Now, whether they're planning on locking us up is another story. You simply couldn't lock away that many people. If that were the case, we'd probably be in a civil war situation (no, not advocating it, Mr. Ashcroft).

[Lori Price CLG]

35. Actually, AshKKKan wouldn't need to lock up too many folks.

AshKKKan only needs to create enough chaos to postpone the 2004 s-election. Most people would not want any change in 'leadership' during a 'national crisis' --and Bush would easily remain dictator.

-Lori

[mobuto]

10. You mean martial law?

If there were a catastrophic terrorist attack on NYC, you're damn right there would be martial law. What's wrong with that? That's what you do in an emergency.

[Lori Price CLG]

23. Uh, I confess. I *do* have a problem with *martial law* being declared.

Moreover, if Bush knew/sanctioned/planned a(nother) terrorist attack, martial law could be imposed in an effort to postpone the 2004 s-election, particularly if the 'neo-cons' predict they are going down. Sen. Kerry already leads Dictator Bush nationally by nine points (Quinnipiac University poll).

Cheers,
Lori Price

[mobuto]

Bush could also nuke the 50 largest

US cities, which would disproportionately hurt Democrats in the upcoming election season.

But I have to tell you, neither prospect is really keeping me up at night.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

6. Let me see if I understand this...

...if we have a terrorist attack involving one or more of nuclear, biologic, or chemical weapons, who will be left to detain, much less be a detainer?

This is like the Post Office spending millions of dollars decades ago on a study to determine how best to deliver the mail after a nuclear attack.

[latebloomer]

7. I remember that!

Man, was that sick.

[nodehopper]

36. I think we would be talking about a small-scale attack

Poisonous gas on public transportation, or even a "dirty" bomb which would be scary and devastating for a city, but its radius of impact would be several blocks.

According to Tommy Franks' interview in Cigar Aficionado, that would be enough to declare martial law, though.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[donotpassgo]

32. catastrophic terrorism in NYC will be caused by a Red Sox fan

n/t