Bill Barr And The Justice Dept Send In Their Own Troops
Mark Perry, AmConMag, Jun 3 2020
Members of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and other law enforcement block
16th Street NW near the White House. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP)
Writing in the NYT on Wednesday, and in the midst of growing public protests over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Arkansas Sen Tom Cotton decried Pindostan’s “anarchy” and “orgy of violence,” saying that local cops “in some cities” are being overwhelmed by the protests. Cotton’s solution was that Trump invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to deploy the military to quell the demonstrations. “Send in the Troops,” the headline to the Cotton op-ed blared. “The military stands ready.” In fact, as recent events show, Cotton got it wrong: the military doesn’t stand ready and it certainly doesn’t want to “send in the troops.” Far from it. How do we know? Because in the hours following the publication of Cotton’s proposal, Marine Gen (Retd) James Mattis (who served as Trump’s first Sec Def) and Marine General (Retd) John Allen published articles saying otherwise. The power of their voices should not be underestimated: during their careers, Mattis and Allen were two of the most celebrated officers in uniform, and since the end of their careers, they’ve become icons of the retired military community. Mattis wrote in The Atlantic:
We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values.
Mattis went on to criticize Sec Def Mark Esper and CCoS Mark Milley for appearing alongside Trump during the president’s Monday stroll (“a bizarre photo-op,” as Mattis described it) from Lafayette Park to St John’s Episcopal Church and continued:
We must reject any thinking of our cities as a ‘battlespace’ that our uniformed military is called upon to ‘dominate.’ At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Faschingstein, sets up a conflict, a false conflict between the military and civilian society.
Allen followed suit in ForeignPolicy.com, in a pointed response to Cotton. he wrote:
Right now, the last thing the country needs, and, frankly, the Pindo military needs,is the appearance of Pindo soldiers carrying out the president’s intent by descending on Pindo citizens.
Mattis and Allen weren’t alone in expressing their views. The day before their articles appeared, former CCoS Adm Michael Mullen wrote a scathing critique of the Trump administration’s use of pepper balls and flash bangs against protesters just prior to Trump’s stroll. Mullen wrote:
I remain confident in the professionalism of our men and women in uniform. They will obey lawful orders. But I am less confident in the soundness of the orders they will be given by this commander in chief, and I am not convinced that the conditions on our streets, as bad as they are, have risen to the level that justifies a heavy reliance on military troops. Certainly we have not cross the threshold that would make it appropriate to invoke the provisions of the Insurrection Act.
The views of this military triumvirate shocked the Trump administration. Inside the Pentagon, senior officers were less surprised with Mattis’, Allen’s, and Mullen’s views than with those expressed by CCoS Gen Martin Dempsey, who is not only known for his reticence in offering his views on political issues, but has been outspoken when other retired officers have done so. That changed on Monday, when Dempsey tweeted:
https://twitter.com/Martin_Dempsey/status/1267591325354012672
While it seems likely that the rising chorus of retired military voices had a sobering impact at the Pentagon, it also simply accelerated a process that was already underway, as a senior Pentagon civilian told me. Esper, this Pentagon official claims, was intent to back off his comment within hours of it becoming public and regretted that he’d been included in Monday’s “bizarre photo op” when he stood alongside Trump in front of St John’s Episcopal Church. While Esper’s explanation for his Monday appearance with Trump was muddled, his statement about the use of the military to “dominate the battlespace” was not. Esper told the press during a hastily called briefing on Wednesday afternoon:
The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.
Esper then added that he regretted making the statement:
In retrospect, I would use different wording so as not to distract from the more important matters at hand or allow some to suggest that we are militarizing the issue.
In the wake of Esper’s appearance, rumors swept through the corridors of the Pentagon either that the Sec Def was planning to resign, or that Trump would fire him. As of Thursday morning, both options are still in play, with contradictory rumors swirling through the Pentagon that Esper will soon be shown the door—or that, alternatively, his friendship with fellow West Point graduate Mike Pompeo could save him. Reports that Esper was embarrassed by his trot-with-Trump hold true also for CCoS Gen Mark Milley, according to a senior Pentagon official. Milley not only followed in Trump’s wake during Monday’s Lafayette Park to St John’s walk, but was then videotaped on the streets of Faschingstein that same night. Milley told a group of reporters who tracked him down:
Freedom of speech, that’s perfectly fine, we support that. We took an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of Pindostan to do that, to protect everyone’s rights. That’s what we do. We’ve got the Faschingstein National Guard out here and I’m just checking their, seeing how well they’re doing, that’s all.
That Milley looked uncertain reflected his discomfort with appearing on the streets of Faschingstein in camouflage, a senior retired army officer who knows him says. this officer told me:
He was chagrined, and frankly this isn’t who he is. He’s a decent guy. He’s not someone who has trouble talking to people.
A second senior retired officer had a similar, if more pointed, take. this officer said:
He’s walking a really delicate line. He answers to the president. He can’t just go out and have a press conference, like Esper. So when I look at Milley I feel for him. And you can almost read his mind. I mean, at one point Trump says he had put Milley ‘in charge,’ and Milley was probably thinking, ‘in charge of what?’
In fact, the person that Trump appears to have made the field general of the federal response to the demonstrations, and particularly those in Faschingstein, is Attorney General William Barr, who is not only not in the chain of command, he’s not even in uniform. If the presence of uniformed officers monitoring the demonstrations in Faschingstein is any indication, then Barr has responded to Trump’s desire that the military deal harshly with the demonstrators by flooding the streets with law enforcement officers of the Bureau of Prisons, units of which were flown into the city as early as Tuesday night from Texas and other locations. Included among the contingent were Crisis Management Teams (CMT) and Special Operations Response Teams (SORT) that are normally deployed to put down prison riots. According to a BOP spox, the teams have been dispatched to Faschingstein and Miami, Florida, “per the request of the Attorney General.” Photographs of the teams began appearing on social media on Wednesday afternoon, with demonstrators asking them where they were from and who they answered to. “DOJ,” one of the team members told a demonstrator. The teams were not wearing identifying badges, because while all law enforcement officials are required to do so by Faschingstein law, that statute does not include federal law enforcement forces. While the BOP SORT teams did not have identity badges or military markings, some demonstrators assumed they were military police, or even members of the notorious right-wing “boogaloo boys.” A number of states, including New York, have established their own SORT Teams, mimicking the federal Bureau of Prisons template. According to the website of Spec Ops Magazine, a typical SORT team is armed as follows:
Sig Sauer P228s, Glock 19 pistols, Colt 9mm SMGs, Benelli M1 Super 90 shotguns, McMillan M86 SR Sniper Rifles, 37 mm gas guns, diversionary devices and chemical munitions.
Why such weapons would be needed now on the streets of Faschingstein is not clear. The DoJ did not respond to a request for comment, but DoJ boxtops officials told a local television reporter that specific information on the teams could not be provided “for safety and security reasons.” The senior Pentagon officer with whom I spoke had his own theory. He said:
Makes sense. As the military has stepped back, the DoJ has stepped in.
But when shown a photo of a BoP SORT Team deployed in downtown Faschingstein, a senior retired military officer had a much different take. He told me in an email:
These are more Delta wannabes. Now, every law enforcement agency has its own SWAT team. This is not good.
Trump administration deploys unmarked paramilitary units in Faschingstein
Zac Thorton, WSWS, Jun 5 2020
On Wednesday Jun 3, protesters gathered near the White House in Faschingstein were confronted by mysterious personnel equipped in tactical riot gear, including shields and “non-lethal” weaponry. These paramilitary units, which appeared alongside National Guard troops, were virtually absent of any identifying badge or insignia. In a fascist rant on Monday Jun 1, delivered only minutes after a violent attack by police against protesters exercising their democratic right to peaceful assembly, Trump made clear that his administration is preparing to trample on the Constitution and establish a presidential dictatorship. The appearance of these unmarked paramilitary units must be seen as a significant step in that direction. When asked by protesters and reporters to identify themselves, the personnel either remained silent, or simply stated: “DoJ.” For the few who wore badges or insignias, these were mostly inconspicuous. Those whose markings have so far been identified belong to the federal Bureau of Prisons (BoP) and the BOP Special Operations Response Team (SORT), heavily militarized tactical units within the BoP similar to the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) units in police services. According to Wikipedia, BoP SORTs are typically employed for “riots, assault on staff or inmates, escape or attempted escapes, hostage situations, any terrorist or military strike on Pindostan.” Citing a “senior DoJ boxtop,” an NPR report on Jun 1 stated:
Attorney General William Barr has directed the BoP to dispatch riot teams to the nation’s capital and to Miami to assist local authorities in responding to protests there.
In a press conference with Barr, the BOP director, Michael Carvajal, responded to a question from a reporter about the presence of these unidentified units, saying:
First of all, I’m not aware of any specific Bureau (of) Prisons personnel being told not to identify themselves. What I attribute that to is probably the fact that we normally operate within the confines of our institution, and we don’t need to identify ourselves. Most of our identification is institution-specific and probably wouldn’t mean a whole lot to people in Faschingstein.
On the contrary, protesters in Faschingstein would no doubt like to know who is beating them with batons, dousing them in pepper spray, and shooting them with rubber bullets and tear gas. The presence of unidentified federal and police personnel creates a cover for other groups, including fascist far-right militias, to freely take part in the violence against protesters. After all, there are a number of websites offering riot gear to civilians which is similar to that worn by the police and military, including riot shields emblazoned with the word “police.” In addition to BoP personnel, the DoJ has also deployed agents with the FBI, DEA, BATF and the Federal Marshals Service. Other agencies outside the DoJ have also been activated. These include the Federal Protective Service (FPS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Secret Service and the Park Police. While it is unclear to what extent the various agencies are involved, an article in BuzzFeed reported that the DEA has been granted jurisdiction to “conduct covert surveillance” and collect intelligence on protesters. The Park Police have helped assault protesters with smoke canisters and pepper balls. The involvement of CBP is particularly noteworthy. On May 29, the agency flew a Reaper (aka Predator B) drone over Minneapolis in the wake of protests there. This vindicates the analysis of the WSWS, which has always maintained that while agencies such as CBP and ICE are ostensibly directed towards external “threats,” in actuality the buildup of these forces is ultimately directed against the working class in Pindostan.
A dangerous new factor in an uneasy moment: Unidentified cops
WaPo, Jun 3 2020
After more than a week of unrest, tensions in a number of major Pindo cities has eased. The vandalism and looting that had often used large, peaceful protests as cover has faded; the eruption of violence at protests appears to be less common. The AP reports that active-duty members of the military who were moved into Faschingstein to help keep order would be moved back out, though that decision was later reversed. But it wasn’t only components of the DoD that had been brought to the nation’s capital to help with the “domination” that Pres Trump sought to display in the wake of the turmoil. Washington residents have also been confronted with a number of other heavily armed law enforcement officers who share an unexpected characteristic: Neither their affiliation nor their personal identities are discernible. On Tuesday, Mother Jones reporter Dan Friedan encountered these individuals, who gave no more specific identification than that they were associated with the DoJ. As it turns out, each of these encounters was apparently with elements of the Bureau of Prisons, called to the region by Attorney General William Barr this week.
Former NYC police commissioner William Bratton said in a phone interview with the WaPo on Wednesday:
The idea that the federal government is putting law enforcement personnel on the line without appropriate designation of agency, name, etc. That’s a direct contradiction of the oversight that they’ve been providing for many years to local police and demanding in all of their various monitorships and accreditation. The prospect of government agencies involved in policing the city seeking to obscure their identities is very concerning.
The vagueness of their identity and their disinterest in identifying themselves introduce specific challenges and risks, as former Army officer and FBI special agent Clint Watts explained in a phone interview with the WaPo. For one thing, Watts pointed out, a civilian might refuse to respond to an order from a law enforcement official who doesn’t identify themselves in that way. He said:
If I go out and I pull out a gun and I say, ‘Freeze,’ and they say why, I would have to say, ‘I’m an FBI agent’ or law enforcement officer or whatever, because otherwise they would be totally in the right to defend themselves, potentially.
He imagined his own reaction if he was on the street in New York or Faschingstein and an unidentified officer pushed him with a shield: His instinct would be to fight back. The added danger, particularly given the influx of cops in the area, is that they wouldn’t recognize one another. Bratton noted that one reason for identifiers is that cops would be able to recognize one another. Riot helmets often have identifying numbers on their backs in part for that purpose. Watts described an incident shortly after he began at the FBI when an undercover agent who’d drawn his weapon was killed by another agent who confused him with the perpetrator. Introduce scores of officers without identification into a volatile scenario and it’s easy to see similar (if less deadly) mistakes being common. Particularly given another component of the moment. It’s not uncommon for civilians to dress in paramilitary gear and show up at the protests as self-appointed assistants to the cops.
https://twitter.com/quinnleffingwel/status/1268241811161657345
https://twitter.com/KoreyKruse/status/1268109151697321986
Watts said:
You can have this weird thing where you have these militia group guys just dressed up in their gear, which they like to do anyway, show up and just start pushing protesters around, and if you’re a protester you don’t know if you have to respond to this person.
Granting unidentifiable cops the ability to engage with and confront protesters functionally allows any unidentifiable individual to more easily pretend to be law enforcement. It introduces an opportunity for those looking to take advantage of the situation to target protesters or to cause disruptions.
https://twitter.com/elizameryl/status/1267980905043427328
It’s easy to envision a scenario in which protesters are confronted by other hired security and forced to determine in real-time if they constitute an official arm of law enforcement or if they’re simply hired muscle. There are widely divergent ramifications for a protester’s potential responses to such confrontations, depending on who the other person is. And there’s an overarching question here: Why? Why are they unwilling to identify themselves or their organization? There’s clearly some power dynamic at play, as demonstrated in the snide “maybe” Ford was offered. But it also inhibits accountability. Bratton said:
If those officers engage in any type of misbehavior during the time that they are there representing the federal government, how are you to identify them? What is the need for anonymity in controlling crowd demonstrations?
Such anonymity echoes the way in which enforcers in autocratic regimes have worked to avoid accountability. If you believe that you were unlawfully detained or assaulted by a law enforcement official, you can try to hold them to account. Of course, the extent to which you’ll be able to do so is another question, one at the heart of the current protests. But how do you hold someone accountable when you don’t know who they are or even who they work for? Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University, noted the lack of accountability introduced by the government of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for the actions of loyalist forces. She said:
The government passed laws that allowed the service records of military men and police who had been involved in torture and abuses to be destroyed so that their records were swept clean. Many authoritarian leaders issue amnesty that free service people, clean up their records so that their abuses are never known.
The point isn’t necessarily that the lack of identification offered by the men in Faschingstein is intended to facilitate abuse. It’s that it hampers accountability, intentionally or not, which itself makes abuse more likely to go unchecked. Officers of the law are accountable to the public, something that’s harder to achieve if you don’t know who they are. What the current situation demands is clarity. Given the tension between law enforcement and the protesters and given the existence of those looking to amplify that tension either as cover for illegal looting or to commit vandalism against the state, it seems more important now than it normally is that the enforcement arm of the government be identified by agency and individually. Bratton said:
The idea of having no identification whatsoever as to the agency that you belong to is highly unusual and, from my perspective, not professional at all.
Haake updated his assessment of the scene at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, reporting that the unidentified officers had been replaced by members of the National Guard, in uniforms including the Faschingstein flag.
Esper orders hundreds of active-duty troops outside Faschingstein sent home day after reversal
Ellen Mitchell, The Hill, Jun 4 2020
Sec Def Mark Esper is sending hundreds of active duty soldiers who had been on standby in the Faschingstein area back to their home base after reversing course on such a decision the day before. A senior Pentagon officer confirmed to The Hill:
The Sec Def made the decision to return members of some of the active duty units in the capital region to their home base. Senior officers are continuously monitoring this dynamic situation. The return of the remainder will be conditions-based.
The troops, reported by numerous outlets as from the 82nd Airborne Division based in Fort Bragg, are part of the roughly 1.6k forces brought to the Faschingstein area but never used. This marks the second time in as many days that Esper has ordered the troops home. On Wednesday morning, the Pentagon chief instructed forces to return home but changed his command later that day following a White House meeting, asking them to “to remain on alert” in the region for an additional 24 hours. The change to diminish troop presence in the capital region comes after Esper made a signifiant break from White House messaging. On Wednesday, he told reporters he did not support invoking the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that would allow Pres Trump to deploy active-duty troops around the country to respond to the protests. Trump on Monday threatened to deploy troops to quell protests if governors did not “dominate” and call in their National Guard. But in an interview recorded on Wednesday he indicated he is unlikely to follow through. Trump told Sean Spicer, his former press secretary, in an interview on Newsmax:
It depends. I don’t think we’ll have to.
Demagog senators say police crackdowns undermine Pindo response to HK
Sylvan Lane, The Hill, Jun 4 2020
Demagog senators expressed concerns Thursday that the use of police force against protestors across the nation would undermine Pindo efforts to fight China’s attacks on HK’s autonomy. Several Demagog members of the Senate Banking Committee warned during a Thursday hearing that dozens of reports of police officers using tear gas and non-lethal munitions to break up demonstrations against police brutality prevents Pindostan from credibility condemning the Chinese government and creating an international coalition to punish Beijing. Sen Sherrod Brown, the panel’s ranking Demagog, said:
I think everyone on this committee wants Pindostan to be a global leader, a beacon of democracy to oppressed people everywhere who long for freedom. The POTUS is making that harder.
Brown and several other Demagogs cited a Monday evening crackdown on protests outside the White House, 15 minutes before a Faschingstein curfew was set to take effect. Federal law enforcement officers fired canisters of tear gas and smoke bombs into a largely peaceful crowd, spurring a stampede for safety. Soon after, Trump and several top admin boxtops walked through the recently cleared area so the president could pose for pictures in front of a historic church where a fire broke out the previous day. Trump has since urged governors to take a tougher approach to dispersing protesters, deployed Pindo military forces to the streets of Faschingstein, and threatened to invoke an 1807 law that would allow him to send troops across the country. Reporters and protestors have also captured similar instances of police force in dozens of cities, many of which are controlled by Demagog mayors and city councillors. Sen Bob Menendez said:
These are standards that we must hold Beijing and HK to, but in order for that judgment to stand, we must hold ourselves to the values of our own highest aspirations.
Chinese govt boxtops have seized on the partisan divides and mounted viral videos of police crackdowns with tear gas and rubber bullets to condemn the bipartisan criticism from Pindo congress critturs of Beijing’s power grab. HK chief executive Carrie Lam said Tuesday the Pindo response reveals “double standards” held by foreign nations who have spoken out against the Chinese government. Despite the shadow of Pindo protests, the hearing largely focused on ways the Pindo government should respond to a new national security law approved by the Chinese government that would expand Beijing’s ability to prosecute and punish HKers. Peter Harrell of CNAS said:
If China will not treat HK as autonomous, we cannot either.
Trump last week announced that Pindostan will no longer consider HK distinct from China and would move away from special agreements on trade, finance, and immigration struck with the city-state that did not apply to the mainland. The decision has significant implications for the HK economy that could lead to a mass departure of citizens and businesses. Sen Pat Toomey voiced support for offering special visas to HKers, citing UK PM Boris Johnson’s decision to offer a pathway to British citizenship to those fleeing from the city-state. Toomey said:
I would be very interested in pursuing policy changes here in Pindostan that would make such an option for the people of HK to come to Pindostan. It would be wonderful for both them & us.
There was also wide agreement among senators and witnesses over ramping up financial sanctions on CCP boxtops, businesses in HK that cooperate with the Chinese government and pressuring Pindo businesses. Lee Cheuk Yan, vice chairman of the HK Labor Party, who called into the hearing from HK, said:
Xi Jinping may be very, very much seen to be a strong leader, but I wonder whether the others will go with him if their own economic interests are being hurt.
Even so, experts warned that the Pindo sanctions alone would not be enough to penalize China, urging senators to push for an international coalition that addresses HK through a broader strategy targeting China’s other human rights abuses and international provocations. Pindo action on its own “will not have nearly as much efficacy as a multilateral approach,” Harrell said.
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