[Infowarrior] - The Last Roundup

[Richard Forno]

(Conspiracy or truth, you be the judge........rf)

The Last Roundup
Is the government compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under  
martial law?
By Christopher Ketcham

PAGE 1 / 5

This article is from the May/June issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk- 
free issue, click here.

In the spring of 2007, a retired senior official in the U.S. Justice  
Department sat before Congress and told a story so odd and ominous, it  
could have sprung from the pages of a pulp political thriller. It was  
about a principled bureaucrat struggling to protect his country from a  
highly classified program with sinister implications. Rife with high  
drama, it included a car chase through the streets of Washington,  
D.C., and a tense meeting at the White House, where the president's  
henchmen made the bureaucrat so nervous that he demanded a neutral  
witness be present.

The bureaucrat was James Comey, John Ashcroft's second-in-command at  
the Department of Justice during Bush's first term. Comey had been a  
loyal political foot soldier of the Republican Party for many years.  
Yet in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he  
described how he had grown increasingly uneasy reviewing the Bush  
administration's various domestic surveillance and spying programs.  
Much of his testimony centered on an operation so clandestine he  
wasn't allowed to name it or even describe what it did. He did say,  
however, that he and Ashcroft had discussed the program in March 2004,  
trying to decide whether it was legal under federal statutes. Shortly  
before the certification deadline, Ashcroft fell ill with  
pancreatitis, making Comey acting attorney general, and Comey opted  
not to certify the program. When he communicated his decision to the  
White House, Bush's men told him, in so many words, to take his  
concerns and stuff them in an undisclosed location.

The Continuity of Governance program encompasses national emergency  
plans that would trigger the takeover of the country by extra- 
constitutional forces. In short, it's a road map for martial lawComey  
refused to knuckle under, and the dispute came to a head on the cold  
night of March 10, 2004, hours before the program's authorization was  
to expire. At the time, Ashcroft was in intensive care at George  
Washington Hospital following emergency surgery. Apparently, at the  
behest of President Bush himself, the White House tried, in Comey's  
words, "to take advantage of a very sick man," sending Chief of Staff  
Andrew Card and then–White House counsel Alberto Gonzales on a mission  
to Ashcroft's sickroom to persuade the heavily doped attorney general  
to override his deputy. Apprised of their mission, Comey, accompanied  
by a full security detail, jumped in his car, raced through the  
streets of the capital, lights blazing, and "literally ran" up the  
hospital stairs to beat them there.

Minutes later, Gonzales and Card arrived with an envelope filled with  
the requisite forms. Ashcroft, even in his stupor, did not fall for  
their heavy-handed ploy. "I'm not the attorney general," Ashcroft told  
Bush's men. "There"—he pointed weakly to Comey—"is the attorney  
general." Gonzales and Card were furious, departing without even  
acknowledging Comey's presence in the room. The following day, the  
classified domestic spying program that Comey found so disturbing went  
forward at the demand of the White House—"without a signature from the  
Department of Justice attesting as to its legality," he testified.

What was the mysterious program that had so alarmed Comey? Political  
blogs buzzed for weeks with speculation. Though Comey testified that  
the program was subsequently readjusted to satisfy his concerns, one  
can't help wondering whether the unspecified alteration would satisfy  
constitutional experts, or even average citizens. Faced with push-back  
from his bosses at the White House, did he simply relent and accept a  
token concession? Two months after Comey's testimony to Congress, the  
New York Times reported a tantalizing detail: The program that  
prompted him "to threaten resignation involved computer searches  
through massive electronic databases." The larger mystery remained  
intact, however. "It is not known precisely why searching the  
databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate," the  
article conceded.

Another clue came from a rather unexpected source: President Bush  
himself. Addressing the nation from the Oval Office in 2005 after the  
first disclosures of the NSA's warrantless electronic surveillance  
became public, Bush insisted that the spying program in question was  
reviewed "every 45 days" as part of planning to assess threats to "the  
continuity of our government."

Few Americans—professional journalists included—know anything about so- 
called Continuity of Government (COG) programs, so it's no surprise  
that the president's passing reference received almost no attention.  
COG resides in a nebulous legal realm, encompassing national emergency  
plans that would trigger the takeover of the country by extra- 
constitutional forces—and effectively suspend the republic. In short,  
it's a road map for martial law.

While Comey, who left the Department of Justice in 2005, has  
steadfastly refused to comment further on the matter, a number of  
former government employees and intelligence sources with independent  
knowledge of domestic surveillance operations claim the program that  
caused the flap between Comey and the White House was related to a  
database of Americans who might be considered potential threats in the  
event of a national emergency. Sources familiar with the program say  
that the government's data gathering has been overzealous and probably  
conducted in violation of federal law and the protection from  
unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

According to a senior government official who served with high-level  
security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database  
of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason,  
are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be  
incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies  
of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar  
that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core.  
One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now  
listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national  
emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened  
surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even  
detention.

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http://www.radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2008/05/government_surveillance_homeland_security_main_core_02-print.php