[Infowarrior] - Report: Bush Mulled Sending Troops Into Buffalo

[Richard Forno]

Report: Bush Mulled Sending Troops Into Buffalo
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:09 p.m. ET

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/07/25/us/politics/AP-US-Terror-Domestic-Raid.html?pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration in 2002 considered sending  
U.S. troops into a Buffalo, N.Y., suburb to arrest a group of terror  
suspects in what would have been a nearly unprecedented use of  
military power, The New York Times reported.

Vice President Dick Cheney and several other Bush advisers at the time  
strongly urged that the military be used to apprehend men who were  
suspected of plotting with al Qaida, who later became known as the  
Lackawanna Six, the Times reported on its Web site Friday night. It  
cited former administration officials who spoke on condition of  
anonymity.

The proposal advanced to at least one-high level administration  
meeting, before President George W. Bush decided against it.

Dispatching troops into the streets is virtually unheard of. The  
Constitution and various laws restrict the military from being used to  
conduct domestic raids and seize property.

According to the Times, Cheney and other Bush aides said an Oct. 23,  
2001, Justice Department memo gave broad presidential authority that  
allowed Bush to use the domestic use of the military against al-Qaida  
if it was justified on the grounds of national security, rather than  
law enforcement.

Among those arguing for the military use besides Cheney were his legal  
adviser David S. Addington and some senior Defense Department  
officials, the Times reported.

Opposing the idea were Condoleezza Rice, then the national security  
adviser; John B. Bellinger III, the top lawyer at the National  
Security Council; FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III; and Michael  
Chertoff, then the head of the Justice Department's criminal division.

Bush ultimately nixed the proposal and ordered the FBI to make the  
arrests in Lackawanna. The men were subsequently arrested and pleaded  
guilty to terrorism-related charges.

Scott L. Silliman, a Duke University law professor specializing in  
national security law, told the Times that a U.S. president had not  
deployed the active-duty military on domestic soil in a law  
enforcement capacity, without specific statutory authority, since the  
Civil War.