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Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,misc.legal,misc.survivalism
Subject: RESISTER 3.1: Dissent Behind The Fence
From: mixmaster@remail.obscura.com (Mixmaster)
Date: 18 Nov 1996 19:27:14 +0100

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The RESISTER ------ The Official Publication of the Special Forces Underground
Volume III, Number 1 & 2. Fall 1996                                   $25/year
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Post Office Box 47095, Kansas City, Missouri, 64188                     
==============================================================================

                  PERINTREP: Dissent Behind The Fence
                           by J.F.A. Davidson
                                 p. 13

Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth McGraw, Public Affairs Officer (PAO) for the
United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) has a thankless
job. For all practical purposes his job description reads: "Lie for the
chain of command." Public Affairs officers do their jobs the best they
can. "Professionalism" demands it. In fairness, LTC McGraw simply
repeats to the public the lies he is directed by the chain of command to
tell them.  PAOs squirm like snared weasels when their general's lies
are caught-out, promise to call you back, which they do after the "new
truth" has been properly rehearsed. For example: "[T]hey are dark olive
green helicopters, not black."

Dark OG or black, the helicopters that began buzzing in and around an
abandoned Pittsburgh, PA, industrial park and hospital at 2200, 03 June,
1996, were not part of "routine" training by "Green Berets," as
described by LTC McGraw. "Overall, nine helicopters--six OH6 scouts and
three MH-60 Black Hawks--were utilized, though not all at one site,"
McGraw said. True enough, as far as his explanation went, but the
helicopters involved were from 1st Battalion, Special Operations Air
Regiment (SOAR), based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. 1st Battalion, SOAR
is dedicated to the direct support of Combat Applications Group (CAG),
more popularly know as Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta
(SFOD-D.) And 1st Battalion's helicopters are black. The 2nd and 3rd
Battalion's helicopters are dark olive green.  The helicopters in
question were "Little Birds," OH6s modified as direct fire gunships
capable of carrying a four-man "brick" in "people-pods" to secure the
landing zone, and MH-60Ls which follow on with the main assault force.
LTC McGraw went to extraordinary lengths to play down reports of gunfire
and explosions as "simulators" and "recordings of gunfire and explosions
from on-board public address systems." Asked why the public wasn't
notified about a military exercise, LTC McGraw stated "We don't put out
any broad, sweeping statement [announcing such exercises] that covers
everybody." (Weasel - English translation: "It was supposed to be a
secret.") "We don't want to unnecessarily alarm people for what might
take place;" he continued. "[W]e don't want to create a commotion by
having a lot of people wanting to observe the training, which has the
potential to create a worse public safety situation." (Weasel -- English
translation: "We thought we'd get away with it.") LTC McGraw's statement
about helicopter paint schemes was a typical half-truth. His explanation
about simulated gunfire was a lie. CAG does not train with blanks or
simulators. The gunfire heard by witnesses was real, and the
"simulators" were linear shaped-charges used to breach the "vents"
(windows and doors) of the buildings being assaulted, and flash-bangs
used in room clearing.

LTC McGraw's efforts to smear frosting on dung might have been
marginally within his preview as official mouthpiece for USASOC if CAG
was actually a subordinate unit of USASOC, and therefore answerable
through it for their actions. But CAG is a subordinate unit of the Joint
Special Operations Command (JSOC), an organization that answers only to
the National Command Authority.  McGraw tried his level best to pin
CAG's operation in Pittsburgh on Special Forces. But CAG is not part of
Special Forces--and frosting covered dung is still dung.

CAG has been conducting live fire exercises in U.S. cities for the past
three years. Generally, one exercise occurs each quarter and rotate
between squadrons "A," "B" and "C." Exercises have taken place in Los
Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Miami, and most recently,
Pittsburgh. According to sources behind "The Fence" these exercises are
purposely kept secret from all but the city police SWAT teams with which
they are conducted. Elected city officials are not told about the
exercises until just prior to launch, because neither the SWAT teams nor
CAG trust them to keep their mouths shut. According to one source, the
rationale for this is the time honored maxim, "It's easier to beg
forgiveness than ask permission."

Prior to each exercise, which is planned and organized by "D" Squadron,
CAG (the training squadron), an advanced party (ADVON) deploys to the
"training area" about 30 days prior to the event.  (Please note that
these things are planned at least a year in advance; "D" Squadron just
doesn't pull the name of a city out of a hat and then start planning.)
During the site survey, conducted jointly with the host SWAT team,
targets are identified, property owners are contacted and "briefed" on
the importance of their remaining silent, and infiltration routes and
safe houses are established and tested.

Several U.S. Army counterintelligence agents accompany the ADVON.  Their
job is to assess the probability of keeping the operation secret and,
according to a second CAG source, their primary tools are their
impressive credentials and a briefcase bulging with cash. "The badges
are the stick and the money is the carrot," related the source. "Appeals
to 'national security' and 'patriotism' are woven with artfully
concealed threats, and if those don't work, the bag men buy their
silence. Having the local cops around," he said "ensures cooperation."
The teams begin infiltrating the target city several days before the
exercise. They arrive individually or in small groups by various modes
of transportation, pass down "the net" established by the ADVON, then
assemble prior to the "take down" to plan and link up with their
equipment and weapons which ware deployed ahead of them in rental
vehicles and cached. If they are lucky they can do a drive-by of the
target during planning. Usually, however, they must rely upon the
ADVON's targeting. They conduct a link up with the SOAR birds at a "hot"
LZ someplace away from town, then execute the mission.

During an exercise in New Orleans last year, the owners of CAG's target,
the Alcoa Aluminum chemical plant in Saint Bernard Parish, having agreed
to the live-fire assault on their property, strongly objected to the
destruction of a three foot-thick wall with a 30 pound satchel charge.
CAG's CI fixer on the scene made good with the owners--to the tune of
$95,000. According to witnesses, this sum, when spread around, was
sufficient to silence other property owners in the semi-suburban area
whose windows shattered in the blast.

Miami required a little more creativity. Part of the ADVON's job is to
set up the objective for the berserkers. This includes placing bullet
traps and targets in the buildings to be assaulted. Apparently, one
member of the Miami ADVON spent too much time in the local Yuppie
hangout with his Dade County counterparts telling lies and showing off
his beeper. A slightly misplaced bullet trap resulted in a sniper's
bullet caroming off the bullet trap, piercing a wall, and exiting
through the front window of an all-night office supply store full of
customers.  When the local hoods showed up with CAG's bag men the
pointed question by concerned customers, "Who are those guys?" was
answered "State cops and sheriff guys." A creative combination of badges
and money kept the incident out of the local papers.  Incidentally, JSOC
is, by executive order, and the full version of PDD-25, exempt from the
Posse Comitatus statutes. This fact does not sit well with many CAG
operatives, and not everybody in CAG is pleased with their new internal
security mission letter.  In an attempt to identify potential
dissidents, JSOC has been conducting surveys of its operatives,
eliciting candid commentary on what they think about "current political
events." One survey required operators to write reports about their
opinions about internal political conditions in America and involvement
with the United Nations. Shortly following that survey, Special Forces
began receiving an influx of senior former CAG operators counting the
days until retirement. Apparently, some of the responses did not conform
with the party line.  Although CAG has never lacked for volunteers,
their forthcoming December 1996 recruiting drive will be accompanied by
a reduction in the traditional standards for acceptance into the
Advanced Land Navigation Course (Delta selection for the uninitiated) at
Camp Dawson, West Virginia. For almost 20 years, SFOD-D/CAG has relied
upon a steady stream of volunteers, the old five-event PT test, the
Advanced Land Navigation Course, and an ego shattering interview with
"The Psychs," to flesh out their ranks of operators--zero to ten
soldiers per semi-annual class.  Now, all of a sudden, they are reducing
their initial standard the Army's three-event PT test. The new standards
at Dawson and for the interview are not yet known. We do know, however,
that the standards have been "normed" to conform with Force XXI
expectations. In other words, CAG has been directed to modify their
selection standards by those who couldn't pass selection.  According to
several operators, CAG's mission is shifting from counterterrorism to
internal security. The official rationale for the mission letter change
is JSOC's proponency for the latest bandwagon--Counter Proliferation
(CP). Briefly, counter proliferation involves "taking out" (weasel for
"kill") anybody threatening to use, or in possession of, nuclear,
biological or chemical weapons.

CP train-up began over two years ago in preparation for the
administration's current shrill and panicky "concerns" about the spread
of weapons of mass destruction and Washington's urgent "need" to get the
military involved with law enforcement to stop it. "The whole thing is a
fake," one CAG source told us. "Almost without exception," he said, "the
classified message traffic describes the 'black market' in nuclear
materials to be one police or intelligence agency trying to sell
[nuclear] materials to another police or intelligence agency." In other
words, all the frightening stories of nuclear smuggling and black
marketing involve cops trying to entrap cops.

There is some dissent in CAG about the ramifications of CP because the
mission entails being at the beck and call of the United Nations by
virtue of the nonproliferation agreements among member nations. Further,
nonproliferation, in the UN's eyes, includes small arms. Guess whose?

Which brings us back to LTC McGraw's "explanation" about CAG storming
around U.S. cities conducting live fire exercises. "This [Pittsburgh]
was standard, prearranged training," LTC McGraw said. "This is not
training for some type of contingency or for anything [specific]."
Several sources in CAG disagree.  "Look; our in extremis mission
involves linear targets [planes, trains, buses] and point targets
[rooms, or a suite of rooms], " one CAG source said. "Those targets can
be set-up in our shooting house; so why are we training to take down
entire buildings or complexes?"

LTC McGraw has an answer: "[B]esides, if you train in the same area over
and over again, it becomes routine. So we look for urban areas that
offer realistic challenges and which are as safe as possible." A safe
answer, that explained exactly nothing.  Let's add it up.

CAG, specifically trained to assault known linear and point targets in
foreign countries, is training to attack unknown urban targets in the
United States.

CAG's parent unit, JSOC, is exempt from Posse Comitatus.  JSOC wrote
CAG's new mission letter emphasizing counter proliferation.

"Proliferation" of non-government nuclear, biological and chemical
weapons is a fraud.
Nevertheless, the panic level about this non existent threat is being
raised by the administration.

The United Nations includes small arms in their "understanding" of non
proliferation.

CAG has been surveyed concerning their "feelings" about UN
participation.

Experienced CAG operators are beginning to go "to Group" awaiting
retirement.

CAG selection standards are being lowered to increase the number of
young operators.

As one old operator put it, "None of this adds up to anything good." We
agree.
