

FEMA's structure for fascist rule

By Kathleen Klenetsky and Herbert Quinde

"You have an authoritarian structure. . .with FEMA."

--Harold Relyea, chief specialist on presidential directives at the
Congressional Research Service, in an interview with EIR.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was founded during the
presidency of one Trilateral Commission member, Jimmy Carter, and it
seems increasingly likely that its fundamental purpose -- to seize
control of the reins of government through emergency fiat -- will be
realized under the presidency of another, George Bush.

The Trilateral link is no accident. Together with the other leading
Eastern Establishment think tank, the New York Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR), the Trilateral Commission effectively brought FEMA
into existence.

The leading theoreticians behind the creation of FEMA were Samuel
Huntington, a National Security Council consultant under Carter, and
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as Carter's national security advisor.
Before that, Brzezinski was executive director at the Trilateral
Commission, a "New Ager" who envisioned a "technetronic society" in
the United States. Nominally a Democrat, Brzezinski nevertheless
became a leading adviser on strategic policy to George Bush's 1988
campaign, and continues to serve as an informal consultant to the Bush
administration. Huntington is currently a member of the FEMA Advisory
Board. Both Huntington and Brzezinski belong to the CFR.

FEMA was established in March 1979 by presidential Review Memorandum
32, with the mandate to maintain "the continuity of government" (COG)
during a national security emergency. PRM 32 bypassed the U.S.
Constitution, and awarded power to the _unelected_ officials at the
National Security Council to direct U.S. government operations by
emergency decree. By placing FEMA under the NSC's control, Huntington,
Brzezinski, et al., turning the NSC into a shadow technocratic
dictatorship, waiting for a real or manufactured crisis to seize
control of the country.

Although FEMA was sold to Congress and the public as the vehicle
through which the United States could mount an adequate, centralized
response to natural and other disasters, the agency has consistently
failed to fulfill that purpose. In its last major interventions, in
1989's San Francisco earthquake and Hurricane Hugo, FEMA's ineptness
and bungling enraged disaster victims and local officials. FEMA was
more interested in psychologically profiling the population's response
to the disasters, than it was in assisting their physical survival.
That was typical of FEMA's 10-year record, which began with its
panic-mongering handling of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in
1979.

Burying the Constitution
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FEMA has proven by it's own actions that it is not a disaster
preparedness agency. Its true purpose is found in the 1970s policy
decisions of the CFR and the Trilateral Commission, decisions which
ushered in the "post-industrial society" and "limits to growth" era
which brought the United States into the current depression.

It is clear from viewing these policy decisions, that the
Establishment had made a conscious decision to deal with economic
contraction and concomitant social unrest by resorting to fascist
emergency rule and other forms of "fascism with a democratic face."

In one of the earliest Trilateral Commission reports, "The Crisis of
Democracy," published in 1975, Huntington demanded that democratic
government be curbed in times of economic crisis. "We have come to
recognize that there are potentially desirable limits to economic
growth," he stated. "There are also potentially desirable _limits to
the indefinite extension of political democracy_. . . . A government
which lacks authority. . .will have little ability, short or
cataclysmic crisis to _impose on its people the sacrifice which may be
necessary_" (emphasis added).

In 1973, the Council of Foreign Relations launched its "1980s
Project," which it called the "largest single effort in our 55-year
history." By its own account, the 1980s Project was aimed at
"describing how world trends might be steered toward a particular
desirable future outcome." Zbigniew Brzezinski belonged to the 1980s
Project's governing body, and Samuel Huntington served on its
coordinating group.

Among the most important products of the project was _Alternatives to
Monetary Disorder_, by the late Fred Hirsch, senior adviser to the
International Monetary Fund. Hirsch wrote: "A degree of controlled
disintegration in the world of economy is a legitimate objective for
the 1980s and may be order. A central normative problem for the
international economic order in the years ahead is how to ensure that
the disintegration indeed occurs in a controlled way and does not
rather spiral into damaging restrictionism."

"Controlled disintegration" became the policy of Jimmy Carter's
Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, whose high interest rates
wrecked the U.S. industrial and farm base during the Carter and Reagan
years.

Another Key 1980s Project document was _International Disaster
Relief_, by Stephen Green. It predicted that the future will bring
about "megadisasters" that will "create conditions of political
instability and, in all likelihood, of conflict, which will further
erode the capacity of societies to cope with natural disasters."

Green recommended rapid implementation of new disaster preparedness
efforts. He called for the creation of a central, global agency, under
the United Nations, with a mandate to intervene in disaster
situations, despite opposition from local governments. "Such a shift,"
he wrote, "would reflect increasingly widespread _dissatisfaction with
the constraints posed by the recognition of sovereign national
jurisdictions" and the "abstract notion of national sovereignty"
(emphasis added).

"Disaster relief" thus became an excuse for tossing out existing forms
of government which stand in the way of fascist economic policies (for
which "sacrifice" and "controlled disintegration" are merely
euphemisms) which the Eastern Establishment has decided must be
imposed.

Oliver North and FEMA
/////////////////////

FEMA's powers have been enhanced during the Reagan and Bush
administrations to the point that the agency is now positioned to take
over the country in the event of a national security crisis, such as a
war with Iraq or an interruption of oil-imports.

A preview of FEMA dictatorship can be found in the Iran-Contra affair.
One of the key components of the FEMA apparatus is a group of 100
persons it has positioned throughout the government bureaucracy. Known
as the "continuity of government" (COG) structure, these 100
individuals are charged with running government departments in times
of crisis. One member of this group was none other than Oliver North
-- whom President Bush called a "national hero."

Bush was at the center of both the Iran-Contra fiasco, and the broader
FEMA-linked crisis management apparatus set up during the Reagan
years. In early 1982, Reagan created the Special Situations Group
(SSG), designating Vice President Bush as chairman.

In May 1982, the Reagan administration is sued a memorandum which
announced that the SSG "is charged, _inter alia_ with formulating
plans in anticipation of crisis. In order to facilitate this crisis
pre-planned responsibility, a Standing Crisis Pre-Planning Group
(CPPG) is hereby established."

North was assigned to the CPPG -- and later helped to write the 1984
"Rex" exercise for police-state rule in the United States.

Through an outgrowth of this structure, the Iran-Contra controllers
wielded extraordinary power and ran various foreign and domestic
initiates, including the overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos of
the Philippines through what became the Project Democracy apparatus,
the Iran-Contra affair, and the government's effort to jail Lyndon
LaRouche, who was rightly seen as a major threat to the FEMA network's
"government by fiat" scheme. (As EIR has previously reported, Buster
Horton, the foreman of the jury which found LaRouche guilty on
trumped-up charges in December 1988, belonged to the same 100-man COG
structure as North.)

On July 22, 1982, President Reagan issued his National Security
Decision Directive 47 to complement the operations of the SSG and
CPPG. Titled "Emergency Mobilization Preparedness," NSDD 47 defined
the responsibilities of federal departments and branches of the U.S.
government to respond to a national security crisis or domestic
emergency. The president charged the Emergency Mobilization
Preparedness Board with implementing the programs detailed in the
directive, which included a restriction of civil rights, bordering on
explicit police-state measures (see accompanying article --
"12656.TXT").

As one of his first acts in office, Bush issued National Security
Directive 1, which boosted the powers of the National Security
Council, the body that runs FEMA.

Bush also stacked the FEMA leadership with "old boys" from the
intelligence and covert operations networks, among them Jerry
Jennings, who was confirmed as a FEMA deputy director in May.
Jenning's background includes nearly a decade of White House service
as an advisor to the President's national security adviser under four
administrations, beginning in 1973. Before that, he worked with the
CIA in the Far East during the gear up for the Vietnam War (1965-68),
and for the FBI, where he specialized in drugs.

EIR Nov 23, 1990 (pg.23)
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(This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the
Patriot FTP site by S.P.I.R.A.L., the Society for the Protection of Individual Rights and Liberties. E-mail alex@spiral.org)
