

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
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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)

