FEMA Takes Preparations for Martial Law to the Next Level

NLE 09: FEMA Takes Preparations for Martial Law to the Next Level

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
April 21, 2009
FEMA is preparing to take its martial law exercises to the next level this July. According to a factsheet buried on the FEMA website, the agency will host National Level Exercise 2009 (NLE 09) on July 27 through July 31, 2009.

Previous TOPOFF exercises concentrated on natural disasters and bio-attacks.

“NLE 09 will be the first major exercise conducted by the United States government that will focus exclusively on terrorism prevention and protection, as opposed to incident response and recovery,” the factsheet states. It is designated as a Tier I National Level Exercise, or TOPOFF, which are exercises conducted annually in accordance with the National Exercise Program (NEP), “which serves as the nation’s overarching exercise program for planning, organizing, conducting and evaluating national level exercises,” according to FEMA.

NLE 09 “will focus on intelligence and information sharing among intelligence and law enforcement communities, and between international, federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector participants” in the “aftermath of a notional terrorist event outside of the United States.” So-called “exercise play” will concentrate on “preventing subsequent efforts by the terrorists to enter the United States and carry out additional attacks.”

Such a large and coordinated exercise seems inappropriate, considering the fact there has not been a terrorist attack on the United States since September 11, 2001. In 2007, the neocon-connected Jamestown Foundation chalked this lack of threat up to “stepped-up counter-terrorist efforts after 9/11 and possibly the simple luck enjoyed by government authorities.”

As the Washington Post noted in 2005, the government has a poor record when it comes to apprehending and prosecuting terrorists within the United States. “Except for a small number of well-known cases — such as truck driver Iyman Faris, who sought to take down the Brooklyn Bridge — few of those arrested appear to have been involved in active plots inside the United States.”

In fact, as recently leaked Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and local law enforcement (in particular, the Missouri State Police) documents reveal, the real target is not al-Qaeda or Muslim terrorists, but rather “rightwing extremists” who support the Second Amendment and states’ rights and oppose abortion and open borders. The liberal corporate media has worked tirelessly with the government to demonize activists and supporters of these movements. It has orchestrated a disinformation campaign against the Tea Party movement and has attempted to link the alleged white supremacist cop killer Richard Poplawski to Alex Jones and others erroneously classified as “rightwing extremists.”

The FEMA factsheet states NLE 09 “will focus on intelligence and information sharing among intelligence and law enforcement communities, and between international, federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector participants.” In other words, the exercise will concentrate on surveillance and counter-intelligence targeted at “terrorists” (rightwing extremists) who will – according to the NLE scenario – carry out attacks following a vaguely defined international terrorist event. A FEMA bullet point underscores the need for “counter-terror investigation and law enforcement.” Local law enforcement, through relationships previously established by DHS, the FBI and the CIA, will be on the front lines of this surveillance effort.

The FBI in particular has experience in surveilling Americans. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, for instance, the FBI kept a list – dubbed the “ADEX” list – of over 100,000 persons to be rounded up as subversive. More recently, the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported that the Terrorist Screening Center (the FBI-administered organization that consolidates terrorist watch list information in the United States) had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007. The list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month, according to the ACLU. The list now totals well over a million entries.

Although not specifically mentioned in the FEMA factsheet, NLE 09 will also include exercises designed to round-up and intern suspected terrorists. Under REX 84 and other operations, FEMA, in association with 34 other federal civil departments and agencies, trained to detain large numbers of American citizens.

During Hurricane Katrina, FEMA performed a “dry-run” of this unconstitutional power in New Orleans, not only rounding up “refugees” and “relocating” them in camps, but also testing its ability to confiscate firearms from law-abiding citizens. Blackwater USA, a private mercenary outfit, participated in this illegal confiscation.

InfraGard, the FBI organized “public-private partnership” (classical fascism as defined by Mussolini), will participate in NLE 09, as they have in past TOPOFF exercises.

As Matthew Rothschild documented last March, there are more than 23,000 representatives of private industry working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. InfraGard “may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations – some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers – into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI,” Rothschild explains, citing the ACLU. The FBI has given the private organization the ability to use lethal force against suspected “terrorists.”

FEMA’s National Level Exercise 2009 represents the next phase of preparations to implement martial law in America under the guise of fighting loosely defined terrorists. As the DHS, FBI, and MIAC reports indicate, the government now defines terrorists as “rightwing extremists” and indicates the threat is not from fanatics with beards in caves half way around the world, but from law-abiding Americans who are opposed to government policies.

The FEMA camps corporate media shill Glenn Beck insists do not exist but are documented to in fact exist around the country are not for Muslims, but the real threat to government – increasing numbers of Americans determined to return the nagtion to a constitutionally limited republic.