Bringing the war home.

"Preoccupied with the war in Iraq and still traumatized by Sept. 11, 2001, the American public has paid little attention to some of what is being done inside the United States in the name of antiterrorism," noted military affairs analyst William M. Arkin in the November 23 Los Angeles Times. "Under the banner of 'homeland security,' the military and intelligence communities are implementing far-reaching changes that blur the lines between terrorism and other kinds of crises and will break down long-established barriers to military action and surveillance within the U.S."

Air Force General Ralph E. Eberhart maintains that the military must start paying more attention to "the home game," which means being ready to provide "military assistance to civil authorities." Gen. Eberhart is the commander of Northern Command, the military's homeland security branch. Mindful of the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the use of the military to "execute the laws" within our borders, Gen. Eberhart told the House Armed Services Committee in March: "We believe the Act, as amended, provides the authority we need to do our job, and no modification is needed at this time."

But the problem with that assurance, notes Arkin, is that "amendments approved by Congress in 1996 for that earlier civilian war, the war on drugs, have already expanded the military's domestic powers so that Washington can act unilaterally in dispatching the military without waiting for a state's request for help [as the Constitution requires]. Long before 9/11, Congress authorized the military to assist law enforcement officials in domestic 'drug interdiction' and during terrorist incidents involving weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, the president, after proclaiming a state of emergency, can authorize additional actions."

Next year, Gen. Eberhart plans to transform Joint Task Force (JTF) Six, a drug interdiction unit of 160 military personnel located at Ft. Bliss in Texas, into "Joint Interagency Task Force North." The new JTF "will be given nationwide responsibility for working with law enforcement agencies," explains Arkin. Recall that military assistance in the notorious 1993 federal raid on Waco's Branch Davidians was made possible because the ATF made false claims about Davidian involvement in drug trafficking. Recall too that JTF 6 was the specific unit involved in training and assisting feds during both the initial raid and the final siege on April 19.

In 2002, the Pentagon established a new intelligence body called the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) to target foreign terrorists. In August, Arkin reports, "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld expanded CIFA's mission, charging it with maintaining 'a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense.' ... This year, the Pentagon inspector general authorized assigning military special agents to 56 FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force operations at FBI field offices.... CIFA, moreover, has been given a domestic 'data mining' mission: figuring out a way to process massive sets of public records, intercepted communications, credit card accounts, etc., to find 'actionable intelligence.'"

"Given all this," concludes Arkin, "it might be a good time for state and local governments to ask themselves whether the federal government, through the military, is slowly eroding their power to manage what--for very good reasons--have always been considered local responsibilities."