Building the military-intelligence complex.During President Bush's second inauguration, "a small group of super-secret commandos stood ready with state-of-the-art weaponry to swing into action to protect the presidency in ways that have never been fully revealed before," noted the January 23 New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times. "As part of the extraordinary army of 13,000 troops, police officers and federal agents marshaled to secure the inauguration, these elite forces were deployed under a 1997 authorization that was updated and enhanced after the September 11 attacks September 11 attacks Series of airline hijackings and suicide bombings against U.S. targets perpetrated by 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda. , but nonetheless departs from how the military has historically been used on American soil." This secretive Special Operations group Special Operations Group may refer to the:
adj. Intended to prevent or counteract terrorism: counterterror measures; counterterror weapons. n. Action or strategy intended to counteract or suppress terrorism. program code-named "Power Geyser Power Geyser is a purported clandestine United States counterterrorism program to operate a group of commandos with state of the art weaponry created to protect the physical safety of the President, Congress, and other high-value government targets. ." "In the past," continued the Times, this unit "has also provided support to domestic law enforcement during high-risk events like the Olympics and political party conventions" --thereby blending military and law enforcement functions in a way prohibited by the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act Posse Comitatus Act, 1878, U.S. federal law that makes it a crime to use the military as a domestic police force in the United States under most circumstances. , which forbids the use of the military as a domestic police force. While the Bush administration works to combine the military with an increasingly centralized domestic law enforcement system, it is also putting the Pentagon in charge of a vastly expanded intelligence community. The administration "has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad," reported the Washington Post on the same day. "The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his 'near total dependence on CIA' for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces Those Active and Reserve Component forces of the Military Services designated by the Secretary of Defense and specifically organized, trained, and equipped to conduct and support special operations. Also called SOF. ." |
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