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Act of 1807 and Posse Comitatus of 1879, protected from military
policing civilian streets. That’s what the National Guard is for. And the reason the Founders wanted to protect us from military on our streets is that they understood that you can’t have a free society if the leader has military on the streets. You just can’t. And if you look at closed societies all over the world, the leader has the military doing civilian policing, that report to him.
Now who does the First Brigade report to? Not to Congress, not to you and me, not to governors. They report up the chain of command to George Bush. And so they are his private army, they have to do what he says they have to. If he says, “Arrest civilians,” they have to do it. If he says, “Fire at these civilians,” they have to do it. If he says, “Arrest this Congressperson,” they have to do it. And as I’ve noted in a video that went viral, the administration is claiming the whole world is a battleground. That’s their justification for Guantanamo. Well, if the whole world is a battleground for the War on Terror, how is the United States not part of the battlefield? So it’s a very dangerous precedent. Now because they—nobody knows where they are—and what’s extraordinary to me is that not a single mainstream media outlet has covered this. It’s not been on the news or the wires. I’ve been lobbying colleagues at the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer, I lobby everyone. I lobby Michael Kirk of Frontline: “Do some reporting on where the First Brigade is.” Everyone agrees it’s a huge story, but no one is covering it.
Kall: How about Congress? How about Kucinich and Robert Wexler – are any of them asking what’s going on with that?
Wolf: I don’t have a direct line to them. If your readers want to check at district offices and get some feelings from them, that would be fantastic.
But what I have to explain to people about the nature of the coup is: you don’t have to see bodies in the streets for the coup to have happened, in the sense that, all it takes at this stage is a sudden action, even a small one, and people will go quiet.
In Italy it was still a parliamentary democracy when the Black Shirts were lined up around the walls of the Parliament. They were still debating. It was like, the First Brigade could just as easily line up around the halls of Congress right now. It was still a parliamentary democracy, but people got intimidated and closed down.
Same thing with Germany. It was a parliamentary democracy when the Brown Shirts were sent, since Hitler’d studied Mussolini, to intimidate the parliamentarians in the Reichstag. And all it took in Italy was one violent murder by Black Shirts of one politician, and in Germany it took the Night of the Long Knives, this action by Brown Shirts, and everyone went absolutely quiet. So it doesn’t take much.
In Zimbabwe, they just had a close election, and Mugabe sent the military to intimidate voters and the opposition. In Azerbaijan, the military are sent to intimidate voters. So what I fear--and the reason I’m raising such a hue and cry about this, because this is the way to stop it--is that—and I’m relieved that we haven’t seen them yet, but people have to not stop this hue and cry, not stop their legal actions, among other things--but what I fear is that, in a close election, they’re priming us for “chaos and confusion.” Angry Obama voters find that they’ve been purged by the millions from the rolls, whoever, they’re going to speak up. Well, if they speak up, or if they are upset, all it takes is one citizen tasered to death—and these tasers kill people—and footage of it replayed again and again on the nightly news, for us to still have the First Amendment, but everyone to be scared to speak. And then, if he (Bush) can deploy the First Brigade, he can deploy the Second Brigade, or the Third Brigade—I mean, Karl Rove works by inches. So that’s why I say a coup has taken place. It’s like being a little bit pregnant: Once you have the military in the streets, it’s not a democracy anymore; it is by definition a police state.
Kall: But it’s not just that. You’ve got that list of ten different stages. What’s that list? Can you run through that quickly?
Wolf: The first is to invoke a terrifying internal and external threat; often it’s a real one that will be hyped. The second is to develop a prison system outside the rule of law where torture takes place. The third is to develop a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the people. The fourth is to create a surveillance apparatus aimed at ordinary citizens. Fifth is to infiltrate and harass citizens’ groups. Sixth is to target individuals like Dan Rather or the Dixie Chicks with job loss or recrimination – Valerie Plame is another.
Seventh is to restrict the press, you start to arrest journalists as you see at the RNC, at or threaten journalists with prosecution under the Espionage Act. Eighth is, you start to recast criticism as espionage and dissent as treason. Then (ninth) you start to subvert the rule of law – you know, ignoring subpoenas, ignoring Congress when they say where are the missing e-mails, ignoring Congress when they say where are the destroyed tapes, just simply disregard the law, and that’s how the First Brigade got deployed: it’s against the law, and Bush issued a signing statement to say he doesn’t feel bound by it.
And the last step is to make it easier for the president to declare martial law, and right now we are one step away from the president declaring martial law legally, because with the Defense Authorization Act of 2007 he can say it’s an emergency, and once he says it, he can deploy troops or the federalized National Guard or Blackwater or wherever he wants in the United States of America—and suspend elections if he wants to.
So just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean this is not an extremely dangerous situation, because one thing I’ve learned about closing societies is that, once people realize what’s happened, it’s usually too late to take action. We’re so used to thinking, “Oh well, we’ll just throw the bums out, or the ACLU will sue them,” or whatever, that’s what happens in democracy time. In police state time, when the edict comes out or the troop is deployed or the politician is assassinated, you’re not free anymore to take these steps because people are in a state of intimidation, and the law doesn’t work the same way it did before that step was taken.
Kall: So it’s the bringing back of the First Brigade, the violation of Posse Comitatus Act, that’s why it’s a coup here in the United States?
Wolf: Yes, that is the completion of the coup.
