Homeland Security: When The Phoenix Came Home To Roost

By Douglas Valentine



The implication or latent threat of force alone was sufficient to insure that the people would comply.1

William Colby, RIP



America has been in an ideological state of siege since 20 September 2001, when the Twin Towers came crashing down, and all the moral and psychological prohibitions on the reactionary right wing were lifted forever. Under the aegis righteous retribution, all the anger and frustration they cultivated during the Vietnam War, and the degenerate Clinton Administration, was unleashed in a torrent of unabashed war mongering. Even Liberal Democrats climbed on the bandwagon and on 15 September 2001, Congress, save for one glorious dissenter, gave Bush $40 billion and the authority to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those involved (or could be said to have been involved) in the uninvestigated, and as yet unexplained terrorist attacks.

After the eerily preordained terror attacks of 11 September, Bush embarked on his Holy Crusade. But something insidious was happening behind the scenes. With little fanfare, his régime announced the formation of the Office of Homeland Security to detect, prevent, and recover from terrorist attacks, and/or "weapons of mass destruction" attacks on American soil. The obscure or Office of Homeland Security was created officially by executive fiat on 8 October 2001. Less than three weeks later, again with overwhelming Congressional support, Bush signed the draconian USA Patriot Act into law, vastly expanding the intelligence and law enforcement powers of the government while rolling back individual rights and protections from government intrusions.2

Thanks to the terror attacks of 11 September, the stigma of his having stolen the 2000 presidential election was replaced with the popular war of revenge in Afghanistan and Bush's standings in the polls nearly doubled. In the absence of any opposition from the anthrax-challenged Democratic Party leadership, his rationale for "eternal war on terror" evolved over the next year, and on 20 September 2002 it was set in stone with the promulgation of "The National Security Strategy of the United States" (Manifesto Bush), through which Bush conferred upon himself the divine right to launch preemptive attacks on any nation he characterizes as a terrorist threat.

This First Degree Murder strategy makes most Americans feel safer, because its terror is directed at "the other". But as Bush knows, "the other" is a projection of his own homicidal impulses, and Manifesto Bush has a sinister, unstated purpose, for by causing more human misery around the world, it will generate more domestic dissident. And more dissent will provide the pretext he needs to impose the "legally criminal" social structure his illegitimate régime requires to maintain its dominance, and ensure support for the eternal war on terror, with all the personal economic benefits that entails for Bush and his clique.3

In order to institutionalize his "legally criminal" social structure, Bush signed the Homeland Security Act on 25 November 2002, creating the Department of Homeland Security under former Pennsylvania Governor, Tom Ridge. The Department's job is to coordinate the anti-terror elements of dozens of federal agencies, and secure the US "from terrorist threats or attacks," be they genuine or provoked by the Bush Régime for black propaganda purposes. The Act also provides for a policy-making Homeland Security Council. The Council has as its standing members: Bush as chairman, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John Ashcroft. The domestic-oriented Homeland Security Council is the flip side of the foreign-oriented National Security Council.4

Last, Bush on 29 January 2003 created the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC). The TTIC combines the essential anti-terror elements of the Justice Department and the CIA. It reports directly to Bush, so he may coordinate the war on terror with his Homeland Security apparatus outside the DHS and Congressional scrutiny.

The Method In Their Madness

Manifesto Bush is based in Homeland Security, for without political "internal security" at home, he cannot wage the eternal war on terror abroad. There is no other need for Homeland Security. That's right: Bush did not concoct the Homeland Security apparatus to provide Americans with greater protection from terrorism. On the contrary, at a cost of $50 billion in taxpayer's money, it will provide him with the 170,000 political cadres he needs to pacify the unwitting, flag-waving American public: including the 75% that support him and supported the war on the Iraq; and the idiotic 40% that believe Iraq was responsible for the terror attacks of 11 September. Homeland Security is a Trojan Horse through which he will unleash his ideological storm troopers on America, and exploit his ill-gotten power to achieve personal and political gain.

This is no mean feat. Creating the Homeland Security apparatus is the largest reorganization of the US government in fifty years. According to Lawrence Korb, one of the nation's leading national security experts at the Council on Foreign Relations, it might "bankrupt the country." Which is undoubtedly another of its unstated purposes, for Bush will need a series of national emergencies, a depression as well as preordained terror attacks, to perpetuate his de facto military dictatorship.5

The most important thing to remember is that the Bush Régime is creating this fascist police state through a Big Lie. A generation has passed since the Vietnam War, and thirty years of revisionist propaganda has erased from our institutional memory the lessons that humiliating defeat taught us about the misuse of power. There is no longer a moral imperative to pretend we care what is right or wrong. The only thing that matters now is conquest. And yet, everyday the war on terror is looking more like the Vietnam, on a global scale. Eighteen months after the burqa was lifted in Afghanistan, the bombs are still raining on the Taliban, as CIA directed Special Forces systematically hunt down and murder the political opposition of the Bush Regime's puppet government. In Iraq, the "total victory" Bush promised means the silent slaughter of thousands of Saddam's political supporters. Worldwide, starting with Syria, the Bush Régime has a "hit list" of sixty nations it intends to invade, conquer and convert into quisling democracies through a series of "shock and awe" military campaigns, followed by endless, illegal dirty wars designed to eradicate the political opposition from the face of the earth.

But what Bush isn't telling you, is that in order to commit genocide and plunder the world, he needs to ensure his political "internal security" at home. This will be done in the same way the war on terror is being waged overseas: through a new and improved version of the CIA's Phoenix Program, as it was conceived in Vietnam, perfected in Israel, and is about to applied here through the Homeland Security apparatus.

Anti-Terrorism As Internal Security

On 12 December 1970, the CIA issued a report titled Internal Security in South Vietnam-Phoenix. It is significant for two reasons. It documents that the CIA equated its Phoenix "anti-terror" Program with political "internal security." And it acknowledged that terrorism, and political and psychological operations, were more dangerous to political internal security and main force operations. In South Vietnam, this shadow warfare was managed by the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI). The CIA defined the VCI as "the political and administrative organization through which the Communists control or seek to control the people of South Vietnam."

Always keep this in mind, for it applies to Homeland Security as well as the war on terror: the CIA's targets in South Vietnam were civilians, not soldiers; and the same holds true today. Civilians in Afghanistan or Iraq who organize politically against the Bush Régime's puppet rulers are the modern equivalent of the VCI and, according to Manifesto Bush, they can be hunted and killed by the CIA. If they arm themselves in self-defense in their Homeland, they become terrorists.

The 10 December 1970 report stated that the CIA's Phoenix Program was the only defense against the insurgency's politicians and administrators, and the terrorists under their control. Phoenix did this by coordinating all US and GVN intelligence and anti-terror agencies in an attempt to identify and then "neutralize" the VCI. "Neutralize" meant to kill, capture, or make to defect, and the CIA went about this in typical corporate fashion: it imposed an 1800-per-month "neutralization" quota on its Phoenix officers in the field. Those officers in turn relied upon a computerized blacklist of the VCI, which included not only Communists, but also their sympathizers, and war significantly, anyone not actively supporting America's puppet government. Even innocent individuals who found their names on the Phoenix blacklist could be killed, kidnapped, detained and/or tortured indefinitely on the false accusation of one anonymous informant.

More on the blacklist later: for the moment I'd like to explain how the analogy between the CIA's Phoenix Program and the Bush Regime's Homeland Security apparatus becomes more valid everyday.

Phoenix As The Conceptual Precedent For Homeland Security

The Phoenix "concept" is that terror is an organizing principle of society, and it is through terror that Bush will create his "legally criminal" society through the Homeland Security apparatus. This includes every type of terror, from the "explicit" terror of the sadistic, feudalistic siege - and Daisy Cutter bombs - that strangled, starved, obliterated and liberated Baghdad from a despot, and delivered it into a humanitarian catastrophe; to the "collective punishments" Israel dishes out to deny Palestinians jobs, health, education, pride; as well as the rubber bullets that now pepper war protesters in America as well. There is also the "implicit" psychological terror of jack-booted National Guardsmen patrolling our airports, and of plainclothes policeman armed with automatic rifles, searching our cars without probable cause. It's color-coded warnings issued by anxious Homeland officials of terror attacks that never occur, and it's frightening but unsubstantiated reports brought to you by Network News.

The Phoenix "concept" also includes "selective" terror, which was perfected by the Vietnamese Communists and involved the murder and mutilation of minor French colonial officials and their Vietnamese suppletifs. The Vietnamese Communists, like the Palestinians, were so incredibly out-gunned they had to choose between submission, annihilation in an open rebellion, or selective terror - including suicide bombers. The purpose of selective terror was psychological: to isolate the oppressor, while demonstrating the ability of the oppressed to strike small blows for freedom, until a general uprising was possible.6

In 1964 the CIA concluded that in order to win the Vietnam War, it had to adopt the enemy's tactics, and start neutralizing VCI through selective terror. The CIA called this "counter-terrorism" as a way of making its terrorism sound justifiable. It also added its own distinctly American twist by applying the "Eye of God" technique, which played on primitive fears of an "all-seeing" cosmic eye that could see into anyone's mind. In South Vietnam in 1964 the CIA produced 50,000 "Eye of God" playing cards. Each card was painted black and had a hideous white eye in the center. When a counter-terror team discovered who the VCI were in a city or village, they would murder them in the most gruesome fashion possible, and then nail one of these cards in the victim's "third eye," which Vietnamese Buddhists considered the seat of consciousness. The idea, which has been adopted by Bush and applied to Homeland Security, was to make each individual feel as if Big Brother was watching him or her personal. The idea was to put the fear of God into people, which is why the CIA's Phoenix was always pictured, in the various psychological warfare documents the CIA distributed among the Vietnamese, as holding a blacklist in one hand and a snake (representing the Communists) in the other.

The Phoenix is the only all-seeing bird that selectively snatches its prey. It is the archetype of terror, and Bush is about to unleash it on America.

The Foundation Stones of A Terrorist State

In 1964 the CIA set in place the three of the four foundation stones upon which the Phoenix Program was built: counter-terror teams; the Province Interrogation Center Program, through which American engineering and construction firms built an interrogation center in each of South Vietnam's 44 provinces, one of which, in 1972, was managed by Representative Rob Simmons (CT-R): and the Hamlet Informant Program (HIP), which was designed to identify VCI suspects at the grass roots level of society. Attorney General John Ashcroft's short-lived Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIP) was the Homeland Security version of HIP. (Don't worry: Ashcroft, the CIA and the military have other blanket surveillance systems up their sleeves, like the Total Information Awareness Program.)

These three programs worked in tandem. On the basis of a false accusation from a single anonymous HIP informant, a counter-terror team would kidnap or assassinate a VCI suspect. If , kidnapped, the suspect was detained in an interrogation center, jail, or one of the hundreds of detention centers the CIA constructed across South Vietnam. VCI suspects were shuffled back and forth between interrogation centers, detention centers, and jails until they died or defected. Otherwise they were sent for "disposition" to a military tribunal or a CIA-advised, Stalinesque security committee. Disposition meant imprisonment on Con Son Island, ninety miles off the southern tip of South Vietnam. Con Son Prison was the Phoenix version of Bush's macabre detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Administrative detention, the fourth foundation stone of the Phoenix Program, is the "extra" legal nail upon which the Homeland Security apparatus and war on terror hang. Administrative detention is a neat way of circumventing the Bill of Rights by creating "crimes of status." It was used by the CIA in Vietnam through the Phoenix Program against anyone sympathizing with the Communists, or failing to actively support the puppet régime. These were crimes of status, as was espousing piece. Administrative detention practices were perfected in Israel, where it is okay to round-up civilians, detain and torture them indefinitely, destroy their homes with bulldozers, and then cast them to the four winds, simply because they are Palestinians and thus are related to terrorists. Being a stateless Palestinian is a crime of status.

The Patriot and Homeland Security Acts have already set in place in America most of the elements of administration detention. John Ashcroft's forthcoming Domestic Security Enhancement Act will eliminate whatever administrative burdens remain, and make it possible for US citizens to be detained on the basis of their crimes of status; such as protesting the war on terror, threatening critical infrastructure programs by being an environmentalist, being a peace activist, or organizing politically against the Bush Régime.

Under Phoenix, the justice system was the ultimate form of terrorism. Through administrative detention laws, due process was non-existent, and corrupt officials used the Phoenix blacklist to extort innocent civilians as well as VCI. It was the greatest blackmail scheme ever invented: if you didn't do what the President and his clique wanted, your name appeared on the blacklist - and you were as good as dead.

Be forewarned: the Bush Régime has its blacklists: the INS-State Department TIPOFF blacklist; the "No-Fly" blacklist of peace activists distributed to airlines by the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration; CAPPS II, which uses credit card information and secret databases to assess a person's security risk level; and local blacklists like the one kept by the Denver police department.7

You know the ones. You just don't know about the secret ones - the legitimate Bush Regime's enemy's list of its most powerful domestic political opponents.