14. Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention
Centers in the US
Sources:
New America Media, January 31, 2006
Title: “Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps”
Author: Peter Dale Scott
New America Media, February 21, 2006
Title: “10-Year US Strategic Plan for Detention Camps Revives Proposals
from Oliver North”
Author: Peter Dale Scott
Consortiium, February 21, 2006
Title: “Bush's Mysterious ‘New Programs’”
Author: Nat Parry
Buzzflash
Title: “Detention Camp Jitters”
Author: Maureen Farrell
Community Evaluator: Dr. Gary Evans
Student Researchers: Sean Hurley and Caitlyn Peele
Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root)
announced on January 24, 2006 that it had been awarded a $385 million
contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build
detention camps in the United States.
According to a press release posted on the Halliburton website, “The
contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing
temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention and Removal Operations
(DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants
into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.
The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required,
initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support
tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities.”
What little coverage the announcement received focused on concerns
about Halliburton’s reputation for overcharging U.S. taxpayers
for substandard services.
Less attention was focused on the phrase “rapid development of
new programs” or what type of programs might require a major expansion
of detention centers, capable of holding 5,000 people each. Jamie Zuieback,
spokeswoman for ICE, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs”
might be.
Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott, Maureen
Farrell, and Nat Parry have explored what the Bush administration might
actually have in mind.
Scott speculates that the “detention centers could be used to
detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare
martial law.” He recalled that during the Reagan administration,
National Security Council aide Oliver North organized the Rex-84 “readiness
exercise,” which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management
Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 “refugees” in the
event of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican
border into the U.S.
North’s exercise, which reportedly contemplated possible suspension
of the Constitution, led to a line of questioning during the Iran-Contra
Hearings concerning the idea that plans for expanded internment and
detention facilities would not be confined to “refugees” alone.
It is relevant, says Scott, that in 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft
announced his desire to see camps for U.S. citizens deemed to be “enemy
combatants.” On February 17, 2006, in a speech to the Council on
Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the harm
being done to the country’s security, not just by the enemy, but
also by what he called “news informers” who needed to be combated
in “a contest of wills.”
Since September 11 the Bush administration has implemented a number
of interrelated programs that were planned in the 1980s under President
Reagan. Continuity of Government (COG) proposals—a classified plan
for keeping a secret “government-within-the-government” running
during and after a nuclear disaster—included vastly expanded detention
capabilities, warrantless eavesdropping, and preparations for greater
use of martial law.
Scott points out that, while Oliver North represented a minority element
in the Reagan administration, which soon distanced itself from both
the man and his proposals, the minority associated with COG planning,
which included Cheney and Rumsfeld, appear to be in control of the U.S.
government today.
Farrell speculates that, because another terror attack is all but certain,
it seems far more likely that the detention centers would be used for
post-September 11-type detentions of rounded-up immigrants rather than
for a sudden deluge of immigrants flooding across the border.
Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg ventures, “Almost certainly
this is preparation for a roundup after the next September 11 for Mid-Easterners,
Muslims and possibly dissenters. They’ve already done this on a
smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions
of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantánamo.”
Parry notes that The Washington Post reported on February 15, 2006
that the National Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC) central repository
holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a fourfold increase since
fall of 2003.
Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the
NSA’s domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the
Post, “Our database includes names of known and suspected international
terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including
NSA.”
As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress
have questioned the elasticity of Bush’s definitions for words
like terrorist “affiliates,” used to justify wiretapping Americans
allegedly in contact with such people or entities.
A Defense Department document, entitled the “Strategy for Homeland
Defense and Civil Support,” has set out a military strategy against
terrorism that envisions an “active, layered defense” both
inside and outside U.S. territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges
to “transform U.S. military forces to execute homeland defense
missions in the . . . U.S. homeland.” The strategy calls for increased
military reconnaissance and surveillance to “defeat potential challengers
before they threaten the United States.” The plan “maximizes
threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm
us.”
But there are concerns, warns Parry, over how the Pentagon judges “threats”
and who falls under the category of “those who would harm us.”
A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity’s
TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.
In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law already
exists in the U.S. and has been in place since shortly after the September
11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order Number One, which empowered
him to detain any noncitizen as an international terrorist or enemy
combatant. Today that order extends to U.S. citizens as well.
Farrell ends her article with the conclusion that while much speculation
has been generated by KBR’s contract to build huge detention centers
within the U.S., “The truth is, we won’t know the real purpose
of these centers unless ‘contingency plans are needed.’ And
by then, it will be too late.”
UPDATE BY PETER DALE SCOTT
The contract of the Halliburton subsidiary KBR to build immigrant detention
facilities is part of a longer-term Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME,
which sets as its goal the removal of “all removable aliens”
and “potential terrorists.” In the 1980s Richard Cheney and
Donald Rumsfeld discussed similar emergency detention powers as part
of a super-secret program of planning for what was euphemistically called
“Continuity of Government” (COG) in the event of a nuclear
disaster. At the time, Cheney was a Wyoming congressman, while Rumsfeld,
who had been defense secretary under President Ford, was a businessman
and CEO of the drug company G.D. Searle.
These men planned for suspension of the Constitution, not just after
nuclear attack, but for any “national security emergency,”
which they defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as: “Any occurrence,
including natural disaster, military attack, technological or other
emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national
security of the United States.” Clearly September 11 would meet
this definition, and did, for COG was instituted on that day. As the
Washington Post later explained, the order “dispatched a shadow
government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work secretly
outside Washington, activating for the first time long-standing plans.”
What these managers in this shadow government worked on has never been
reported. But it is significant that the group that prepared ENDGAME
was, as the Homeland Security document puts it, “chartered in September
2001.” For ENDGAME’s goal of a capacious detention capability
is remarkably similar to Oliver North’s controversial Rex-84 “readiness
exercise” for COG in 1984. This called for the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) to round up and detain 400,000 imaginary “refugees,”
in the context of “uncontrolled population movements” over
the Mexican border into the United States.
UPDATE BY MAUREEN FARRELL
When the story about Kellogg, Brown and Root’s contract for emergency
detention centers broke, immigration was not the hot button issue it
is today. Given this, the language in Halliburton’s press release,
stating that the centers would be built in the event of an “emergency
influx of immigrants into the U.S.,” raised eyebrows, especially
among those familiar with Rex-84 and other Reagan-era initiatives. FEMA’s
former plans ‘for the detention of at least 21 million American
Negroes in assembly centers or relocation camps’ added to the distrust,
and the second stated reason for the KBR contract, “to support
the rapid development of new programs,” sent imaginations reeling.
While few in the mainstream media made the connection between KBR’s
contract and previous programs, Fox News eventually addressed this issue,
pooh-poohing concerns as the province of “conspiracy theories”
and “unfounded” fears. My article attempted to sift through
the speculation, focusing on verifiable information found in declassified
and leaked documents which proved that, in addition to drawing up contingency
plans for martial law, the government has conducted military readiness
exercises designed to round up and detain both illegal aliens and U.S.
citizens.
How concerned should Americans be? Recent reports are conflicting and
confusing:
In May, 2006, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began
“Operation Return to Sender,” which involved catching illegal
immigrants and deporting them. In June, however, President Bush vowed
that there would soon be “new infrastructures” including detention
centers designed to put an end to such “catch and release”
practices.
Though Bush said he was “working with Congress to increase the
number of detention facilities along our borders,” Rep. Bennie
Thompson, ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said
he first learned about the KBR contract through newspaper reports.
Fox News recently quoted Pepperdine University professor Doug Kmiec,
who deemed detention camp concerns “more paranoia than reality”
and added that KBR’s contract is most likely “something related
to (Hurricane) Katrina” or “a bird flu outbreak that could
spur a mass quarantine of Americans.” The president’s stated
desire for the U.S. military to take a more active role during natural
disasters and to enforce quarantines in the event of a bird flu outbreak,
however, have been roundly denounced.
Concern over an all-powerful federal government is not paranoia, but
active citizenship. As Thomas Jefferson explained, “even under
the best forms of government, those entrusted with power have, in time,
and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” From John Adams’s
Alien and Sedition Acts to FDR’s internment of Japanese Americans,
the land of the free has held many contradictions and ironies. Interestingly
enough, Halliburton was at the center of another historical controversy,
when Lyndon Johnson’s ties to a little-known company named Kellogg,
Brown and Root caused a congressional commotion—particularly after
the Halliburton subsidiary won enough wartime contracts to become one
of the first protested symbols of the military-industrial complex. Back
then they were known as the “Vietnam builders.” The question,
of course, is what they’ll be known as next.
Additional links:
“ Reagan Aides and the Secret Government,” Miami Herald,
July 5, 1987, http://fpiarticle.blogspot.com/2005/12/front-page-miami-herald-july-5-1987.html
“Foundations are in place for martial law in the US,” July
27, 2002, Sydney Morning Herald, smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/27/
1027497418339.html
“Halliburton Deals Recall Vietnam-Era Controversy: Cheney’s
Ties to Company Reminiscent of LBJ’s Relationships,” NPR,
Dec. 24, 2003, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1569483
“Critics Fear Emergency Centers Could Be Used for Immigration
Round-Ups,” Fox News, June 7, 2006, http://www.foxnews.com/
story/0,2933,198456,00.html
“U.S. officials nab 2,100 illegal immigrants in 3 weeks,”
USA Today, June 14, 2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-06-14-immigration-arrests_x.htm