You're Being Watched

"Watching out for you" sounds a lot like "watching you."

EXCLUSIVE TO THE SPOTLIGHT

By Mike Blair

Are 10 special anti-terrorism units being established across the nation intended to step up government sponsored spying on U.S. citizens?

The teams are (by coincidence?) called RAID, rapid assessment and initial detection, and will, according to Maj. Michael Yowell, a spokesman for the Colorado National Guard, work with other federal, state and local authorities in an emergency. However, an increasing number of Americans and groups concerned about diminishing United States freedoms, aren't convinced of the benign nature of the project.

In Colorado, as an example, the Citizens for Peace in Space (CPS), which opposes the U.S. Space Command, with headquarters in Colorado Springs,and programs at Buckley Air National Guard Base in Aurora that control American spy satellites, are deeply concerned. According to a spokesman for the Colorado-based group, while it recognizes the increasing threat of domestic terrorism and the need to protect America from it, it fears the "international technology" that is based at Buckley which "could be used to spy on U.S. citizens in an attempt to prevent another incident like the Oklahoma [City] bombing."

"I don't want this to be the groundwork for more erosion of civil liberties," Bill Sulzman of the Colorado group said. "The safeguards [against] that happening are too weak." Yowell denies this will happen. "We abide by United States law," Yowell argued. "We do not spy on our own citizens."

EYE IN THE SKY

That remark brought strong reaction from numerous Coloradans concerned about the government spying on its citizens. It is known, for example,that the U.S. government already is spying on its own citizens by satellite. For instance, at the time of the crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, New York, in 1996 it was revealed that the air disaster had been recorded by cameras on a U.S. spy satellite that was passing overhead at the time. It is widely believed that spy satellites are also being used to search the nation for explosives being detonated by "right wing extremist groups"; always, of course, "right wing" groups, as opposed to "left wing" radicals, such as violence-prone supposed environmentalists.

Buckley Air National Guard base was chosen as one of the U.S. centers for the rapid-deployment anti-terrorism teams because Denver is the regional office of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA is well known to SPOTLIGHT readers as the shadowy government agency which has been designated to run the nation under emergency conditions during either man-made or natural disasters, even to the point of assuming the powers of the president and Congress.

FEMA was given its unheard of and unprecedented powers through the issuance of so-called Executive Orders issued by presidents going back to Jimmy Carter, who signed an order establishing FEMA as the nation's all-powerful "emergency" organization. It will be FEMA that will manage the operation of the U.S. government in the event martial law is ever established, on whatever pretexts, in America. Its powers are virtually total.

COINCIDENCE?

Teams will also be located in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Denton, Texas, all of which are(surprise, surprise) homes to key FEMA offices. The 22-member, full-time response team will begin to assemble at Buckley in September and is scheduled for completion in December. Members will undergo training to deal with chemical and biological warfare as well as traditional combat and terrorist acts in an urban area.