powergrab 2001: Must the law "tell the truth and for everybody to follow the law"

[Major Variola (ret)]

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011124/us/attacks_posse_comitatus_1.html

Saturday November 24 5:00 AM ET

  1878 Military Law Gets New Attention

  By T.A. BADGER, Associated Press Writer

  SAN ANTONIO (AP) - America's military is largely prohibited from
acting as a domestic police
  force, but with the increased fears of terrorism, some experts say
it's time to rethink those restrictions.

  ``Our way of life has forever changed,'' wrote Sen. John Warner (news
- bio - voting record), R-Va.,
  in a letter last month to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. ``Should
this law now be changed to
  enable our active-duty military to more fully join other domestic
assets in this war against terrorism?''

  The law, known as the Posse Comitatus Act, was championed by Southern
lawmakers in 1878 who
  were angry about the widespread use of the Army in post-Civil War law
enforcement.

  It currently bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from
participating in arrests, searches,
  seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The
Coast Guard and National Guard
  troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the act.

  Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, testifying in October before
the Senate Armed Services
  Committee (news - web sites), agreed that it might be desirable to
give federal troops more of a role
  in domestic policing to prevent terrorism.

  ``In certain cases we can do more than anyone else in the country
because of the special capabilities
  that we have,'' he said.

  Those roles could be varied, such as helping local law enforcement in
the event of a terrorist attack,
  patrolling the nation's borders or serving as armed sky marshals
aboard flights over the United States.

  But the issue of expanding the military's domestic reach sharply
divides lawyers who have spent years
  studying Posse Comitatus, Latin for ``power of the county.''

  Dennis Corrigan, a retired colonel who taught the law at the Army's
Judge Advocate General's
  school, says legislators should resist the urge to change it.

  The military isn't trained to be a police force, he says, so it should
stick to the skills for which it is
  trained: surveillance, information gathering, logistical support. All
of these activities are allowable under
  Posse Comitatus.

  ``There should be a partnership between the military and civilian
sectors - the civilian doing the
  confrontation and the military providing support,'' said Corrigan, now
a businessman living in Gilford,
  N.H. ``I'm not sure, even with what's going on today, that Congress
wants the military arresting
  people.''

  Jeffrey Addicott, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army JAG Corps,
wrote that the law handcuffs the
  nation when it comes to responding to terrorist attacks.

  ``We've got a homeland defense office, but if there's not reforms, the
Posse Comitatus Act will cut
  them off at the knees,'' Addicott, now a law professor at St. Mary's
University in San Antonio, said in
  a recent interview.

  ``This is a new kind of war,'' Addicott said. ``We have to make a
compromise now to prevent these
  guys from committing an act of terror on a larger scale.''

  Army Secretary Thomas White said late last month that the Pentagon
(news - web sites)'s review of
  Posse Comitatus would not likely lead to recommendations that Congress
overhaul the act.

  ``But we are looking at the details of the law to see if revisions are
appropriate in the way it's
  executed or the exceptions that can be taken,'' White said.

  Exceptions over the years have seen armed federal troops used for drug
interdiction and patrol of the
  U.S.-Mexico border to enforce immigration laws with mixed results.

  In 1997, a Marine corporal on a drug surveillance patrol shot and
killed an 18-year-old goat herder in
  the Texas desert about 200 miles southeast of El Paso. A Marine
inquiry determined its personnel
  were not adequately trained for the mission. Soon afterward, such
patrols ended.

  Michael Spak, a former Army JAG colonel now teaching at Chicago-Kent
College of Law, says the
  exceptions made in the name of national security in recent decades
have left Posse Comitatus a hollow
  shell. He says the law should be scrapped entirely.

  Any amendment to loosen Posse Comitatus would be strictly pro forma,
he says, because as it's now
  construed, the statute has enough wiggle room for the government to
use the military for domestic
  action as it sees fit.

  ``It's good for the law to tell the truth and for everybody to follow
the law,'' he said. ``But is it
  necessary? No.''