From: pierce@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce)
Subject: Re: Executive Orders
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 22:45:31 GMT

------------------  FORWARDED POSTING  --------------------------------

>From: dave@ratmandu.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)

===========================================================================
NOTE:  the following article, printed in the January 17, 1990 edition of
       the San Francisco Bay Guardian, is reproduced here with permission
       of both the Guardian and the author, Ed Connolly.  
       In speaking with Mr. Connolly, he recommended to anyone in California
       who is so inclined (other states may have different situations), to
       contact your State Assemblyman or Assemblywoman, communicate your 
       concern, and urge them to create a policy panel to review the State 
       Military Reserve (SMR) agency.
===========================================================================


                         WARRIORS IN THE WINGS

        California is training and arming a state militia to quell
          domestic disturbances in the increasingly likely event
            that the National Guard is sent to fight overseas.

By Ed Connolly
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ed Connolly is a freelance writer living in Palo Alto. He testified 
against funding for the State Military Reserve at a hearing of the 
Assembly Ways and Means Subcommittee on State Administration in May.
--------------------------------------------------------------------


      INSIDE THE armory, the general is addressing about 30 officers,
   discussing the problems of civil unrest during national emergencies.
   Suddenly, one of the officers, clad in a camouflage uniform, rises and
   begins to rant about the people whom he considers the real threats to
   national security: "the queers in San Francisco and the freaks in
   Berkeley."

      No one bats an eye. The general waits politely for the man to finish,
   then continues with his lecture.

      The meeting is not taking place on a secret military base or in the
   clandestine hideout of some neo-Nazi or nuclear-war-survivalist group.
   The scene is Fort Funston, just half a mile south of the San Francisco
   Zoo. And the organization is part of the official militia of the State
   of California, as conceived by the Department of Defense and coordinated
   by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Guard
   Bureau.

      Welcome to the November 1988 monthly meeting of the 2nd Brigade of
   the California State Military Reserve, part of a little-known network of
   "state defense forces" operating in 25 states.

      State defense force members are the new minutemen, the citizen
   soldiers. In the increasingly likely event that the National Guard is
   called up for active duty to fight a war in, say, Panama or Nicaragua,
   state militia members would become the officers of a rapidly recruited
   and rapidly trained armed force charged with keeping the peace here at
   home.

      Unlike the minutemen of the American Revolution, these troops
   wouldn't be turning muskets outward against a foreign army. Instead,
   they would be turning riot batons and M-l4 automatic rifles against
   other U.S. citizens. Their job would be to put down civil unrest,
   enforce martial law and quell the antiwar demonstrations that would
   almost certainly follow any major U.S. military intervention.

      Militia members would be performing duties typically associated with
   the National Guard, but with far less training and oversight. If you
   think the National Guard performed badly at Kent State in 1970 or
   People's Park in 1969, wait until you see these guys.

      An ongoing, year-long investigation, involving attendance at militia
   meetings and conventions, interviews with state defense force members
   nationwide and examination of thousands of pages of documents, suggests
   that state militias pose a serious threat to civil liberties and to the
   health and safety of the civilian population in times of war.

      While many militia members are well-meaning individuals who view
   their participation as a form of patriotic community service or a chance
   to hang out with the boys at meeting halls and firing ranges, the state
   defense forces--recruited by word-of-mouth and advertisements in such
   magazines as American Survival Guide--have also become havens for
   right-wing ideologues, survivalists, racists, soldiers of fortune and
   unrepentant cold-warriors.

      In three states since 1986, the governors or legislatures have
   dismantled and reorganized defense forces after complaints from the
   public and law-enforcement officials. In Utah, several militia members
   were openly part of the militant white-supremacist group Aryan Nation.

      And these aren't the grunts who will be following orders. They're the
   officers--the elite that will be issuing orders if state militias are
   ever activated. Plans underwritten with public funds give members of
   this cadre considerable latitude to interpret political dissent as
   subversion, civil disobedience as terrorism. The plans also assign to
   militia groups the task of gathering domestic intelligence to prepare
   for a possible civil emergency.

      Probing this paramilitary world has not always been easy. Some states
   have fought to keep secret even basic mobilization plans, and some
   militia members have attempted to discourage any inquiries. For example,
   when asked about his participation in the California State Military
   Reserve and the private State Defense Force Association of the United
   States[SDFAUS], the chief building inspector of San Mateo County, 
   Major Paul Schmidt, warned this reporter, "Maybe we should investigate
   you.  Maybe you're a Communist."


   UNTIL SUMMONED to active duty by the governor when the National Guard
   departs, the California State Military Reserve musters a skeleton staff
   of officers that would train and marshal as many as 20,000 troops
   inducted during mobilization.  In the event that not enough volunteers
   join to fill the ranks at that time, the governor can, by law, draft any
   able-bodied male between 18 and 45 years of age not obligated to other
   service.

      A regulation issued by the U.S Army requires that state defense
   forces drill to "prevent or suppress subversive activity" and "guard and
   protect critical industrial installations."

      A State Military Reserve captain, San Jose jeweler Ernest Glave,
   described to me how his local battalion would carry out those duties.
   "We've had training with the 36-inch baton and that's what you use," he
   said. "We whip out the baton, although many of us are sharpshooters.
   We're all qualified with weapons."

      Glave also said vehicles maintained by his battalion in San Jose were
   ready to roll when given the green light--including jeeps, an ambulance
   and an armored weapons-carrier that the group takes on exercises. "These
   are not museum pieces," he pointed out.

      Currently, about 800 officers belong to the state's standing cadre,
   including the gang that meets at Fort Funston, but the command is
   seeking 700 more officers. "We are selective: We recruit mostly by word
   of mouth," Glave said.

      In July, to help spread the word, David Strom of the Glendale
   battalion placed an ad in a survivalist magazine, American Survival
   Guide, that appealed to "patriotic Americans 18-50 years old for the
   defense of the United States.  Prior military service is not required."

      Although militia officers receive no pay, many members devote
   hundreds of hours annually to armory meetings and field exercises.  For
   example, the San Jose battalion meets every Wednesday night and one
   weekend per month, in addition to sporadic field exercises held in
   conjunction with the National Guard.

      One such exercise was held last February at Camp Parks, near
   Pleasanton, where officers from the Walnut Creek SMR battalion trained
   70 members of the National Guard 49th Military Police Battalion and 20
   ROTC cadets from nearby high schools.

      Captain Richard Grossman of the Walnut Creek battalion conducted the
   exercise.  "As the weapons instructor in the police department, I'm also
   assigned as a SWAT [Special Weapons and Tactics] team member," Grossman
   said.  "I've been to basic SWAT course[sic], I've been to sniper SWAT
   courses...all the various SWAT courses, and of course, SWAT teams are
   trained in riot control. I`ve attended most of the civilian riot-
   control, civil disturbance and firearms-instructor courses that are
   given in the state of California."

      According to the State Military Reserve Mobilization Plan, when the
   militia is called into active duty, officers will train recruits at Camp
   San Luis Obispo, where M-l4 automatic rifles, .45-caliber sidearms and
   riot gear will be issued.

      Since 1984, the State Military Reserve has consumed about $250,000
   each year without ever being called by the governor to do anything. A
   full-time administrator in Sacramento and his secretary account for
   approximately half the money; the remainder reimburses travel expenses
   and pays for office supplies.


  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  |                     SDFAUS: THE COLD WAR LIVES                          |
  |                                                                         |
  |     THE GUEST speaker at the 1988 State Military Reserve meeting at     |
  |  the Fort Funston armory was none other than Brigadier General Ronald   |
  |  Markarian, deputy commander of the State Military Reserve.  He also    |
  |  directs the U.S. Selective Service in California.                      |
  |                                                                         |
  |     A retired career Air Force intelligence officer, he was appointed   |
  |  in 1974 to be the first director of the Air Force Intelligence         |
  |  Reserve Force, a post he held in the Pentagon for four years. Before   |
  |  that appointment, he performed intelligence work in Saigon.            |
  |                                                                         |
  |     As chairman and cofounder of the private State Defense Force        |
  |  Association of the United States, Markarian sets agenda for national   |
  |  militia conferences tailored to paranoids on the right-wing fringe.    |
  |                                                                         |
  |     The keynote speaker he invited in October l988 was George Stein,    |
  |  a professor at Miami University in Ohio. Stein enlightened officers    |
  |  about provocateurs.  "There are targets, both physical and             |
  |  psychological, in the United States for sub-conventional or            |
  |  low-intensity attack," he warned, "and the Soviets, their allies and   |
  |  proxies, are continuing to develop the means to attack these targets." |
  |                                                                         |
  |     The next speaker related "Perceptions of the Soviet Military" and   |
  |  was followed immediately by another lecture devoted to "Soviet         |
  |  SPEZNAZ and Protection of Key Assets."                                 |
  |                                                                         |
  |     Grant Peterson, acting director of the Federal Emergency            |
  |  Management Agency, concentrated on nuclear-attack preparedness in his  |
  |  address, which concluded the conference. Among other duties,           |
  |  evidently, state defense forces are expected to emerge from the        |
  |  rubble of atomic blasts to secure continuity of government (see        |
  |  "Hurricane FEMA," Bay Guardian, 12/13/89).                             |
  |                                                                         |
  |     "Some of the so-called intellectuals of this country," Peterson     |
  |  said, "have recommended to Congress that they should cut civil         |
  |  defense funds because they believe attack preparedness is              |
  |  wasteful...and could lead to war. We should never, never, never let    |
  |  those merchants of disinformation go forward unchallenged."            |
  |                                                                         |
  |     Why should these conferences of state defense force representatives |
  |  dwell on Soviet minions and nuclear attacks? "Education, merely        |
  |  education," answered Markarian, during a recent telephone interview.   |
  |                                                                         |
  |  --E.C.                                                                 |
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------


   WHlLE THE State Military Reserve has never been called up, activation
   scenarios are not all that farfetched. Since the Vietnam War, U.S.
   military policy has undergone a profound change that makes it
   increasingly likely that the National Guard will fight abroad during any
   major conflict.

      In 1972, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird instituted the Total Force
   Doctrine, which redefined the National Guard as a frontline strategic
   force instead of a last-resort reserve army.

      By last year, the National Guard provided nearly half the combat
   units of the entire Army.

      Since 1984, the number of National Guardsmen annually shipped to
   foreign exercises has jumped five-fold to about 40,000, abetted by the
   1987 Montgomery Amendment to the federal Defense Authorization Bill,
   which abrogated the constitutional authority of governors to decide
   where their state contingents train. Despite unsuccessful lawsuits by
   several governors to retain jurisdiction over National Guard
   assignments, more than 40,000 Army National Guardsmen and 16,000 Air
   National Guardsmen have been sent to Central America for war games.

      Now the Supreme Court has agreed to hear one of these cases,
   concerning the efforts of Minnesota officials to keep the state's
   National Guard from participation in Central American training missions.

      Presidents, however, may now dispatch 100,000 National Guard troops
   for three months without approval by Congress or declaration of war,
   thanks to the 1980 federal law, PL-96-58l. And if the National Guard is
   sent to war, the state defense forces will take over the Guard's duties
   at home.

      Dubious credit for developing the state defense forces as
   replacements for the National Guard goes to John Brinkerhoff. In 1981,
   Brinkerhoff was appointed to serve as a strategist for the Assistant
   Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs and Logistics. In
   that capacity, he commissioned a study of vigilance committees and
   militia organized during the two world wars to repel invasions. Most
   local militia disappeared after the Korean War, but the enabling
   statutes remained on the books.

      Soon after contracting the study, Brinkerhoff moved to FEMA to head
   the planning for national security emergencies. At FEMA, he began
   working to set up the state defense forces.

      In conjunction with FEMA, the Office of Policy and Liaison in the
   National Guard Bureau began early in Reagan's first term to persuade
   state legislators to establish and fund defense forces.

      No federal contributions have yet been allocated to state defense
   forces, although two bills were introduced before Congress in 1987 to
   provide equipment and training. Both bills died in the House of
   Representatives without a floor vote.

      At one legislative hearing in 1987 before the Readiness Subcommittee
   of the House Committee on Armed Services, Commander Constantine Lambros
   of the Ohio Military Reserve testifying in support of one of those
   bills, asked for surplus M-l6 rifles. If those weren't available, said
   Lambros, who served as legal counsel to the National Guardsmen who
   killed four students during May 1970 antiwar demonstrations at Kent
   State University, reconditioned M-l rifles would do just fine.


   LAMBROS HELPED forge the two-year plan that sets guidelines for the Ohio
   Military Reserve. That document clearly reflects the intent of the state
   militia to conduct anti-terrorism activities and to gather intelligence
   on private citizens and political groups.

      "For the Ohio Military Reserve," the report states, "the challenge of
   terrorism is immense."

      One guideline instructs: "Coupled with constitutional safeguards,
   effectively use Counter-Terrorist Intelligence to thwart attacks before
   they occur."

      The document does carry this caveat: "Avoid becoming so panic-
   stricken by the potential for terrorism that we overreact. As serious as
   terrorism is, we must not so limit our liberties in the effort to be
   prepared that we end up doing the terrorists' work for them."

      Ohio and Massachusetts have been reluctant to release documents about
   state defense forces; New York has been intransigent. In a case brought
   by the New York Civil Liberties Union, now pending in the New York
   Supreme Court, the state refuses to turn over the New York Guard
   mobilization plan. The reason given was that disclosure would jeopardize
   the lives of cadre members and interfere with intelligence and
   counterintelligence operations.

      In Oregon, the National Guard Reserve has people called security
   specialists who train with 12-gauge shotguns. Their training manual
   section on the riot baton includes identifying "fatal points on the
   body." The training manual also includes provisions for intelligence-
   gathering and handling captured documents.

      Like its counterparts in other states, the California militia may
   consider intelligence-gathering part of its bailiwick. The January 1989
   State Military Reserve Mobilization Plan calls for the militia to
   maintain intelligence and counterintelligence files on local activists.
   Last May, Assemblywoman Maxine Waters grilled Robert Thrasher, adjutant
   general of the  California National Guard, during fiscal hearings by her
   Ways and Means Subcommittee on State Administration, which is
   responsible for evaluating the military budget.

      When confronted, Thrasher explained that intelligence files on local
   activists called for by the State Military Reserve Mobilization Plan
   actually are to be maintained by the California National Guard. After
   apologizing for that inadvertent overlap of responsibilities between the
   two agencies under his command, he promised to expunge such duties from
   the l30-page guide, originally published last January. However, the
   amended document still requires militia volunteers to report people they
   perceive to be enemies.

      To secure funding this year, the State Military Reserve was forced to
   submit to several fiscal committees a report listing the names of all
   cadre members, their responsibilities and recruitment methods. Submitted
   in September, the report neglected to mention the July advertisement in
   American Survival Guide that recruited volunteers. And testimony by the
   adjutant general to the contrary, the report listed intelligence as the
   assignment of several officers.


   INTELLIGENCE-GATHERING has been the least of the excesses of militias in
   some states. In three states since 1985, the governors or legislatures
   have dismantled and reorganized defense forces following complaints by
   the public, the press and law-enforcement officials.

      Governor Bangerter of Utah, for example, purged hundreds of officers
   from the cadre there in 1987, after reports of commando and racist
   actions surfaced. Many of the purged officers belonged to the white
   supremacist group Aryan Nation, and Aryan Nation literature was
   distributed at a militia recruiting booth at a gun show.

      Among incidents verified by law-enforcement officials and reported in
   the Utah press, Utah State Guard personnel trained members of the
   white-supremacist sect for combat, at the Aryan Nation compound in
   Hayden Lake, Idaho. In fact, the chief recruiter for the militia,
   Lieutenant Dwight McCarthy, was an avowed member of the Aryan Nation and
   once hosted a regularly scheduled radio talk show for racists, according
   to reports in the Salt Lake Tribune.

      Some officers of the Utah State Guard who worked in security at Toole
   Army Depot and Hill Air Force Base have been under investigation by
   federal authorities for alleged thefts of weapons from those arsenals,
   the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

      In Texas, the legislature slashed funding for the State Guard by 60
   percent and reorganized the cadre in 1985, after reviewing complaints
   about war games and misappropriation of funds.  As part of the shake-up,
   the 105th Military Police Battalion was kicked out of the Texas State
   Guard in 1984, but its officers continued to operate independently as
   the Texas Reserve Militia.

      The type of highjinks that concerned authorities were described in
   the May 1987 issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine, in a nine-page
   article lauding the renegade unit. Headed by Major Robert Holloway and
   staffed by local police and by Special Forces veterans who served in
   Vietnam, the unit reportedly "kicked some ass" in war games against the
   U.S. Army Reserve while still part of the State Guard.

      By 1987, according to Soldier of Fortune, "Most [Texas Reserve
   Militia members] were armed with AR-l5s, a few Mini-l4s, FNFALs and
   other assault rifles thrown in. And they handle these weapons with
   skill. Mobility is assured by members who purchased one 2.5-ton surplus
   troop truck, two 1.25-ton military trucks and two jeeps.  A dozen
   troopers also put together the bucks to become airborne qualified.  But
   the Texas Reserve Militia doesn't have any aircraft--yet."

      More recently, in March 1989, the Virginia legislature threw out the
   Virginia Defense Force commander and officers, some of whom reportedly
   saved money to buy a tank and practiced ad hoc drug raids.  Unlike other
   state defense forces that have kept a low profile, the Virginia militia
   ran radio advertisements and posted fliers in shopping centers to
   attract recruits.  Thousands of volunteers were accepted without any
   kind of screening.

      Eschewing the shotgun approach to recruiting, one unit placed a
   bulletin-board item in a Virginia supplement of the Washington Post:
   "The Northern Virginia Defense Force is recruiting to fill vacancies
   within the unit. No military experience is necessary to join, but Viet
   Nam veterans with combat experience are preferred."

      In California, too, the military reserve has provoked controversy.
   Before he moved to the Fresno brigade as security officer, George R.
   Callaghan of the Van Nuys battalion caught the ire of a Jewish
   volunteer, Eric G. Forster, who took offense at videotapes Callaghan
   used in anti-terrorist lectures. Those tapes allegedly slurred Israel
   and blacks, according to a Feb. 4, 1986 Los Angeles Times article.
   Forster told the L.A. Times that one training film said American blacks
   were being recruited by the Soviet KGB.

      Another tape was produced by Western Goals, a group sued by the
   American Civil Liberties Union for computerizing illegal files on peace
   workers. The KGB Connection, also presented by Callaghan, purported to
   describe Communist infiltration of American institutions.

      The offended officer, who resigned from the cadre, also said
   literature from the neo-Nazi Aryan Nation group had been left at
   battalion meetings. An investigation by the National Guard adjutant
   general's office cleared the State Military Reserve of the racism
   charges.


   CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT of the California militia has been exceedingly lax.
   The one notable exception was the May hearing before Assemblywoman
   Waters' State Administration Subcommittee, but even then, no strong
   steps were taken to curb the potential for abuse.

      Assemblyman John Burton (D-SF) expressed worries during the hearings
   that the State Military Reserve might crack down on citizens construed
   as "disloyal." He specifically expressed concerns about the private
   State Defense Force Association of the United States, which is chaired
   by the SMR's deputy commander, General Markarian (see box).  He noted
   that the SDFAUS still holds seminars on dealing with Russian commandos
   and commented it was "a sort of mind-set--because during my youth there
   were some people who probably thought I was a Russian commando."

      But in the end, Burton voted to continue funding the militia. He
   reported during the hearing that he had been lobbied by several members
   of the SMR in his office the day before and that he knew some of the
   officers.

      Another member of the subcommittee, Assemblyman Mike Roos (D-L.A.),
   who had introduced one of last year's bills to ban assault rifles, said
   that before aides stopped counting he received more than two dozen calls
   from constituents who claimed to be in the militia and said they need
   their guns to help "fight off the Commies," inside and outside of
   government.  Roos also voted to continue funding for the militia.

      Waters appeared startled by Burton's and Roos's decision to continue
   funding the militia. "You're in favor? They shouldn't get another
   nickel!" she exclaimed, and voted no.

      The committee's vote was 3-1--Assemblyman Bill Jones (R-Fresno) also
   voted for continued funding, noting that his father had been an air-raid
   warden during World War II. "If needed tomorrow, there should still be
   people who would do likewise," he said.

      In a May 23rd letter, the Friends Committee on Legislation laid out
   its reason for opposing funding for the militia.  "We know from our
   experience with the internment of Japanese American citizens how easy it
   is for the government to suspend constitutional rights in wartime," 
   wrote director Doug Thompson.

      "To charge a domestic military force with the task of gathering
   intelligence on state citizens, to train them in the use of tear gas and
   truncheons and to arm them with automatic weapons is to invite martial
   law. In a democracy, civil dissent is something to be recognized and
   encouraged. The state should not be in the business of preparing to
   crush it."

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