Obamanation Readies FEMA Detention Camps

From Jihad Watch

Continuing his assigned role as corporate media siren of the apocalypse, Glenn Beck interrupted a discussion on Russia and Iran last night on Fox & Friends to mention a heretofore no-no for national television — FEMA camps. At two minutes into the video below, Beck declares he attempted to “debunk these FEMAS camps” because he is “tired of hearing about them,” but was unable to do so. “We now for several days have done research on them… I can’t debunk them.” Beck follows this with a declaration that the United States may be headed for totalitarianism.

The existence of FEMA detention camps is a well-documented fact. In January 2006, Haliburton subsidiary KBR announced that it had been awarded a $385 million contract to construct the camps for the Department of Homeland Security. In a press release issued on January 24, 2006, KBR said the “contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing 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 possibility of an influx of illegal aliens, however, is a cover for the real purpose of the camps — to detain American citizens after a declaration of martial law. In 1984, the government created REX-84, an emergency response program involving the implementation of martial law and the arrest and detainment of certain segments of the population. REX-84 was mentioned during the Iran-Contra hearings and publicly exposed by the Miami Herald on Sunday July 5th, 1987. REX-84 dovetailed with Operation Garden Plot, a United States Army and National Guard program under control of the U.S. Northern Command to provide Federal military support during domestic civil disturbances (see US FEMA Camps, Global Research, January 10, 2008).

On May 9, 2007 George Bush reasserted the role of the government during a declared emergency by issuing Executive Order NSPD 51/ HSPD-20, stating that in the event of a “catastrophic emergency” all “national essential functions” may be taken over by the Executive branch of government and the Department of Homeland Security, including FEMA.

In October of 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, legislation allowing the government to detain citizens deemed “enemy combatants” and hold them indefinitely without charge and independently of the judiciary. The act was upheld by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2003.

“Citizens who are concerned about the purpose and potential use of the detainment camps have documented and, when possible, filmed the detainment facilities,” writes the Geopolitical Monitor. “A current estimate of the number of detainment camps is over 800 located in all regions of the United States with varying maximum capacities. If one includes government buildings currently used for other purposes the number is far greater. Video of renovated but empty detainment camps has also been released” (see Friends of Liberty FEMA Concentration Camps: Locations and Executive Orders).

On September 11, 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I wrote for Global Research:

It appears Hurricane Katrina has provided FEMA with an excuse to “dry run” its unconstitutional powers in New Orleans, rounding up “refugees” (now called “evacuees”) and “relocating” them in various camps. “Some evacuees are being treated as ‘internees’ by FEMA,” writes former NSC employee Wayne Madsen. “Reports continue to come into WMR that evacuees from New Orleans and Acadiana [the traditional twenty-two parish Cajun homeland] who have been scattered across the United States are being treated as ‘internees’ and not dislocated American citizens from a catastrophe. Some FEMA facilities are preventing these internees from leaving on their own. Reports of mandatory registration and the issuing of FEMA ID cards suggest that FEMA, an agency that is rife with right-wing security goons and severely lacking in humanitarian workers, has other motives in treating poor and destitute American citizens as prisoners in their own country.” Call it REX-84 revisited.

For those who may have difficulty believing the government would actually suspend the Constitution, impose martial law, and round-up citizens, consider Bush era memos issued by the Justice Department. “The Justice Department secretly authorized President George Bush to use the military inside the United States to snoop on, raid and even kill citizens in order to fight terrorism without regard to the Fourth or Fifth Amendment, according to a Oct 23, 2001 memo released by the Obama Administration Monday,” reports Ryan Singel for Wired News. The memo was written in part by John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general best known for penning a memo authorizing government agents to torture suspected terrorists, including crushing the genitals of children in order to get suspected terrorists to confess.

“Military action might encompass making arrests, seizing documents or other property, searching persons or places or keeping them under surveillance, intercepting electronic or wireless communications, setting up roadblocks, interviewing witnesses and searching for suspects,” wrote Yoo and Justice special counsel Robert Delahunty.

It may have also encompassed rounding up American citizens and sending them to KBR constructed concentration camps in approximately 800 locations scattered around the country, the existence of which Glenn Beck and his researchers are unable to debunk.

Finally, we should ask why Glenn Beck is now mentioning the existence of FEMA detention camps, a subject previously considered in the realm of delusional conspiracy theories by the corporate media.

Is it possible Glenn Beck’s handlers are sending us a message?