Followup: Monday's G20 Police Brutality & Journalist Abuse Press Conference - more PDFs & primary sources for all!

Followup: Monday's G20 Police Brutality & Journalist Abuse Press Conference - more PDFs & primary sources for all!
By Dan Feidt for Twin Cities Indymedia
[[OK to forward or repost as necessary]]
Hey everyone,
I put together some excerpts of various primary source PDFs related to new methods of intelligence-related policing, the RNC, the G20, NORTHCOM and National Security Special Events for the press packet that was distributed at Monday's press conference at the Thomas Merton Center.

We've had a lot of requests for more documents, so I've uploaded a ton of complete primary source documents, mostly from government and academic sources. Many of these were never intended to be made public.

Here is the official press conference announcement:
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/g20-press-release.pdf
Here is Melissa Hill's prepared statement:
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/melissa-statement.pdf

Here's a quick summary of my remarks -- our colleague Flux Rostrum recorded the press conference & my remarks are @ about the 24 minute mark on Part 2: http://fluxview.com/USA/Post-G20-Press-Conference-Pittsburgh

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It's hard to understand the way that joint operations involving federal, state, local and military entities work at National Security Special Events. A number of primary source document excerpts in the press packet shed light on this.

First up is the seating chart from the 2008 Republican National Convention Multi Agency Communications Center (MACC), which shows the variety of corporate and government entities involved. The US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), created as a counterpart to the Department of Homeland Security after 9-11 (and quite unregulated) had five seats in the MACC, more than any other entity. The activities of these entities are hard for defense attorneys and others to get access to; for example, radio communications between the Pennsylvania National Guard and NORTHCOM will be very hard to get, but should be available in a Constitutional republic.

The Posse Comitatus Act says that the military shall not "execute the laws" of the United States, so special exceptions have to be carved out for deputized or active military units. Another agency at the RNC and other NSSEs is the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) which provides geographic intelligence (GEOINT). The NGA has to get a special "Proper Use Memoranda" in order to use military technology against American citizens at each NSSE; otherwise their activities would be illegal and unconstitutional. We have never been able to get the NGA Proper Use Memoranda for the RNC.

This kind of thing makes up the legal framework of NSSEs, where no one is really "in charge" and everyone is basically unaccountable.

Another important G20 feature was the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) which had never been used against demonstrating American citizens before. Who decided to use LRAD? Who decided it was acceptable? Who is trying to adjust the norms of our society to say that LRADs can be used in demonstrations?
[[The Honduran coup is using LRAD to attack the Brazilian embassy right now:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3460/honduran-coup-regime-mocks-un-security-council-embassy-attacks  ]]

That's the kind of transparency and accountability that the NSSE seems designed to obfuscate. These are the kind of overarching things -- there are many layers of details. If people are charged with crimes, they can't defend themselves fairly. All these different types of information are behind organizational firewalls.

In a Constitutional republic the government has to provide exculpatory evidence or information that may help you in court. It seem the whole system is design to put walls between that and the defense attorneys. NSSEs are somewhere on a strange gradient between "law enforcement intelligence" and "national security intelligence," along with very unusual intelligence operations compared to normal policing.

It's hard to find these primary source documents... Also it should be determined if the US Army was running any intelligence functions under Army Regulations 381-10. Officials need to be clear and transparent if the Army was operating under 381-10.

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Here are some nice primary source PDFs, many of which I did not include any excerpts from in the press packet. Some of these were leaked, some via wikileaks.org and cryptome.org .
* "From St. Paul to Pittsburgh: Citizen Media is Not a Crime" by Nigel Parry // RNC08Report.org. A nice overview of NSSEs, journalist abuse at the RNC and beyond.
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/Citizen-Media-is-Not-a-Crime.pdf

* "Special Event Planning: 2008 Republican National Convention" by Terri Smith for the Minnesota Homeland Security and Emergency Management office. This was supposed to be secret but wound up on Wikileaks. It includes the MACC seating chart and the very complex 'information management' PR system at the RNC. There are G20 counterparts for this information that are being kept secret.
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/RNC-SpecialEventPlanning.pdf

* Main Directive for activities of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) - includes some notion of their domestic activities:
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/nga-directive-dodi-5105-60.pdf
* US Government Accountability Office report GAO: "HOMELAND
DEFENSE U.S. Northern Command Has a Strong Exercise Program, but Involvement of Interagency Partners and States Can Be Improved" Including notes on Posse Comitatus constraints and coordination between NORTHCOM and National Guard units, as well as how NORTHCOM is brought into 'emergency management' situations.
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/gao-09-849-northcom.pdf
[[Sidebar: much of the NSSE is more like a "live exercise" than a truly "necessary" security operation; it lets entities 'practice' domestic security operations that would otherwise be impossible or forbidden by law.]]
* "Law Enforcement Intelligence: A guide for State, Local and Tribal Law Enforcement" by David Carter, via the Community Oriented Policing Services Program at the US DOJ. Includes the "law enforcement" vs. "national security" intelligence gradient on page 18 (and many other fun diagrams.)
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/le-spy-guide.pdf
* "US Army Regulation 381-10 Military Intelligence" All the Army regulations for intelligence gathering, including a ton of detail on what is acceptable domestically (including the conditions under which MI agents can join orgs, etc.) Were the PA National Guard using any parts of 381-10?
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/army-intel-381-10.pdf
* "Concept of Operations for Police Intelligence Operations (PIO)" produced by contractor ANSER for the US Army Military Police School. John Towery, an operative for SAIC who infiltrated activist groups in Tacoma, contributed to this report & on PDF page 32 (marked as p.24) there is a "vignette" about how he and others deployed military intelligence against Tacoma demonstrators into a legally dubious "fusion cell", also praised for things like NSSEs in particular. See also PDF pages 39-42 for good specifics on legal restraints on domestic military activity.
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/us-army-conops-police-2009.pdf

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More background documents not included in the press packet:
GW Schulz with the Center for Investigative Reporting got a number of internal intelligence documents from Minnesota law enforcement entities including the Minnesota Joint Analysis Center (MnJAC).
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/12scan0012.pdf
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/14scan0014.pdf
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/rnc-01scan0001.pdf
More RNC docs are on this sidebar:
http://www.minnpost.com/stories/2009/09/01/11198/assessing_rnc_police_tactics_missteps_poor_judgments_and_inappropriate_detentions
* "Seattle Police Department After Action Report" Here is the post-WTO protest report from the Seattle police:
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/15seattle.pdf
* ACLU: "What's wrong with fusion centers?" The ACLU has done a lot of work on the policies (and the absent regulations and safeguards) around fusion centers. At NSSEs the joint command center (or MACC) is effectively a temporary fusion center, but with a more hazy command structure (i.e. no one is actually directly responsible for anything that happens there). The update followed several months later.
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/aclu-fusioncenters.pdf
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/aclu-fusioncenters_update.pdf
* FBI "Counterterrorism Analytical Lexicon" & DHS "Domestic Extremism Lexicon". The FBI and DOJ have attracted a lot of criticism for the very analytical framework they used to determine how some political ideas and movements are 'extremist' and therefore due for heightened scrutiny and collection of defamatory information. It also describes anyone who 'disseminates' 'extremist' information as dangerous. (Using political ideas as a substitute for true 'probable cause' as a premise for scrutiny)
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/fbi-ct-lexicon.pdf
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/lexicon.pdf
* Department of Homeland Security "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." This really upset a ton of people as it was the first anti-right document from the Feds exposed after Obama's inauguration:
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/hsa-rightwing-extremism-09-04-07.pdf
* "The ‘view from nowhere’? Spatial politics and cultural significance
of high-resolution satellite imagery." The very act of state surveillance is its own power relation - this is a reflection on the political meaning of surveillance. For example, widespread police photography & videotaping of demonstrators has a chilling effect because people are afraid of getting tagged with permanent intelligence files. Via Cryptome.org
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/imint-secrets.pdf
* DOJ "Guide to Information Sharing and Data Interoperability". A pretty technical guide which might be helpful for lawyers trying to pry out the various messages among law enforcement entities.
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/info-data-share.pdf
* Department of Homeland Security "National Incident Management System" 2004 overview guide. A long document that explains how DHS NIMS is to be used in all emergency situations. Some kind of NIMS framework runs between the NGA's military GEOINT data, FEMA, and the other Federal agencies. It's essentially the Feds' event "operating system" so its contents should be available to defense attorneys but so far it seems impossible to get anything from them about it. (i.e. it would have police reports and other intelligence including exculpatory evidence)
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/NIMS-90-web.pdf
* "Plans to Target Transportation Infrastructure Surrounding Republican National Convention" from the defunct "Highway Watch Information Sharing & Analysis Center". This is generally our favorite silly post-RNC security document because it was produced by a corrupt public-private partnership run by the Department of Homeland Security and the American Trucking Associations, a good example of law enforcement data leaching into the private sector, and "guilt by association" of silly hyperlink-based "node analysis" that is really defamatory and paranoid. The footnotes like "FBI IIR 4 201 1401 08" indicate that Highway Watch had access to very privileged law enforcement data.
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/spy-protests-03.pdf
* "WAJAC Outsourcing 2008" Released document dump from Washington Joint Analysis Center: The pattern of illegally combining military intelligence, military contractors and local civilian police reached its apex with the setup they pulled in Tacoma, where SAIC, the local military intelligence unit and the police worked together to penetrate protest movements. If this becomes legalized it means that military intelligence will be professionally focused on crushing domestic dissent. This 1500-page PDF has all the docs from WAJAC, and the resume of Neoma Skye (after p 351) showed how operatives can switch in and out of SAIC and military intelligence in order to manage spying on activists domestically -- a way to skip around Posse Comitatus restraints on domestic military intelligence activity.
http://tc.indymedia.org/files/g20/wajac-outsourcing-2008.pdf

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That should provide plenty of background material for anyone who wants to explore the militarization and increased surveillance of American society in detail. NSSEs represent 'high water marks' of this type of activity, as events more oriented around 'live exercises' of police activity than truly necessary 'security' operations; they're deliberately opaque with hidden lines of responsibility. NSSEs also represent a deliberate effort to "normalize" the introduction of new political repression technologies like the LRAD, and "information operations" strategies designed to manipulate the press.

Please keep digging -- and don't forget: at the G20 and the RNC, there really were black helicopters all over the place! :-)
--Dan Feidt