Santa Luisa is burning. The power stations have been bombed. The
local armories are in flames and the ammunition stocks have been
destroyed. The riots began a day ago, after a policeman shot an
antiwar demonstrator, and now thousands of people are milling in
the streets, blocking off traffic, breaking plate glass windows,
ambushing police cars. Sirens scream in the night as revolving red
beacons spasmodically illuminate the glass-strewn streets. It looks
like war in Santa Luisa, and the small college town is not unique:
Riots are pulsating up and down California, spreading through
several of the large Eastern and Midwestern states. Years of
antiwar rhetoric reverberate in an ominous new note. The war has
come home.
For it is a war: There is another side. As soon as the demonstrator
is shot, before the first hint of public reaction, police forces
have begun whirring up. They have checked their computerized lists
of local radical troublemakers. They have telephoned to make sure
that National Guard and Military Police forces are standing by.
When the violence ignites they are ready -- detaining local
radicals, mobilizing searchlight-equipped observation helicopters,
coordinating U.S. Army troops with the National Guard, rolling
armored tanks through the city, evacuating civilians. In four days,
they have blitzed through the town, shredded the radical movement,
established a curfew and imposed martial rule. After four days of
war, Santa Luisa is quiet.
Close observers of the antiwar movement will be surprised that they
have never heard of the Santa Luisa riots. But that's not surprising
at all: There never were any riots in Santa Luisa. In fact, there
never was a Santa Luisa. It is just a nightmare -- a fictional
creation of the Pentagon, the Justice Department and local police
departments. It is their imaginative scenario of the revolution they
thought would blossom from the race riots and antiwar protests of
the late Sixties and early Seventies. As fiction, it would be merely
an historical curiosity, except for one thing -- it was the spawning
ground of another nightmare, this one fact, not fiction. The Santa
Luisa scenario is a game plan used by an elaborate and insidious
structure that has developed over the last seven years, an intermeshing
of Army, National Guard and local police forces, led by the most
right-wing public officials and military men, designed to decimate
leftist dissent but capable of crushing anything.
Four years ago Senator Sam Ervin's Subcommittee on Constitutional
Rights revealed that Military Intelligence had established an
intricate surveillance system covering hundreds of thousands of
American citizens. Committee staff members had seen a master plan
-- Garden Plot -- that gave an eagle-eye view of the Army -
National Guard - police strategy. But they weren't eagles, and the
plan was too general to seem alarming. "We could never find any
kind of unifying purpose behind it all," Britt Snider, who was then
the subcommittee's main man on military intelligence, told a
reporter four months ago. "It looked like an aimless kind of
thing." The subcommittee issued a report condemning the Pentagon's
monitoring of the "peaceful activities of non-violent citizens"
whose only offense was "to stand on their hind legs and exercise
the rights they thought the Constitution guaranteed." The subcommittee
had seen the tail of the monster and they proclaimed it monstrous.
The subcommittee's problem was that although they had a copy of
the Garden Plot master plan, they lacked any of the more detailed
subplans. An investigation sponsored by New Times has now uncovered
one of those subplans -- code name Cable Splicer, covering
California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona, under the command of
the Sixth Army. It is a plan that outlines extraordinary military
procedures to stamp out unrest in this country. Developed in a
series of California meetings from 1968 to 1972, Cable Splicer is a
war plan that has adapted for domestic use procedures used by the
U.S. Army in Vietnam. Although many facts still remain hazy behind
Pentagon smoke screens, Cable Splicer, laid out in six loose-leaf
binders holding several thousand pages of documents, reveals the
shape of the monster that the Ervin committee was tracking down.
The story begins a decade ago. In 1965 Watts exploded in riots and,
across the Pacific, Marines landed in South Vietnam. It was the
opening of a long season of racial unrest and political turmoil.
Four major ghettos suffered riots that year, leaving 36 dead and
more than a thousand injured. The next year was checkered with 21
major riots and civil disorders fueled by racial issues, economic
grievances and the Vietnam war. Seven times the National Guard was
called in to restore order. In 1967 there were 83 incidents, 25 of
which required the Guard. A third of the 83 were marked by sniping,
over half of the 83 by looting.
The turning point was Detroit. The Detroit riots of 1967 were the
most destructive civil disturbances of the decade. Forty-three
died, several hundred were wounded and over 5,000 were left
homeless. President Johnson sent trouble-shooter Cyrus Vance --
later the American representative to the Paris Peace Talks -- as
his personal observer to Detroit. After the riot, Johnson appointed
a National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, headed by
Illinois Governor Otto Kerner. A week later, Harold K. Johnson,
Chief of Staff of the Army, set up another task force to study
"every aspect of the Army's role in civil disturbances." The Army
task force assisted the Kerner Commission. It also issued its own
report in early 1968. Acting on the report's recommendations, the
Pentagon took a five-pronged approach to solving the civil
disturbance problem:
-
Following and expanding the suggestion of Cyrus Vance,
Military Intelligence -- working with the FBI, local county
and state police forces -- undertook and directed a massive
domestic intelligence-gathering operation.
- To train senior military, National Guard and police officers,
the Senior Officers Civil Disturbance Course (SEADOC) was
instituted at the Military Police Academy in Georgia.
- Contingency plans, called "planning packets," were prepared
for every city in the country that had a potential for student,
minority or labor unrest.
- Security forces ranging from Army troops to local police were
trained to implement their contingency plans.
- The Army task force that had designed this program took on a
new name, the Directorate of Civil Disturbance Planning and
Operations, and became a national coordinating center for these
different efforts.
The Army task force's transformation into the Directorate occurred
during the massive rioting that broke out in black ghettos of 19
cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968.
The Directorate's headquarters was in the Pentagon's basement,
known as "the domestic war room." Surrounded by acetate map
overlays, a fulltime staff of 180, including around-the-clock
"watch teams," used teletype machines, telephones and radios to
keep in constant communication with every state National Guard
headquarters and all major military installations in the
continental United States. Seven Army infantry brigades totaling
21,000 troops were available for riot duty. And a huge, sophisticated
computer center kept track of all public outbursts of political
dissent, thereby furnishing the first of the Army task force's
prescribed remedies: intelligence.
Senator Ervin's Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights discovered
the computer in 1971, a full year after beginning its admirable
investigation of the massive domestic operations of Military
Intelligence. "At no time," its staff report states, "during the
first year of the Subcommittee's investigation did either the
The conservative congressman thumbed through the Cable Splicer
documents: "Well, I'll be damned! This is what I call subversive."
Army or the Department of Defense admit that a computer on civilian
political activity existed within the Pentagon's domestic war room."
The subcommittee discovered computerized files on 18,000 of the
celebrated and the obscure, on people such as Senator George
McGovern and former Massachusetts Gov. Francis Sargent down to
ordinary citizens who had, sometimes unknowingly, become "associated
with known militant groups."
How does the Pentagon define "militant groups"? Documents from
their war games sessions provide some idea. At the Cable Splicer III
After Action Conference, held in California in May 1970, Los Angeles
Police Department Captain Don Miller observed that militant groups
are easy to identify since they "are normally organized according to
political beliefs and/or ethnic backgrounds." Generalizations are
accurate, noted Lynn "Buck" Compton, the Los Angeles prosecutor of
Sirhan Sirhan, because there's "really very little difference
between the Sirhans, the [Jerry] Rubins, the [Bobby] Seales, the
[Abbie] Hoffmans, and the people of that stripe in that all resort
to physical violence to achieve political goals." In a "revolutionary
criminology" lecture listing activities that "require police
action," Los Angeles Police Department Inspector John A. McAllister
mentioned "loud, boisterous or obscene" behavior on beaches,
"love-in type gatherings in parks where in large numbers they freak
out," disruptions of "legitimate activities by gangs of noisy
and sometimes violent dissidents," peace marches, rock festivals
(where "violence is commonplace and sex is unrestrained") and
"campus disruptions -- which in fact are nothing more than
mini-revolutions." The guests at the Cable Splicer conference
listened and learned.
Cable Splicer I was conducted in California in May 1968, barely a
month after the Army task group became the Directorate. Held at the
California National Guard's training academy at the San Luis Obispo
Camp, the conference was attended by 307 law enforcement and
military officials from all over the state. It was designed as a
workshop seminar on civil disturbance control and as a prelude to
Cable Splicer II.
Cable Splicer II was a bigger affair. It began on February 10,
1969, with the Governor's Orientation Conference, the kickoff for a
series of joint military-police training sessions across the state
of California. Before an audience of 500 -- including generals from
the Pentagon, the Sixth Army and the National Guard, dozens of
lesser officers, police chiefs and sheriffs from as far east as
Washington, D.C., California state legislators, a dozen Military
Intelligence officers and executives from telephone, utility and
defense-contract companies -- Governor Ronald Reagan took the
microphone. It was a week after he had promised to keep California's
universities open at the point of a bayonet, if necessary. "You
know," he began, "there are people in the state who, if they could
see this gathering right now and my presence here, would decide that
their worst fears and convictions had been realized -- I was
planning a military takeover."
The Cable Splicer II war games, which were played a month later,
would only have reinforced those fears and convictions. The games
were organized around 23 existing political jurisdictions, usually
at the city, county or regional level, across California. On the
scheduled morning, the controllers, players, monitors and observers
gathered in the emergency operations center," usually the radio
room of the county sheriff or of the largest participating police
department. In some cases, a National Guard armory was used. Among
the participants were senior National Guard officers and their Army
advisers, senior police and sheriff's officers and telephone and
utility company executives. The soldiers always wore civilian
clothing and took all precautions to disguise the military's
cooperation with the police.
By the time the participants gathered in the emergency operations
center, anywhere from six weeks to six months of preparation had
already been invested in the game. Initial orders had been
transmitted from the Army command to the state National Guard
headquarters, where, with the help of Army advisers, the scenarios
were drafted. On every level, in every way, military men worked
closely with police officers. In California the Guard prepared two
special intelligence documents, titled "Special Intelligence
Summary" and "Organizations and Personalities." Although their
content is unknown, apparently they supply intelligence data on
California citizens and political organizations. Asked if that were
true, Lt. Col. Frank Salcedo, public information officer for the
California Guard and a Cable Splicer planner since 1969, answered
rhetorically: "Well, how else could you do it?" Copies of both
documents were sent to Cable Splicer planners to help them create
realistic skirmishes. On their end, local policemen prepared their
own special intelligence summaries featuring the "best described
dissident activity" for their community, targeting either racial,
student or labor unrest. Finally, over 1,200 preplanned intelligence
reports on supposedly imaginary events, people and organizations,
carefully pasted to IBM cards, were provided to help generate the
make-believe war.
With everything ready, it's time to begin. The clock reads 0800
hours. The players listen to a special intelligence summary,
learning the background of the civil disturbance that has led up to
the current "emergency." At that point, the "controllers" --
usually the senior National Guard officers and their Army advisers
-- begin play, feeding the IBM-card preplanned intelligence reports
of dissident activity to the players. Seated at rows of desks
dotted with telephones, facing a "situation map" of their community,
the players respond to the unfolding scenario. They are the thin
blue line standing between order and anarchy.
The situation escalates. In Phase I of the scenario possessed by
New Times, an arrest and shooting provoke crowd unrest and threats
against public officials. Fourteen hours later (not real time:
he riot unfolds like a time-phased movie of a chicken hatching)
a major incident" occurs -- a police car is ambushed and an officer
is wounded, a minority group member is killed and two others are
injured. This is followed by "minority group charges [that] police
planned [the] shooting incident" and "threats of retaliation."
A day passes. Intelligence reports indicate "probable widespread
activity momentarily." Apparently the reports are accurate, for
Phase I ends with the arrival of a "chartered flight" carrying
"70 persons" -- apparently radicals -- who are picked up at the
airport by friends in 20 separate automobiles.
Phase II begins two hours later with the ambush of several police
cars, the attempted assassination of the mayor, the bombing of
local armories, the destruction of vehicles and ammunition stocks
and the gathering of thousands of people in the streets. County and
state police and police from other cities are called in. Previous
intelligence reports have proved prophetic, but within the next few
hours "two distinct and conflicting intelligence reports develop."
The players decide that the first, which indicates "widespread
support for general insurrection, is unreliable and invalid." They
rely on the second one, which identifies "limited but violent
activity planned and executed by a relatively few individuals with
virtually no popular support. There are soon reports of "scattered
incidents of guerrilla activity."
As Phase III opens, intelligence reports pouring into the Emergency
Operations Center disclose more fire-bombings, attempted
assassinations of public officials, hoarding of water in certain
areas and sniping at fire trucks. The streets remain filled with
thousands of people, and the National Guard is called to active
duty. Intelligence notes that the "crowds [are] not violent yet and
should be dispersed before becoming sympathetic to guerrillas." But
the police and National Guard aren't quick enough. Reports soon
come in of window-mashing and looting. The crowds are now violent,
and as Phase III ends the Guard is unable to deal with the riots.
What happens next is unclear. The scenario possessed by New Times
says only, "It is now 96 hours later," followed by these cryptic
entries: "Situation well under control. No major incidents last 24
hours. Intelligence: remaining loose militants cannot get support
for further violence."
How has order been restored? We can only guess. It is known that
during this period the U.S Army is called in to bail out the
National Guard. At their disposal, according to the game plan,
there are heavy artillery, armor, chemical and psychological
warfare teams and tactical air support. "Complete coverage day and
night" is offered by observation helicopters coordinated with
ground patrols. To impress the populace, armored vehicles and
"saturation of areas with police and military patrols" are two
recommended tactics, Cable Splicer players are instructed to
"evacuate civilians to preclude their interference with operation
and/or to insure their safety." They are also coached in techniques
of emergency relief supply, temporary shelters "for civilians whose
homes have been destroyed," collection of privately owned weapons
and other techniques useful for the rule of war-torn provinces.
Do the police detain radical leaders, leaving only some "remaining
loose militants"? How do they extract the militants from the
thousands of less committed supporters? At last the Military
Intelligence domestic surveillance program begins to make some
sense. In the winter of 1967-8, as Garden Plot and subplans such as
Cable Splicer were developed, Military Intelligence sent domestic
operatives countrywide to organize political intelligence units,
compiling data eventually stored in the Pentagon domestic war room
computer. Was that information the basis for the "hypothetical" war
games? In the exercise directive's "security guidance" paragraph is
the following order: "Names of real militant or dissident
organizations will not be used. For development of problem play,
fictitious names will be used." Are the directors of this secret
military project worried about slander lawsuits? Or are they simply
notifying local forces not to draw on the police or military
intelligence lists of "real militant or dissident organizations?"
There are other questions surrounding these mysterious 96 hours.
How can such military sweeps be justified legally short of a
declaration of martial law? Cable Splicer scenarios provide for "an
orderly progression from state to federal control." Perhaps it is
not accidental that "martial rule" is the first subject discussed
in a special training course on "Legal Aspects of Managing Civil
Disorders" that is taught at the California National Guard's
training academy. An off-shoot of one of the five prongs in the
Army task force's original report on civil disorder, this course
for senior officers fits with Cable Splicer.
The Senior Officers Civil Disturbance Course (SEADOC) was
established at the Military Police Academy at Fort Gordon, Georgia
(recently transferred to Fort McClellan, Alabama), to train high
military and civil officers. Using identical language, the After
Action reports for both Cable Splicer II and the later Cable
Splicer III call for the creation of another school, offering a
"long range training program" to provide "exchange of law
enforcement officers and military officers" with the goal of
establishing "a nucleus of officers (both law enforcement and
military) at every level of government who were conversant with the
doctrine, tactics, of each other." Their prayer was answered by the
creation in May 1971 of the California Specialized Training
Institute.
The Civil Emergency Management Course Manual at the San Luis Obispo
school is a virtual handbook for the counterrevolution. Examining
the motives behind "revolutionary activity," the manual author
finds the causes legitimate, the frustration often well-justified,
the "revolutionaries" basically sincere. That is exactly why the
threat is so dangerous. The manual and the course describe how
that threat should be met. The methods? Press manipulation,
computerized radical spotting, logistical support from other
agencies, martial rule. Three days of preparation lead up to a
day-long game, Cable Splicer-style, based on a hypothetical riot in
the mythical town of Santa Luisa. After seven hours of war, there
is a critique and another work session. A last day is highlighted
by discussions of "reduced lethality weapons" and student movement
infiltrators.
Between September 1971 and May 1975, 4,063 officials of the
National Guard, the Army, local police forces, fire services, city
government, courts, legislatures, utilities, prisons and private
corporations attended this course in San Luis Obispo. They are the
"nucleus of officers ... at every level of government" called for
in the Cable Splicer II and the Cable Splicer III After Action
reports. They came from nearly every state west of the Mississippi
and some east. Other officials, mostly from the East, take a very
similar course given by SEADOC in Fort Gordon. And the teaching
continues. Last September was the beginning of a new academic year
in San Luis Obispo, the start of the first of 17 one-week Civil
Emergency Management courses.
The San Luis Obispo school teaches soldiers as well as commanders.
The most well-known alumni of this and similar programs are the law
officers who systematically slaughtered the Symbionese Liberation
Army cohorts of Patricia Hearst. That televised massacre occurred
only six months after the November 1973 graduation of the first 40
students at the San Luis Obispo special weapons and tactics (SWAT)
program. SWAT teams are the Green Berets of the ghettos. "If you
know about LURP (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol teams, the
'regular' Army version of the Green Berets]," says Commandant Louis
O. Giuffrida, "then you know what SWAT is, adapted of course to
domestic needs in an urban setting." Like LURP teams, SWAT teams
consist of five men, including a sniper, a shotgun man, an
automatic weapons man, a scout and a team leader. One California
police official, begging anonymity, called them "the outlaws of the
police." They are urban guerrillas. At San Luis Obispo, the name
SWAT, with its unpleasant connotations, has been replaced by the
more antiseptic SERT (Special Emergency Reaction Teams). SERT
officers are the triggermen, the enforcers, for their higher-level
colleagues who study at the same academy. They are taught not only
how to act on the streets but how to defend their actions in a
courtroom. For instance, SERT trainees are read two examples of
testimony by a police officer who has choked a prisoner. The first
explanation makes the act defensible, the other leaves the officer
culpable.
It is not publicly known how many SWAT men have been trained since
the various Garden Plot subplans created a pressing need for them.
Over 1,400, including campus and utility company security police,
have been instructed at the San Luis Obispo academy since November
1973. Another 15 or more classes of at least 50 students each are
scheduled for the current academic year. In addition, the FBI has
coached officers from at least 450 police departments across the
country. In Los Angeles County alone, criminal justice authorities
plan to train 10,000 police in a variation of SWAT (Disturbance and
Riot Training) by 1977.
The Pentagon and California State officials all deny any connection
between SEADOC in Fort Gordon, Georgia, and the San Luis Obispo
academy. The facts contradict them. At the Cable Splicer III After
Action conference, talking not to the hostile press but to a
sympathetic audience, Col. Anthony L. Palumbo promised that the
forthcoming California academy at San Luis Obispo would "duplicate"
Fort Gordon's SEADOC facility. That was in late spring 1970. A year
later, the staff of the California Specialized Training Institute
at San Luis Obispo had assembled under Commandant Louis O.
Giuffrida, a 30-year Army veteran who retired as a full colonel in
the Military Police Academy at Fort Gordon to take his new job.
Robert L. Wyngard, a SEADOC instructor, accompanied Giuffrida to
San Luis Obispo as the director of instruction. No wonder the
courses at the two academies are so similar. Another explanation
for the similarity is their shared source of funding: The Law
Enforcement Assistance Administration bankrolled SEADOC's expansion
in May 1971 and planted a $425,000 seed in San Luis Obispo.
Thumbing through the pages of Cable Splicer last summer,
Congressman Clair Burgener (R-Calif.) shakes his head in disbelief.
Burgener is a staunch conservative who attended Governor Reagan's
Cable Splicer II kickoff conference over six years earlier. He has
never heard of Cable Splicer. "I've read Seven Days in May and all
those scare books, and...." He hesitates, searching for words.
"And they're scary!" He never knew that the brief public
relations luncheon he barely remembers was connected to a series of
military-police war games. "If this was going on in this spirit,"
he says, "they were certainly pulling the wool over the eyes of the
invited guests." He reads for half an hour and then leans back in
his chair. "Well, I'll be damned!" he exclaims. "This is what I
call subversive."
In the office of the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights,
chaired by Senator John Tunney since Ervin's retirement last year,
chief counsel Doug Lee devotes over four hours to the three big
loose-leaf binders. First he chuckles occasionally, and then his
chuckles turn to giggles of amazement. "Incredible," he mutters
again and again. "Unbelievable." Giggle. "These guys are crazy!"
Giggle. "We're the enemy! This is civil war they're talking about
here. Half the country has been designated as the enemy." And in
another Senate office, Britt Snider, who worked for Ervin on
Military Intelligence and is now with Senator Frank Church's Select
Committee on Intelligence, thumbs through the papers and observes,
"If there ever was a model for a takeover, this is it."
It is hardly remarkable that government officials developed methods
of dealing with the disorders that rocked the nation for almost a
decade. What is shocking is the secrecy of the program, the
deliberate and continuing cover-up, the disregard of the careful
restraints on the military that are fundamental to democratic
society, and the rabidly reactionary quality of the organization's
leader. "We are in a revolution," California Chief Deputy Attorney
General Charles O'Brien told his Cable Splicer III audience in May
1970. "Here in this room today," chipped in prosecutor Buck
Compton, "we have at least a nucleus of people who should be able
to, in some measure, contribute to the counter-revolution." In his
opening address, Glenn C. Ames, Commanding General of the
California National Guard, told the throng, "The avowed mission of
these anarchists and revolutionaries is to bring America to its
knees, to destroy our present system of government, to defeat 'the
establishment' at every turn, and to replace this with absolutely
nothing but irresponsibility, a drug culture, and permissiveness."
The "one thing" everyone in the room had in common, declared John
A. McAllister of the L.A. police, to the crowd of military
officers, policemen, civilian officials and business executives,
"is that we recognize that the nation is involved in a revolution."
Documents for Cable Splicer continue only through the sixth and
apparently final session on December 16, 1972, and Cable Splicer
covers only four Western states. But Brig. Gen. J. L. Jelinek,
senior Army officer in the Pentagon's National Guard Bureau, said
last July that he knows of "no state that didn't have some form of
this [civil disturbance control] exercise within the last year"
under different code names. Although the Army claims to have
de-emphasized the program recently, there is strong evidence that
they have merely decentralized it. Every National Guard
headquarters now has an Emergency Operations Center, says Colonel
Zane Kortum, recently retired deputy director of the Pentagon
Directorate. Each EOC boasts a full-time staff using multiple lines
of communication to the Pentagon's domestic war room, with access
to the computerized intelligence systems. The Army told Senator
Ervin that it destroyed those records, but now, apparently
contradicting Einstein's law of the conservation of matter, these
intelligence files have recently been discovered in the Pentagon's
cavernous underground computer facilities at Mount Weather, W.Va.
The Cable Splicer III conference met just three weeks after
National Guard troops shot and killed students at Kent State and
Jackson State. A year later, other law enforcement officials staged
mass sweeping arrests at the Mayday demonstrations in Washington,
arrests that have recently been declared illegal. How are these and
scores of other police actions related to Garden Plot and subplans
like Cable Splicer? Congressional investigators are looking into
it. Another unanswered question is the extent of White House
involvement.
Bob Brower, a staff assistant to Congressman Ron Dellums, believes
that some acts contemplated under Garden Plot scenarios may be
violations of the law. The program's greatest danger, Brower says.
is that it creates "a mechanism that could easily be used to
abridge civilian, or at least democratic, control of the
government."
The generals and their cohorts talk a great deal about
constitutionality, but their version of the Constitution does not
seem to include the Bill of Rights. At the Cable Splicer II
conference, Chief Deputy Attorney General Charles O'Brien attacks
the First Amendment repeatedly, arguing at one point that if the
Constitution prevents the police from gathering political
intelligence, then the Constitution goes too far. Deputy Attorney
General Buck Compton declares that "free speech, civil rights,
rights to assembly" have all become "cliches." "Dissidents and
revolutionaries," he points out, "go beyond ... honest dissent,
honest and proper use of the right of free speech."
The concept of "dishonest dissent is crucial to Cable Splicer and
Garden Plot. This is a revolution, and anything goes. A civil
disturbance anywhere in this state," says O'Brien, "is an attack on
the state itself." Anyone who attacks the state, even verbally,
becomes a revolutionary and an enemy, by definition. Speakers at
Cable Splicer III condemned university administrators who demur at
giving the police free rein on the campuses; parents of "would-be
revolutionaries" who support their children; and legislators who
investigate police actions. But their real venom is reserved for
the demonstrators. These "guerrillas" are enemies of society,"
"vandals, visigoths, and huns of the twentieth century," "modern
day barbarians," "Brown Shirts," "kooks and "VC." They are the
enemy, and they will be destroyed. The streets may be quiet these
days, but the Pentagon will not be caught napping. In communities
across the country, a new generation of enforcers waits for the
revolution that they have been taught to recognize and trained to
crush.
[ Sidebar: ]
The question of secrecy
Cable Splicer was conducted in secrecy, and even today the Pentagon
cover-up continues.
There was no attempt to hide the war games, according to Col.
Anthony L. Palumbo, deputy controller of Cable Splicers II and
III. But his statement is flatly contradicted by another
participant, Lt. Col. Frank Salcedo. Asked last June if he
regretted any aspect of the exercises, Salcedo said, "Yes, the
secrecy." He confirmed that the entire operation had been conducted
under wraps.
The documents support Salcedo. The official plan forbids all
advance publicity, and warns that if either the war games or the
governor's pep rallies are discovered, the two are not to be
connected. And if that defense line is breached, there's another
line to fall back on: The role of the Sixth Army is to be
concealed. Throughout the sessions, military participants are to
dress in civvies "to prevent adverse publicity or misleading
psychological effects." No cable splicer is to arrive at a local
police department in a military vehicle. Finally, all participating
troops are warned not to talk about their classified orders. As one
former game~player recalled, some papers were "read and eat."
"Strict document and information control" was urged at "all levels,"
particularly in regard to the "realistic problem areas and technical
information contained in the scenario."
So last week Col. Palumbo denied everything. (Palumbo, formerly
chief of Police/Community Relations for the Law Enforcement
Assistance Administration in Washington, returned this month to his
job with the Guard after a six-month tour with the Army's Forces
Command Center as an "action type" whose primary responsibility was
implementing Garden Plot contingency plans.) He denied any
connection between Cable Splicer and Garden Plot, between the
governor's orientation conference and the war games, between the
Army and Cable Splicer -- although he conceded that the Army
donated some money ($95 million of the California National Guard's
$100 million budget last year) and that Cable Splicer was run as a
National Guard training exercise.
The cover-up continues.
Authors' ID from New Times:
Ron Ridenhour, the Tempe, Arizona, correspondent of New Times, spent
several months gathering information for this article. The Fund for
Investigative Journalism supported some of his research. Arthur Lubow
is a free lance writer living in New York.
