07/16/14 – John Whitehead – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Our next guest is John Whitehead from the Rutherford Institute.
That's at rutherford.org, and continuing along the same topic, the Department of Homeland Security here, and well, first of all, welcome to the show, John.
How are you?
Hey, thank you.
Doing okay.
Oh, good, good.
Happy to have you here.
I appreciate you joining us.
It seems like only now, I guess it sort of started after Katrina, but really, it's only now I think that the American people are really kind of catching their breath after all the September 11th hysteria, to the degree where not just people like you and me, but kind of in general, the American masses are sort of revising what's taken place in the past and they're more anti-war than they've ever been, even in the middle of a few, and well, I think things like the kind of work that you're doing at the Rutherford Institute is falling on listening ears right now.
Now is the time to ask previously seemingly impossible questions like, could we, should we actually just repeal the Department of Homeland Security Authorization Act and abolish the thing?
Is it possible that history can be undone in that way, this severe overreaction?
So really appreciate the work that you're doing here.
I think that people are really paying attention right now and it's really important because of course, if we don't get rid of it now, if we even have a chance now, it can only get worse and worse and worse from here and it's already pretty dang bad.
So I guess, first of all, could you go through, as you've done many times on your website here in your articles, and talk about just what's such a big deal about Homeland Security anyway.
Maybe they are just keeping me safe.
Anyway, the article, they should read the full article, it has the Department of Homeland Security become America's standing army at rutherford.org, rutherford.org, but, and by the way, I footnote everything, so if you want to read further, you can look at some of the footnotes once you go to the website.
But the Department of Homeland Security right now, maybe your first question, can you get rid of it?
No.
It's there to stay, like the NSA is there to stay, FBI, any of the large intelligence groups, CIA, it's going to stay, so get used to it, how to combat it, we can talk about that policy.
I do have a book called A Government of Wolves where I go through a number of ways you can combat the police state, but give you a few facts, the Department of Homeland Security now has 240,000 full-time workers, a $61 billion budget, they rule over the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, Secret Service, TSA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the so-called FEMA group that was, by the way, the Department of Homeland Security was given $385 million to build the so-called FEMA detention centers, we did a research project on that, we couldn't get the government to answer the question if the money had been used and the camps had been built, they would refuse, we called them, we even called Halliburton, no one would answer the question, so I surmise if someone was given $385 million they did build, so there's probably some detention camps around for so-called round-up when needed, but some of the problems that I look at, all the SWAT team raids you're seeing today, militarized SWAT team raids, from all the armored equipment they're having, the guns, the vests, the helmets, that's mainly coming from the Department of Homeland Security which hands it out free, they're also handing out to local police agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, what are called MRAPs, that means Mine Resistance Armored Protection Vehicles, they're used in war zones, there are huge monsters, about 50 foot long, 24 foot high tanks, there are some towns with 20,000 people that have those, for whatever reason, no one seems to know, spying on dissidents, people across the country that are trying to make a difference, Operation Vigilant Eagle is one program that's run out of the Department of Homeland Security where they watch returning veterans, they're very paranoid about veterans, the Department of Homeland Security also in 2009 issued two memos called Right-Wing Extremism and Left-Wing Extremism, I wrote a commentary, you can go to our website ruffin.org and read it, but when I read the list of what was an extremist, I said am I an extremist, anybody that opposes big government basically, whether you're a veteran, veterans by the way are singled out, animal right activists, those kind of people, so anybody that's considered an extremist can be controlled, watched, and filed, and by the way, under the National Defense Authorization Act which allows the military to come to your home, if President Obama or any President's administration thinks you're a terrorist, which also can be an extremist, you can be rounded up and taken into military detention, the Department of Homeland Security is also stockpiled, a lot of ammo, they also specifically contracted and bought 1.6 billion rounds of hollow point bullets about a year ago, and I was a military officer, we weren't allowed to use them, they violate international treaty, they explode on contact, those are some of the things to start with, but license plate readers that police have on their cars now all handed out by the Department of Homeland Security, all that information goes back, by the way, when the police are watching you, with the stingray devices that the Department of Homeland Security is handing out to police, these are small computer-like devices that fit in police cars, they drive by your neighborhood, around the city, and download everything from your text messages, phone calls, goes right into police and back to the Department of Homeland Security, NSA has that information as well, which is a scary scenario, so what the Department of Homeland Security basically, in my opinion, is the face of the police state, and it's not friendly when you see a lot of the things that are happening from the SWAT team raids where people are getting shot, they always shoot dogs, little girls have been killed, there was recently a case in Atlanta where the police went through a home through a flashbang grenade, equipment funded by the Department of Homeland Security, by the way, and burned the child's face off, I think she was a year old, 80,000 SWAT team raids, none of those SWAT team raids basically could be funded, it wasn't for the Department of Homeland Security, and people are getting killed, a lot of them are being done without warrants, the Supreme Court has upheld that, they can go through your door without a warrant if they think you're doing something illegal, Fourth Amendment, by the way, says that they're not supposed to do that, they ignore the law, so those are some of them, if you've got some questions, but, if you read the list, it's pretty scary, it's a very scary list, it's, well look, how about this, how about in the larger sense, what you've just done by going down this list, is you've just described, you know, post-constitutional lawless government, the face of the police state, indeed, what's funny about it is, it's all there, but most of it seems like it's being held in reserve, John, you keep kind of alluding to, boy, they sure got a lot of MRAPs, and apparently spent some money on some camps, and seems like bought a lot of bullets, what are they preparing for, NDAA, could it all just be that it's just bureaucracy growing and growing under any circumstance, or do you think that this really means that there's a gigantic boot waiting to still drop here, another shooted drop?
I've studied, well, I wrote a book on the government of wolves, I studied Nazi and Soviet history, I got a new book I'm working on now, and I'm a little more into former regimes, former regimes operated off that bureaucratic principle, once they set something in motion, what the bureaucracy, how they view us is the key, they view us basically as consumers and data bits, however, once you put a man in a black outfit, with an assault rifle, a flak jacket, Cal-Bar helmet, he'll rise in an assault vehicle like an MRAP, and you can go on our website and take, there's some pictures of those things, and he'll come into your door, you're no longer the American citizen, you're an enemy combatant, I've actually talked to people who work in police academies, and they say most of your young policemen are being trained to view people that way, so the whole idea of that, I mean, when I was a kid, my next door neighbor was the chief of police, he didn't carry a gun most of the time, he was a nice guy, everybody liked him, he arrested people, sure, but brown pants, brown shirt, sometimes not even a hat, and I grew up in a town that had 50, 60,000 people, it was a fairly large town, Bartonville, Illinois, but that's all changed now, the way he looked at me, and again, I got in trouble a couple times, he took me home to my parents, he looked at me as someone who needed correction, here, take care of, today, people are going face down, they're getting shot on the driveways because they have a cane, an old man gets shot in his driveway because he's walking down the driveway and he has a cane, the police think he has a rifle, and they just jump out and shoot him, and he's just...
The change has come, that's what you're saying, the change is already here, now, I'm sorry, we've got to take this break, but when we get back, we're going to talk more about the Department of Homeland Security and what it's doing to our society, it's John Whitehead from Rutherford.org, the article is, has the Department of Homeland Security become America's standing army?
Of course, the answer is yes.
Hang tight.
Alright, I'm Scott Horton, this is my show, Scott Horton Show, I'm talking with John Whitehead from the Rutherford Institute, author of A Government of Wolves, and a couple of things that you mentioned there in the earlier segment was, well, a couple of times you mentioned about the MRAPs, these mine-resistant vehicles that were built for war in Iraq and Afghanistan, well, really more for Iraq than Afghanistan, and then also you mentioned about the paranoia about vets and the left and the right, and these are the things that I especially want to go back over here, but first of all, I wanted to combine the first two there by mentioning, and I'm sure you've seen this probably, John, it's Sergeant Dan Downing at Fox59.com, he's a Morgan County Sheriff's Department from Indiana, and it's a neat little rhetorical trick that he does here, the quote, and he's justifying the MRAP, and he's saying, the weaponry is totally different now than it was in the beginning of my career, plus you have a lot of people who are coming out of the military that have the ability and knowledge to build IEDs and to defeat law enforcement techniques, and so what he's doing there immediately is he's conflating all the Army and Marine Corps veterans coming home from the war with these Sunni-based insurgencies that they've been fighting against, as though it's the U.S. Army veterans who are the experts in the homemade landmines on the side of the road, and he's just, right away, just conflated the returning Army so-called heroes with the jihadi enemy, in order to justify his big, big truck.
That's propaganda pushed by the Department of Homeland Security, yes.
Oh, so you're saying even DHS is telling these sheriffs that, hey, these soldiers really are dangerous.
They're putting out the affirmation now that it's called Operation Vigilant Eagle.
We have cases where vets have been arrested and pulled from their homes for Facebook posts by the Department of Homeland Security, which is the ringleader of these raids, FBI, Secret Service, and local police.
Oh, they're all just a bunch of Tim McVeighs, ready to get us at any moment.
Yep.
Anybody returning.
I mean, I work, again, I work with a lot of people returning from overseas, some of them law students, good men.
They don't like the way the direction's going, but none of them are violent, and most of them don't, they can't own weapons, by the way.
They're told, by the way, they're automatically, most of them are PSTD before the, automatically they have a 15-minute exam, so there is a paranoia about veterans, but there's a paranoia about average Americans, generally.
Let me give you an example.
The Department of Defense, working with the Department of Homeland Security, is doing research, $70 million research programs with universities now on how to stop civil unrest and protesters, how to stop them from getting going, and what's that all about?
I've read it intensively, I'm writing about it, it'll come out probably next week or the week after, but on our website, Rutherford.org, but it's the average American getting organized and getting out there and possibly non-violently pushing against the system.
That's what they're concerned about.
They're doing massive research projects.
We're getting cases where a group of 30 protesters are doing, and this is dangerous if you're a protester, text messages, Twitters, Facebook posts, let's get together, let's fight the government.
FBI is reading that, well, the NSA alerts the FBI.
They arrive at people's doors and they seek an interview.
They sit in their home and talk to them, trying to stop it.
What we used to know as really fruitful, guaranteed under the First Amendment, the right to petition your government for redress of grievances, assemble, they don't want that.
They're actually doing $70 million, they're spending our money on how to stop us from picketing.
Martin Luther King would have never got off the ground today if he'd have used electronic media.
You talk about these reports about left and right-wing extremists, and I'm familiar with the one that came out about the right-wingers that they kind of had to retract back a few years ago.
I don't think I've seen the one on the left-wing extremists, but correct me if I'm wrong, tell me if you think that this is basically the correct characterization, is that it's basically anyone who has politics but is part of an out group.
Not even necessarily poor people, but people who just aren't necessarily playing their local Democratic or Republican Party game.
They're trying to do some other form of politics outside of the accepted system, only what's accepted is getting narrower and narrower.
So now, where Hoover went after commies and the KKK, now anybody who's on the outside of the Republican or Democrat parties might as well be the commies and the KKK.
Yeah, what's happening is we're repeating the McCarthy era in a very subversive way.
My wife is supposedly a communist, or had communist ties, was rounded up and all those things.
In fact, one of my best friends, Nat Hedhoff, a great writer for the Philly's Voice, he's a really old fellow now, but he told me, he says, John, it's going to be worse in the McCarthy era.
He lived through it.
He's writing about all this stuff now.
He says, I can't believe we're redoing all this stuff.
We're watching protesters.
We're studying their, the NSA is downloading 227 million text messages a day.
They admit that.
They're collating those things.
So if you're a protester and you're emailing somebody or texting them and saying, let's get together at five to talk about protesting, what's the city government's doing?
Well, the police are going to be alerted.
There are no local police anymore.
If you think that, I'm just telling people that you're way behind the times because who's handing out the equipment to the police and why are they handing it out?
The Department of Homeland Security?
Listen, MRAP cost the American taxpayer $150,000.
Police stations get them for $2,000.
We're paying $140,000 on the side for them to have a monster in your neighborhood.
And for what?
Police shootings, by the way, police deaths are at a 50 year low.
Police getting shot or killed.
So why all the paranoia?
It is paranoia.
Yeah.
Well, it's just self-justification.
Basically, like you said before, when you're dressed up in this uniform, kicking in a door, you believe in the scene that you're acting in because you have to.
And because the costume really helps you feel that way, you know, as I show my book, A Goblet of Wolves, once people put on, I just, there are a lot of studies on this.
Once you put on those black outfits and here, this is a scary thing.
A lot of the SWAT teams are wearing black masks now.
You don't know who it is.
All you can see is their eyes.
They're coming through doors.
They look just like those pictures of Nazis back in 1940s.
In fact, I had some students do a study, I said, where did the black uniform come from?
I didn't install that until recently.
Group of sharp kids came back to the detailed study and they brought in pictures and put them on my desk.
I said, you'll probably be surprised.
I looked down and it was, there stood a line of Nazis with black uniforms on and black ball caps.
And I went, oh my God.
Well, it's just like you said earlier about your police chief neighbor wore a brown blouse and slacks basically.
The APD, the Austin police, they always wore blue slacks and a blue blouse.
And now they wear the black combat fatigues that they would be wearing under their SWAT armor, even if they're just driving around on regular patrol, they have their under military fatigues on, you know, so it's still, and it's that mindset too.
And you can tell in their demeanor that it makes that much of a difference.
It really does.
Oh yeah.
I talked to older policemen that say they can't, the way police approach citizens these days, they said, we were trained not to do that.
Very authoritative.
Remember in America, we are the masters, they're the service.
Even the president works for us.
But do you think they believe that these days?
No, sir.
Not at all.
The way they look at us is, I mean, I talked to older policemen working in and out of the academies.
They say it's getting frightening.
But it's coming out of the federal government.
They want a strong national standing army.
Yeah, exactly.
What a perfect place to leave it.
That's John Whitehead at Rutherford.org.
Thanks so much for your time.
Appreciate it.
Thank you, sir.
The Government of Wolves, A Government of Wolves is the book, y'all.
We'll be right back.
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