Blackshirts, Brownshirts, Blackwater, Infragard

Matthew Rothschild writes in The Progressive magazine:

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law

So what is Infragard?

InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.

“Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty-six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.

So, can just anyone join this organization?

To join, each person must be sponsored by “an existing InfraGard member, chapter, or partner organization.” The FBI then vets the applicant. On the application form, prospective members are asked which aspect of the critical infrastructure their organization deals with. These include: agriculture, banking and finance, the chemical industry, defense, energy, food, information and telecommunications, law enforcement, public health, and transportation.

And what, exactly, do these captains of industry do as members of Infragard?

FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. At that time, the group had less than half as many members as it does today. “To date, there are more than 11,000 members of InfraGard,” he said. “From our perspective that amounts to 11,000 contacts . . . and 11,000 partners in our mission to protect America.” He added a little later, “Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.”

He urged InfraGard members to contact the FBI if they “note suspicious activity or an unusual event.” And he said they could sic the FBI on “disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against their employers.”

And here’s the topper:

“Then they said when—not if—martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted,” he says.

So we have Blackwater ready to petrol our streets and now we have this – jeez I don’t know what to call it – secret organization of “private sector” operatives with some kind of deadly pseudo-law enforcement powers granted by the FBI. It sure sounds familiar. Remember these other secret, quasi government organizations?

This is pretty shocking, but not surprising to me. I have been concerned about this type of thing for a long time.

These scoundrels have been consolidating power and undermining American democracy ever since they were installed by the Supreme Court after the 2000 election and it has seemed to me ever since that they have been getting all their ducks in a row for what I have feared since that fall of 2000, a bloodless coup, imposition of martial law, dictatorship, the end of democracy in America.

Just another duck in the row.