A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State (14 page)

The goal of VIPR is to have an omnipresent anti-terrorist force deployed at every moderate or high-density site: malls, stadiums, restaurants, grocery stores, and so on. Expanding VIPR to its logical conclusion necessitates a police state. Additionally, VIPR, by expanding intrusive searches beyond the spatially circumscribed confines of airports, regularizes abusive behavior by government officials and inculcates submis-siveness and subservience on the part of the average citizen.

In effect, VIPR paves the way psychologically for the implementation of Orwellian apparatuses of control. Furthermore, by entrenching frequent, intrusive searches in the American mindset as an unquestioned component of everyday life, programs like VIPR actually serve to reduce the level of protection afforded citizens by the Constitution. And once VIPR has accrued a sufficient bureaucracy, it will be virtually impossible to eradicate.

Getting After the "Bad" Guys

For now, under the pretext of protecting the nation's infrastructure (roads, mass transit systems, water and power supplies, telecommunications systems, and so on) against criminal or terrorist attacks, these VIPR teams are being deployed to do random security sweeps of nexuses of transportation, including ports, railway and bus stations,
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airports,
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ferries, and subways.
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VIPR teams are also being deployed to elevate the security presence at certain special events such as political conventions, baseball games, and music concerts.
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Sweep tactics include the use of x-ray technology
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pat downs and drug-sniffing dogs, among other things.
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Unfortunately, these sweeps are not confined to detecting terrorist activity. Federal officials have admitted that transit screening is also intended, at least in some instances, to detect illegal immigration or even cash smuggling.
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Incredibly, in the absence of any viable threat, VIPR teams–roving SWAT teams, with no need for a warrant–conducted over 8,000 such searches in public places in 2011 alone.
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For example, in February 2011, a VIPR team conducted a raid at an Amtrak station in Georgia, not only patting down all passengers–both adults and small children alike-entering the station but also those departing.
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In a characteristic display of incompetence, TSA agents co-opted the station and posted a sign on the door informing patrons that anyone who entered would be subject to mandatory screening
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(this, despite the fact that boarding passengers can easily bypass the station entirely and access the boarding area directly).
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One officer rummaged through a passenger's hand luggage and even smelled her perfume.
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A vacationing firefighter roped into the search commented, "It was just not professional. It was just weird... we are being harassed by the TSA."
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In fact, when Amtrak Police Chief John O'Connor was informed of VIPR's activities, he "hit the ceiling" and banned VIPR personnel from entering Amtrak property
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These raids, conducted at taxpayer expense on average Americans going about their normal, day-to-day business, run the gamut from the ridiculous to the abusive. In Santa Fe, TSA agents were assigned to conduct searches at a high school prom.
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At the port of Brownsville, Texas, VIPR units searched all private and commercial vehicles entering and exiting the port. Although the TSA admitted the search was not conducted in response to any specific threat, VIPR agents nonetheless engaged in "thorough" inspections of each and every vehicle.
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In a training exercise in Atlanta, VIPR teams allegedly arrested a man after discovering a small amount of marijuana in his semi-trailer.
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In San Diego, a VIPR investigation at a trolley station resulted in the deportation of three teenagers apprehended on their way to school.
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In April 2011 Homeland Security official Gary Milano stated that VIPR teams involved in a raid at a Tampa bus station, again conducted in the absence of any threat, were there "to sort of invent the wheel in advance in case we have to, if there ever is specific intelligence requiring us to be here. This way us and our partners are ready to move in at a moment's notice."
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He added, "We'll be back. We won't say when we'll be back. This way the bad guys are on notice we'll be back."
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Likewise, in an intimidating display of force in June 2011, VIPR conducted a vast training exercise–that is, a military raid–covering more than 5,000 square miles' worth of crucial infrastructure sites such as bridges, gas lines, and power plants between Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
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The raid included members of seventy different agencies, over 400 state and federal agents, Black Hawk helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft,
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and Coast Guard vessels.
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Although the surveillance activities constituted an exercise rather than a response to an actual terrorist threat, the sweep was clearly calculated to produce a deterrent effect. According to TSA official Michael Cleveland, the purpose of the exercise was to "have a visible presence and let people know we're out here... It can be a deterrent."
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On September 11, 2012, the Cincinnati Police Department SWAT team conducted a training raid on the University of Cincinnati campus without first warning the student population. Concerned students videotaped the incident and uploaded it to YouTube,
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documenting a dozen or so armed men with masks and shields exiting a black SWAT team vehicle. When a concerned student asked one of the lead officers what they were doing on campus, the officer was evasive, refusing to confirm or deny that any federal agencies were involved. The SWAT vehicle did, however, have the words "Department of Homeland Security" emblazoned on the side.
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Public Enemy Number One?

The question that must be asked, of course, is whom exactly is the TSA trying to target and intimidate? Not would-be terrorists, given that scattershot pat-down stings are unlikely to apprehend or deter terrorists.
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In light of the fact that average citizens are the ones receiving the brunt of the TSA's efforts, it stands to reason that we've become public enemy number one. We are all suspects. And how does the TSA deal with perceived threats? Its motto, posted at the TSA's air marshal training center headquarters in the wake of 9/11, is particularly telling: "Dominate. Intimidate. Control."
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Those three words effectively sum up the manner in which the government now relates to its citizens, making a travesty of every democratic ideal our representatives spout so glibly and reinforcing the specter of the police state. After all, no government that truly respects or values its citizens would subject them to such intrusive, dehumanizing, demoralizing, suspicionless searches. Yet by taking the TSAs airport screenings nationwide with VIPR and inserting the type of abusive authoritarianism already present in airports into countless other sectors of American life, the government is expanding the physical and psychological scope of the police state apparatus.

Security Theater

VIPR activities epitomize exactly the kind of farcical security theater the government has come to favor through its use of coded color alerts and other largely superficial and meaningless maneuvers. These stings do, however, inculcate and condition citizens to a culture of submissiveness towards authority and regularize intrusive, suspicionless searches as a facet of everyday life. In April 2010, for instance, at a Tampa bus station, VIPR patted down passengers and used dogs to search the luggage.
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That type of small-scale, random operation provides little actual value but does impart to some citizens a false sense of security. A passenger in Tampa, for instance, commented, "I feel safe, knowing that I get on a bus and I'm not going to blow up."
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It's an ingenious plan: the incremental ratcheting-up of intrusive searches combined with the gradual rollout of VIPR teams permits the normalization of the TSA's police state tactics while inciting minimal resistance, thereby muting dissent and enabling the ultimate implementation of totalitarian-style authoritarianism.

VIPR Teams (AP Photo/Yuri Gripas)

Sadly, this repeated degradation by government officials of Americans engaged in common activities inevitably normalizes what is essentially an abusive relationship to such an extent that government agents are permitted to trample Americans' constitutional rights with impunity. And those abused are prevented even from protesting. Reinforcing this latter point is the TSAs admission that those who merely exercise their First Amendment rights by
complaining
about intrusive airport security exhibit a behavioral indicator of a "high risk" passenger that, in combination with other behavioral indicators, warrants additional screening.
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There is also a chilling effect to TSA activity. For instance, when a group of peace protesters composed of high school students and Catholic priests and nuns were detained at an airport after showing up on a federal watch list, a sheriff's deputy, according to one member of the group, explained, "You're probably being stopped because you are a peace group and you're protesting against your country."
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TSA and VIPR searches also indoctrinate children to accept pat downs, full-body scans, and other invasive procedures as a regular component of the relationship between government and its citizens. In this way, Orwellian police state tactics will gradually grow in acceptance as simply "the way things are." A child who has been molested by government officials since before he could read is unlikely to question such activities as an unjustified exercise of authority when an adult.

Furthermore, the normalization of intrusive searches arguably reworks the content of the protections provided by the Constitution, particularly the Fourth Amendment. Increasing use of pat downs and other controversial screening procedures changes the definition of what is a "reasonable" search and seizure from a cultural perspective and therefore actually re-engineers the constitutional fabric by altering the definition of what is "reasonable" under the Fourth Amendment.

Black Hawks over America

Obviously the bedrock of the American republic is fracturing. The Constitution is being eviscerated by government leaders and their corporate allies. The system of checks and balances embodied in that document, the mechanism which prevents the United States from sliding into tyranny, is eroding. The walls separating the three branches of government, as well as those separating the government from corporations and the military, have collapsed. With the rise of the national security state, this process has accelerated. Now, thanks to the collusion between domestic police forces and the military, we are being subjected to an onslaught of VIPR and military drills carried out in major American cities, SWAT team raids on unsuspecting homeowners, and Black Hawk Helicopters Take to the Skies Black Hawk Helicopters patrolling American skies.