Time: Wed Sep 03 13:39:21 1997
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Wed, 3 Sep 1997 06:54:48 -0700 (MST)
Date: Wed, 03 Sep 1997 06:54:48 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Training Fascism's Enforcers (fwd)
<snip>
>
> ©1997, WorldNetDaily.com
>
> September 02, 1997
>
> National police force
> in training?
> Inside the center that’s creating
> a federal law enforcement ‘family’
>
> By Joseph Farah
> ©1997, WorldNetDaily.com
>
> The two federal police agents wearing body armor, one
> male and one female, entered the store, Glock 19 9mm
> semi-automatics holstered, to serve a subpoena to the
> owner, a potential witness in a felony case.
>
> It seemed like a routine matter. The owner accepted
> the summons without protest as he was locking up his
> store. A friend of the owner came by to ask him to go
> fishing. But just as everyone was about to leave,
> gunshots rang out across the street as another store
> owner attempted to ward off an armed robber.
>
> As the gunbattle between the shopkeeper and the robber
> spilled out into the street, the federal agents
> subdued the suspect, disarmed the shopkeeper and
> successfully protected the innocent bystanders caught
> in the crossfire. There were high-fives all around.
> Mission accomplished. No one hurt. Bad guy
> apprehended.
>
> An FBI case file? A TV action show script? No. This
> was a training simulation of the kind thousands of
> agents go through every year at the 1,500-acre site of
> the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco,
> Georgia. The cops, in this case, weren’t agents of the
> [Federal Law Enforcement Training Center] FBI,
> Bureau of
> Alcohol,
> Tobacco and Firearms, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals
> Office or any other federal law enforcement agency
> typically associated with street shootouts. Instead,
> they were two of 200 agents of the Environmental
> Protection Agency, charged specifically with
> investigating “environmental crimes,” but trained in a
> state-of-the-art facility and equipped with an arsenal
> capable of deadly force, to deal with virtually any
> other crisis situation that might arise.
>
> The FLETC training center is the hub of an effort to
> train thousands of new federal law enforcement
> officers in dozens of agencies and upgrade their
> firepower with modern, high-capacity, semi-automatic
> weapons. It is also the central networking agency for
> a growing standing army of federal police forces -- an
> army now numbering around 60,000, according to the
> best information publicly available from U.S.
> government sources.
>
> “In the past 10 years, the FLETC has experienced a
> phenomenal growth in the number of students it trains
> and the range of instruction it offers,” explains a
> brochure prepared by the center.
>
> To put the growth of federal police agencies in
> context, FLETC graduated 848 students in 1970. By
> 1976, the number of graduates rose to 5,152. Last
> year, the center graduated 18,849 students. In 1997,
> projections for the graduating class currently stand
> at 25,077. Since 1970, 325,000 students have gone
> through the program.
>
> “As a graphic example of the growth experienced by the
> center, in just two years -- 1989 and 1990 -- more
> students graduated from the center than in its first
> 10 years,” boasts FLETC promotional material.
>
> While the center also trains some local, state and
> even international police agents, it does not train
> the federal government’s largest police force, the
> FBI, which maintains its own training center at
> Quantico, Virginia. FLETC is expecting even more
> growth for the near future -- most of it training
> federal police in at least 70 different agencies, from
> the Border Patrol to National Aeronautics and Space
> Administration to the Small Business Administration.
>
> “Recent administration and congressional initiatives
> and enhanced security concerns in the wake of the
> tragic Oklahoma City bombing incident have resulted in
> an unprecedented demand for training,” an official
> FLETC document reveals. “Participating agencies are
> projecting they will need to train almost 79,000
> students totaling more than 350,000 student weeks of
> training over the next three years. “
>
> The surge in training federal law enforcement agents
> has forced the center to open up two new facilities --
> one permanent site in Artesia, New Mexico, near
> Roswell, and another temporary site at a former naval
> base in Charleston, South Carolina. Civil libertarians
> concerned about the growth of a federal police force
> will derive no comfort from other promotional
> literature produced by the center.
>
> “A dimension of quality, which is also a function of
> consolidated training, is the comingling of students
> from many agencies and the networking and interagency
> cooperation it fosters,” the document reads. “While
> difficult to quantify, the resulting sense of a
> federal law enforcement ‘family’ begins to mitigate
> traditional turf issues which would be heightened in a
> separated training environment.”
>
> FLETC operates under the authority of the U.S.
> Treasury Department and is one of the fastest growing
> agencies within that department. In 1975, the center,
> with its staff of 39 employees, moved from Washington,
> D.C., to Glynco. Today the center has an authorized
> staff of 487 and an adjunct staff of 96 detailed from
> participating agencies. The on-site participating
> agencies, numbering 20, also have staffs exceeding
> 592.
>
> In 1970, the departments of the Treasury, Interior,
> Justice, the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the
> Smithsonian Institution, the Office of Management and
> Budget and the U.S. Postal Service -- agencies that
> comprised the bulk of the federal government’s law
> enforcement activity -- signed a memorandum of
> understanding to create FLETC. It was established by
> Treasury Order 217 on March 2 of that year. The
> original signatories represented the first clients of
> the training center. That base has now expanded to at
> least 70 federal agencies.
>
> While the increases in armed federal police agents
> have been most dramatic during the Clinton
> administration years, FLETC Director Charles F.
> Rinkevich takes pride in pointing out the “strong
> commitment” the consolidation efforts have received
> from Congress.
>
> Since 1989, Congress has approved $53 million in
> support of the $121.4 million goal FLETC officials
> deem necessary for facility expansion efforts. One of
> the other ways the center supports its rapid growth is
> through fee services to state and local agencies and,
> increasingly, through training of foreign cops.
>
> “With the break-up of the Eastern Block (sic)
> countries, the FLETC will be required to play an
> increasing role in providing law enforcement training
> to the emerging democracies while at the same time
> continuing to support the training needs of other
> foreign countries,” reads Objective 1.4 of the
> center’s strategic goals statement.
>
> The center has trained agents of the governments of
> Brazil, Poland, Russia and Romania and provided
> assistance to the International Law Enforcement
> Academy in Budapest.
>
> Besides training law enforcement officers in tactics,
> survival skills and the use of weapons, the center
> established in 1989 the Financial Fraud Institute,
> whose specialty is training related to financial and
> high-technology crimes including special courses in
> asset forfeiture procedures, insurance fraud, illegal
> tax shelters and computer and telecommunications
> investigative procedures.
>
> Critics of the growing militarization of the federal
> government will also take no comfort in the fact that
> the center’s program was designed with the help of a
> team of experts from the U.S. military.
>
> “The Department of Defense Army-Air Force Center for
> Low Intensity Conflict played a key role in the
> development of this plan by facilitating the planning
> process for Task Force 2002 and the implementation
> planning group,” one FLETC document explains. “Prior
> to assisting FLETC, CLIC facilitated the development
> of strategic plans for the Drug Enforcement
> Administration, Project North Star and others.
> -------------------------------------------------------
>
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Paul Andrew Mitchell : Counselor at Law, federal witness
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