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Year
after year Bill Clinton curtails civil liberties and squanders
billions fighting a supposed "terrorist" threat
to the United States. The media cheers in delight; Congress
forks over the money with barely a murmur of dissent. Even
by his dishonest standards the nonsense he spouts about
"cyberattacks" on our infrastructure or Osama
bin Laden types armed with biological weapons is shameless
opportunism. The goal as always is to increase the powers
of government and enrich the corporations that are in the
forefront of the fight against "terrorism."
In
May 1998, Clinton signed two Presidential Decision Directives
to defend America from computer hackers and terrorists armed
with weapons of mass destruction. The directives set up
a variety of boards and agencies, including the office of
National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection
and Counter-terrorism, headed by Richard Clarke.
According
to a story put out by Clinton – almost certainly untrue
then – he was stunned into action by reading Richard
Preston’s The
Cobra Event about a bioterrorism attack on New York.
He immediately convened a White House roundtable discussion
on genetic engineering and biological weapons. On April
10, 1998, seven experts briefed him on breakthroughs in
biotechnology and genetic engineering. Also attending the
meeting were top officials from the departments of Justice,
Defense, State, and Health and Human Services, and from
the CIA, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)
and the NSC. The experts allegedly advised Clinton that
"terrorists" could soon have the capability to
produce lethal organisms that would evade existing vaccines
and antibiotics.
In
May 1998, Clinton announced the redirection of nearly $300
million of appropriations to defense against chemical and
biological weapons; proposed the creation of a stockpile
of specialized medicines; ordered the federal government
to develop a national plan for dealing with a biological
attack on the United States. Washington would train doctors,
police and firemen, equipping them with chemical suits and
with chemical and biological weapons detectors. Clinton
has even spoken of establishing a commander-in-chief for
the defense of the continental United States.
In
January, 2000, Clinton launched the National Plan for Information
Systems Protection. According to the plan, "America
is vulnerable…because it has quickly become dependent
upon computer networks for many essential services... Water,
electricity, gas, communications…and other critical
functions are directed by computer controls over vast information
systems networks. The threat is that in a future crisis
a criminal cartel, terrorist group, or hostile nation will
seek to inflict economic damage, disruption and death, and
degradation of our defense response by attacking those critical
networks." Note how easily the United States, by far
the most powerful nation on Earth, takes to describing itself
as "vulnerable."
The
plan is little more than a proposal that government takes
over business. "Systems owned and operated by private
companies provide 90 plus percent of the telecommunications
and electrical power required by the Defense Dept. and other
agencies of government," explains the somewhat demented
Richard Clarke. "If you take down the privately owned
and operated telecoms and electricity and banking and transportation
networks, you have destroyed this country. So we need not
only to protect the government but more importantly we need
to protect the private sector systems." No wonder that
businesses that are to be "saved" from these dastardly
"cyberattackers" are not exactly jumping with
joy at the administration’s proposals.
Clinton
has continued to increase funding on infrastructure "protection."
During the State of the Union he departed from the prepared
text to predict that terrorists and organized criminals
"with increasing access to ever more sophisticated
chemical and biological weapons" will soon pose "the
major security threat" to the United States. Infrastructure
protection is up 16 percent to $2.03 billion in the FY2001
budget proposal. In March, the administration submitted
an $11.1 billion request to Congress to strengthen "domestic
preparedness" against a terrorist attack – almost
twice what it was in 1995 ($5.7 billion). This sum includes
$1.5 billion for defense against weapons of mass destruction
and almost $2 billion for protection of computer networks.
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