On 27 September, 2024, the US Department of Defence issued a document that went largely unnoticed in Britain. America, on the other hand, is abuzz with troubled – some will say alarmist – comments.
No wonder. Called DOD Directive 5240.01, the document gives every indication of a country preparing to go to civil war. In broad strokes, the Directive makes the vast bank of military intelligence data available to civil law enforcement.
It also explicitly states that, under certain circumstances, the armed forces can be called upon to quell civil unrest, by lethal force if necessary. This effectively invalidates the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which removed the military from civil law enforcement.
The Act was deemed necessary during the Reconstruction in the aftermath of the Civil War, when the army was widely used against obstreperous American citizens and went about its task with a hand too heavy for some tastes.
When I wrote “explicitly states”, it was a figure of speech. The Directive is so loaded with legalese jargon that little about it is really explicit. One has to decipher the obtuse cant to prise the kernel of meaning out of the jumbled prose.
Legal terminology can be used to elucidate the precise meaning of every word, but also to obfuscate it. The second stratagem often serves to leave the message open-ended, allowing room for interpretation and also for convenient disclaimers.
One such was offered by Pentagon spokesman Sue Gough (yes, I gather she isn’t a man, but verbal probity takes priority over woke virtue). Her press release stated that: “The policies concerning the use of force by DOD addressed in DoDD 5240.01 are not new, and do not authorise the DOD to use lethal force against U.S. citizens or people located inside the United States, contrary to rumours and rhetoric circulating on social media.”
Having cast a quick glance over that disclaimer, a resurrected William Shakespeare would say: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”. Indeed, such denials by the Pentagon are extremely rare. So rare, in fact, that one smells a giant rat running around trapped among the building’s five corners.
I may be missing some fine points but, as I read the Directive, it seems to do exactly what Miss Gough says it doesn’t do. Here are a couple of salient points.
According to the document, the Secretary of Defence can approve “assistance in responding with assets with potential for lethality, or any situation in which it is reasonably foreseeable that providing the requested assistance may involve the use of force that is likely to result in lethal force, including death or serious bodily injury.”
Those chaps do have a way with words, don’t they? But to this unbiased reader, the text is unequivocal. The US Army is authorised to help out the police by firing at misbehaving Americans. This, in a country that’s always at pains to point out that even intelligence agencies such as the CIA have no jurisdiction within the country.
I don’t know about the CIA, but military intelligence, including the vast resources of the National Security Agency that can give you chapter and verse of every phone chat you’ve ever enjoyed, can now be used to spy on US citizens.
Perhaps I’m misreading the directive – I did tell you its language is at times impenetrable. But it does provide for “Defence Intelligence Component intelligence assistance to any Federal department or agency, including a Federal law enforcement agency, or to a State or local law enforcement agency when lives are in danger.”
Let’s remark parenthetically that the reference to situations “when lives are in danger” leaves much room for arbitrary interpretation. A stampeding crowd of unarmed protesters, for example, may conceivably trample people to death. Does this mean the DIC may forewarn the army about the protest march, with the latter then going in with guns blazing?
That’s how the much maligned conspiracy theorists read it. Thus, for example, Robert F. Kennedy, who upset his august family by his apostasy from the sainted Democratic Party: “… Biden/Harris have just pushed through DoD Directive 5240.01 giving the Pentagon power – for the first time in history – to use lethal force to kill Americans on U.S. soil who protest government policies.”
Much as you, I and all God’s own people may detest conspiracy theories and those who spread them around, it’s hard to deny that perfectly practical and not at all theoretical conspiracies do happen. That boy perhaps shouldn’t have cried wolf, but this doesn’t mean there are no wolves on the prowl at the outskirts of the village.
What upsets many commentators, including those considerably saner than Mr Kennedy, isn’t just the contents of the Directive but also its timing. Issuing that document just six weeks before the presidential election gives some people unpalatable food for mournful thought.
My serious American friends – and all my American friends are laudably serious – fear that civil unrest will ensue no matter who wins the election. Trump’s supporters and their demigod of a candidate already hinted at that possibility last time, when a MAGA mob tried to take the Capitol building by storm.
However, there are many indications that, this time around, it’s the Harris crowd that may revolt should their candidate lose, and they are indeed revolting. Harris herself and her staff give rise to such fears by their inflammatory rabble-rousing.
They portray Trump not as an unfit candidate for the presidency, but as a villain whose return to the White House would spell an end to democracy, along with such sacred American accoutrements as motherhood, baseball, apple pie and verbs made out of nouns. Words like ‘fascist’, ‘neo-Nazi’, ‘Hitler’ and ‘dictatorship’ cross their lips with increasing regularity.
Fair enough, Trump doesn’t even bother to conceal his disdain for the traditional political class on either side of the aisle. But if he aims to rule by decree, one wonders why he didn’t do so during his first term, when he supposedly had ample opportunity to put his foot down.
My impression is, and I hope I’m wrong, that Biden (who will remain president for two months after the election) and Harris are setting the stage for overturning the results of the election if it goes the wrong way.
When the Republic is in mortal danger, democratic niceties may fall by the wayside – as they did during the Second World War, when thousands of Nisei and German Americans were interned without due process. If the Democrats succeed in portraying Trump’s victory as a similar threat to everything the nation holds dear, they may use the two-month window of opportunity to set things right, from their perspective.
The Directive in question may then be invoked as the legal justification for any action, including the use of lethal force. The document certainly has that kind of ring to it, and it was put forth at a suspiciously opportune time.
This is all pure speculation, you understand. But something does smell foul, like that proverbial rodent. I hope the smell is all it is and remains to be. For the consequences of another American civil war are too awful to contemplate.
Such a massive explosion would produce shock waves wreaking destruction not only on America but on much of the world, emphatically including Britain. Let’s just pray that the Directive is as innocuous as Miss Gough will have us believe.
A good movie about such a scenario was released back in April.
What is it called and is it on Netflix? I’m afraid London cinemas have priced themselves out of my custom.