Bringing the War Back Home. The "Danger" of "Ungoverned Spaces." American Federal Nazis in Training at the Command and General Staff College.

SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Main Security Office

My thanks to the several readers who brought this post at Western Rifle Shooters which highlights this thesis presented by William Presson, Chief Inspector of the United States Marshals Service, Denver, Colorado, "to the Faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree."

Entitled Enhancing Security -- Projecting Civil Authority into America's Uncontrolled Spaces, here is the abstract of this 74 page plan for a seamless American National Socialist enforcement state:

Actions taken or not taken by law enforcement agencies, in ungoverned spaces reduce USability to forestall hostile actions on US soil. The current organization of the United States civil authorities and their limitations to impact “Ungoverned Spaces” within th eUnited States poses problems to accomplish the goals of our National Security Strategy to “Prevent attacks on the Homeland” and “Enhancing security at Home.” To that end,this thesis examines areas of the United States that function as “Ungoverned Spaces” and possible strategies to maximize Inter-agency and interoperable government control through joint operations between civil authorities and Department of Defense forces.Finally, the author analyzed the gaps in the ability of law enforcement to project civil authority into ungoverned spaces and the historical short falls of civil law enforcement in past events. The recommendations suggest; the creation of a full time paramilitary police force trained, and maintained in sufficient size and strength to police our nations ungoverned spaces, established as a full time National Guard unit. Satisfying the author’s recommendations on the use of the National Guard as a paramilitary police force, he examined the historical and a current legal precedent the author believes allows it is legal to deploy National Guard troops under Title 32 as law enforcement entities.

As Pete at WRSA comments:

See page 52 (page 60 in the .pdf) for the punch line(s), but do at least scan the whole thing as an example of OpFor mindset.

My fave quote thus far (.pdf pp. 63-64):

…The very nature of this nation’s separation of power and balance of governance laid out by our founding fathers to protect the citizens of the United States has become fractured by time and a changing global footprint of state and non-state actors. The very mechanisms of democracy and the separation of power to protect this nation from government tyranny have also created a national vulnerability. It has created an aversion to a national police force or the use of the military as a paramilitary police force and has created multiple large governmental organizations competing for the same resources with little unity of effort. The author refrained from attempting to formulate a National Guard paramilitary police force structure, he believes that topic is beyond the scope of this thesis and is a future topic to be examined. The current thought and discussion in DoD Defense Support to Civil Authorities (DSCA) doctrine is that the military cannot be the lead agency in homeland security missions needs to be reexamined.

With the draw down of U.S. forces from the wars in the Iraq and Afghanistan, the military will need to find an increased role in homeland security missions to augment their Homeland Defense mission and maintain Congressional funding (WRSA emphasis added). With over ten years of experience in stability operations and the current legal exceptions to the PCA,the author does not see a reason the military could not function in a law enforcement capacity in joint operations with civil law enforcement authorities or as a lead federal agency with the appropriate training and oversight to project civil authority into the United States’ ungoverned spaces…

Pete headlines his post: "Reichssicherheitshauptamt: American Occupation Forces In The Homeland" and he is right to do so. Reichssicherheitshauptamt, for the uninitiated, was the Reich Main Security Office run by SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, until he was assassinated by Czech resistance fighters in 1942.

Heydrich's car, caught in an ambush at a hairpin turn, on 27 March 1942. He died of complications to his wounds on 4 June and was roasting in Hell shortly afterward.

Wikipedia reports the aftermath:

Infuriated by Heydrich's death, Hitler ordered the arrest and execution of 10,000 randomly selected Czechs. But after consultations with Karl Hermann Frank, he tempered his response. The Czech lands were an important industrial zone for the German military, and indiscriminate killing could reduce the region's productivity. Hitler ordered a quick investigation. Intelligence falsely linked the assassins to the towns of Lidice and Ležáky. A Gestapo report stated that Lidice, 22 km north-west of Prague, was suspected as the hiding place of the assailants as it was known that several Czech army officers, then in England, had come from there. Further, the Gestapo had found a resistance radio transmitter in Ležáky. On 9 June, after discussions with Himmler and Karl Hermann Frank, Hitler ordered brutal reprisals. Over 13,000 people were arrested, deported, and imprisoned. Beginning on 10 June, all males over the age of 16 in the village of Lidice, and the village of Ležáky, were murdered. All the women in Ležáky were also murdered. All but four of the women from Lidice were deported immediately to Ravensbrück concentration camp (four were pregnant – they were forcibly aborted at the same hospital where Heydrich had died and then sent to the concentration camp). A number of children were chosen for Germanization, but 81 were killed in gas vans at the Chełmno extermination camp. Both towns were burned and the ruins of Lidice were levelled. At least 1,300 people were massacred after Heydrich's death.

The massacred men of Lidice.

My first question was raised by this acknowledgment:

I would like to thank the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and theUnited States Marshals Service for this opportunity to attend college at Ft. Leavenworth,KS. It has been an honor and privilege to attend this school with the men and women of our armed services; I am humbled to be able to make their acquaintance. It has been apleasure to attend college with my classmates and learn from the talented staff of instructors at CGSC.

I want to thank my thesis committee Mr. David P. Gunn, Mr. Richard Berkebileand Dr. John Kuehn. Without their assistance, guidance and mentoring this thesis wouldnot have come to fruition.

Can someone please tell me what we are doing sending a federal law enforcement bureaucrat to the Army's Command and General Staff College when there are many, many real Army officers who better deserve the slot that this proto-Nazi took?

Second, a glance at Presson's footnotes tells us that applying the straw boogeyman of "Ungoverned Spaces" to the United States is just that, and not what the author of the footnoted document had in mind. In testimony before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on the National Security and Foreign Affairs, United States House of Representatives on 14 February 2008, on "Ungoverned Territories," Angel Rabasa of The RAND Corporation clearly was testifying about international not domestic problem areas. Rabasa defined them as:

The term “ungoverned territories” does not imply the complete absence of power structures in the territories in question. We mean that, in these regions, the state is absent, unable, or unwilling to perform its functions.

Ungoverned territories can be failed or failing states, poorly controlled land or maritime borders or airspace, or areas within otherwise viable states where the central government’s authority does not extend. Ungoverned territories can thus be found along a continuum of state control. At the benign end of the continuum are otherwise healthy states that have lost control of some geographic or functional space within their territories. For instance, a state that otherwise functions reasonably well could be plagued with a high level of illegal immigration across poorly controlled borders and the presence of criminal gangs involved in that activity. At the other end of the spectrum are failed states, in which the institutions of the central government are so weak that they cannot maintain authority or political or social order beyond their capitals. . .

Characteristics of Ungoverned Territories

The first characteristic of an ungoverned territory is the lack of penetration by state institutions into the general society. A lack of state penetration could be measured by absent or nonfunctioning state institutions. For example, law enforcement entities may only be present in the capital or major cities of a state, leaving substantial territory outside the state’s purview. Health and welfare institutions may not reach into a substantial portion of the state’s rural areas or inner cities. This lack of presence allows other organizations to take precedence in determining the rules of everyday life. Thus, individuals may look to warlords, mullahs, or tribal leaders rather than state agencies for judicial processes. Or insurgent groups may offer the only health care or other social services available to the population.

The lack of state penetration is also reflected in low compliance with existing laws. In an ungoverned territory, the state is not the primary source of authority. It is no more likely to be perceived as legitimate than competing power centers or to be able to elicit compliance with its laws. Indeed, the state is simply one actor within an ecosystem in which many groups and entities interact with each other and evolve through adaptation to changes in the environment. In this situation, a “survival of the fittest” dynamic emerges. The state’s ability to reassert control depends on the health of whatever state institutions — particularly judicial and law enforcement — may be present, and whether those institutions have been subverted by corruption or competing local allegiances.

Aside from the overarching issue of the presence, or lack thereof, of state institutions in ungoverned territories, there are physical and social factors that contribute to the emergence of ungoverned territories. An important factor is inaccessibility. Ungoverned territories are often found in difficult terrain: mountains, jungles, or desert. These areas are generally economically marginal and sparsely populated conditions that retard economic development and diminish the state’s incentives to develop the infrastructure necessary to maintain a robust state presence. In the globalized world, however, inaccessibility is a relative concept. Even where physical infrastructure is least developed, there are options for travel and communications. Nevertheless, especially in states with weak administrative structures, such limited infrastructure might actually aggravate governance problems because anti-state forces can use it for their own purposes.

How much of this definition describes your neighborhood? The problem for Presson, as he makes clear in his introduction, is that aren't enough federal policemen to enforce the District of Criminal's diktat (and local and state LEOs may be unreliable to do so) so he wants a greater ability to punish scofflaws (as he sees them) by bringing in the military. The fact that this is contrary to the Founders' concepts of local and state government or even Posse Comitatus is irrelevant to Presson (who, presumably, took an oath to defend that very Constitution he now seeks to subvert).

Presson's federal masters, having achieved the erosion of the liberties and property rights of Americans for the past century to the aggrandizement of their power, must be very proud of their good little Nazi for his new plan to get more. The fact that we wasted taxpayer dollars to further his career by giving him a slot at the USC&GSC is merely outrageous salt in the wound.

I hope Presson remembers the fate of Heydrich, for there are many in this country who still remember Lidice.

No "Ungoverned Spaces" here. This is a "Governed Space" in 1942 of a regime's monopoly of force that presumably US Marshal Presson could embrace.