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[FONT=Helvetica,Geneva,Arial][FONT=Helvetica,Geneva,Arial]THE WAR AT HOME:
[/FONT]U.S. MILITARY CIVIL DISTURBANCE PLANNING
By Frank Morales
[/FONT][FONT=Helvetica,Geneva,Arial]ORIGINS OF OPERATION GARDEN PLOT:
THE KERNER COMMISSION
[/FONT]
[FONT=Helvetica,Geneva,Arial][FONT=Helvetica,Geneva,Arial]THE WAR AT HOME:
[/FONT]U.S. MILITARY CIVIL DISTURBANCE PLANNING
By Frank Morales
[/FONT][FONT=Helvetica,Geneva,Arial]ORIGINS OF OPERATION GARDEN PLOT:
THE KERNER COMMISSION
[/FONT]
[FONT=Helvetica,Geneva,Arial]"Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave."
--Frederick Douglass,[/FONT]
--Frederick Douglass,[/FONT]
[FONT=Helvetica,Geneva,Arial] Rochester, New York is the former home of Frederick Douglass¼s, North Star newspaper. In 1964, it erupted in one of the first large-scale urban outbursts of the decade. Precipitated by white police violence against the black community, the July uprising lasted several days, subsiding only after the arrival of 1500 National Guardsmen. In "the fall of 1964, the FBI, at the direction of President Johnson, began to make riot control training available to local police departments, and by mid-1967 such training assistance had been extended to more than 70,000 officials and civilians."(2) [/FONT]
[FONT=Helvetica,Geneva,Arial]On July 29, 1967, President Johnson issued Executive Order 11365, establishing the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. It is more commonly known as the Kerner Commission, named for it¼s chair, former Major General, and then Governor of Illinois, Otto Kerner. The creation of the commission came hot on the heels of the violence in Detroit, a conflict which left 43 dead, several hundred wounded and over 5,000 people homeless. Johnson sent troubleshooter Cyrus Vance, later Secretary of Defense, as his personal observer to Detroit. The commission issued its¼ final report, completed in less than a year, on March 1, 1968. [/FONT]
[FONT=Helvetica,Geneva,Arial]Although the Kerner Commission has over the years become associated with a somewhat benign, if not benevolent character, codifying the obvious, "we live in two increasingly separate America¼s" etc., the fact is that the commission itself was but one manifestation of a massive military/police counter-insurgency effort directed against US citizens, hatched in an era of emergent post-Vietnam "syndrome" coupled with elite fears of domestic insurrection.While the movement chanted for peace and revolution, rebellious, angry and destructive urban uprisings were occurring with alarming frequency, usually the result of the usual spark, police brutality, white on black crime. The so-called urban riots of 1967-1968 were the zenith, during this period, of social and class conflict. "More than 160 disorders occurred in some 128 American cities in the first nine months of 1967."(3) [/FONT]
[FONT=Helvetica,Geneva,Arial]The executive order establishing the commission called for an investigation of "the origins of the recent major civil disorders and the influence, if any, of organizations or individuals dedicated to the incitement or encouragement of violence."(4) The work of the commission was funded from President Johnson¼s "Emergency Fund." The executive order sought recommendations in three general areas: "short term measures to prevent riots, better measures to contain riots once they begin, and long term measures to eliminate riots in the future."(5) Their two immediate aims were "to control and repress black rioters using almost any available means", (6) and to assure white America that everything was in hand. Commission members included Charles B. Thorton, Chairman and CEO, Litton Industries, member of the Defense Industry Advisory Council to the DoD and the National Security Industrial Association, John L. Atwood, President and CEO, North American Rockwell Corporation ("Commission Advisor on Private Enterprise"), and Herbert Jenkins, Atlanta Chief of Police and President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. [/FONT]
