Our fear has been that we might lose our constitutional republic during a time of economic catastrophe or depression, foreign attack or world war. In line with the movie "State of Siege," we thought that a General would appear on the scene and announce that the president has declared martial law, the tanks would come rolling down our streets, and troops would be posted on street corners.

It hasn't happened that way. Instead of the General in the movie, King Clinton stands up there basically saying, "I am the law." He doesn't use tanks and troops; he uses executive orders and presidential directives. The result can be much the same. The approach was summed up by his adviser Paul Begala, who said, "Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool."

The evil genius behind Clinton's reign of peace, prosperity and security has been his knowledge that the American people will accept the subversion of their constitution if they are entertained with bread and circuses, and as long as the system seems to be operating efficiently. The stock market is up, interest rates and unemployment are down, so don't rock the boat.

The American people will tolerate what political scientist Clinton Rossiter 50 years ago labeled a "constitutional dictatorship." His book is out-of-print, which is unfortunate because it is an academic work that describes how a country like the U.S. comes to accept or even embrace the use of autocratic powers and emergency rule. In the doublespeak of Washington, Clinton calls it "doing the peoples' business."

It is not a dictatorship in which elections are canceled; rather, it's a dictatorship available to presidents of both parties, who can use executive and emergency powers to manage the "people's business" during a real or manufactured crisis, and deploy troops at home and abroad without congressional approval.

Clinton's recent performance as a budget dictator, using the veto and the threat of a government shutdown to get his way on legislation, demonstrates the underlying reality of the process that has accelerated over the last six years: the president has assumed many of the powers of the legislative branch of government.

Consider the resolution of the so-called U.N. debt issue. The Congress attaches symbolic anti-abortion restrictions which can be suspended by the president, at minimal cost to the abortion lobby, and the U.N. gets about $1 billion. The fact is, Clinton has already raided military readiness funds to provide an additional $15 billion for U.N. military operations over the last six years, none of which has been credited or reimbursed to the U.S. This means that our so-called "debt" to the U.N. doesn't exist in the first place and that the U.N. actually owes us money.

Congress gives failure a bad name.

To cite another example: six years after the fact, we are still wondering how the Waco massacre occurred, why the FBI lied to us, and what role our own military forces played in burning amost 100 men, women and children to death.

The fact is that the president has the inherent power under the Insurrection Act to use our military or any means necessary to suppress domestic disturbances, as defined by the president, and the authorization doesn't even need to be in the form of a public document. If President Bush can use an executive order to send troops to Los Angeles after the riots, Clinton can send troops to Waco under a secret directive. Army troops have been used over 100 times in U.S. history to control civilians without a formal declaration of martial law.

FDR used an executive order to round up people and place them in federal camps. That was upheld by the Supreme Court.

It's true - that was during a war declared by Congress. But today, the president declares wars and national emergencies.

The war on Yugoslavia was waged by the president without Congressional approval through executive order. He used executive orders to declare a war zone, call up troops, proclaim a national emergency with respect to Yugoslavia, and impose economic sanctions on Belgrade. An executive agreement between Clinton and foreign governments expanded the NATO treaty to cover non-NATO states.

The illegal war on Yugoslavia was taken to court by a courageous group of members of Congress, numbering about 30, who had their suit tossed out. So much for the courts acting to save our Constitution.

Under two laws, the National Emergencies Act and the International Emergencies Economic Powers Act, the IEEPA, the president has been given the power to confiscate private property and control imports and exports. A standing executive order, No. 12919, gives the president virtually dictatorial powers, even in peacetime, to control the private sector and civilian activities.

So far -- and the worst may be yet to come -- Clinton has issued more than 300 executive orders and more than 70 classified executive orders.

Under the classified executive orders, known as presidential decision directives, the administration operates a secret government. PDD-62, on counterterrorism, laid the groundwork for a recent FBI report disclosing agency surveillance of peaceful, pro-second amendment groups and individuals, and smearing opponents of the U.N., including some Christians, as violence-prone and crazy. It also warned of Y2K terrorism, which may be a self-fulfilling prophecy that could set the stage for Clinton to invoke Executive Order 12919 and even blame foreign-inspired terrorism on domestic right-wing groups.

In the name of protecting government computers, PDD-63 has laid the groundwork for FIDNET, the Federal Intrusion Detection Network, which foresees Orwellian surveillance of private e-mail, enabling the feds to track how private citizens use the Internet.

Congress has now promised to take a look at Echelon, a global surveillance system that can track and identify Americans, operated by the National Security Agency, the NSA. But the NSA was itself established by a presidential directive dating back to 1952. In the film, "Enemy of the State," the director of the NSA tells a Senator: "you and I know what the average citizen does not -- that we are at war 24 hours of every day."

He's right. Emergency declarations are now in effect regarding Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Iran, the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, Osama bin laden, Colombian drug traffickers, and Yugoslavia. All of these groups, individuals or countries have been named in Clinton executive orders as constituting unusual and extraordinary threats.

In response, Clinton sends some cruise missiles to hit an aspirin factory in Sudan, and orders air strikes on a few tents and a Mosque in Afghanistan. This is how Clinton deals with state sponsors of terrorism.

If this is a war, it's one-sided and we're losing. On November 8 -- just a week and one-half ago -- Clinton provided a memorandum to Congress about a continuing "national emergency" because the government of Iran poses "an unusual and extraordinary threat" to the United States. Yet we have evidence that Iranian agents bombed Khobar Towers, killing killing 19 American servicemen in Saudi Arabia, and the Clinton Administration refuses to hold them responsible.

Likewise, last December Clinton renewed a national emergency with Libya, declaring the Gadhafi regime an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to the U.S. But the Clinton State Department is currently stonewalling the release of a United Nations letter, approved by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, letting Gadhafi off the hook for his role in ordering the bombing of Pan Am 103 back in 1988.

Regarding Osama bin Laden, Clinton supports U.N. sanctions on Afghanistan, where bin Laden operates, knowing full well that this approach is what led to the U.N. deal giving Gaddhafi immunity over ordering the killing of the 270 victims of Pan Am 103, including 189 Americans.

Currently, almost two dozen persons, mostly Arabs and Muslims, are being detained by federal authorities in the U.S. on the basis of classified evidence supposedly tying them to terrorism. Foreign terrorists do operate inside the U.S. The World Trade Center bombing stands as proof of that. But are we supposed to trust the federal authorities when they cite "classified evidence" and violate due process? Who will the next suspected terrorists be? Perhaps some of those controversial Christians cited in that FBI report?

This happens because Congress has provided the president with emergency powers that undermine constitutional liberties. These emergencies have become so routine that they don't even make news anymore.

Of special concern is how emergency powers and executive orders may actually conceal certain aspects of crimes of terrorism.

After the Oklahoma City bombing, Clinton employed emergency powers to keep independent investigators away from the crime scene and to cover-up a foreign connection to the bombing. For political reasons, the militias and right-wing "hate radio" were blamed. After the crash of TWA 800, Clinton issued an executive order that muzzled Navy divers who might have discovered information that the flight was downed by a missile. A mechanical failure was blamed.

Although presidents have used executive orders in the past, some of the Clinton executive orders have been drafted in almost complete secrecy for political reasons to cover-up scandals and implement illegal policies. An executive order on federalism, virtually repealing the 10th amendment, was suspended, only to be replaced by another. Clinton has also used executive orders to promote abortion rights and homosexual rights, and to restrict property rights and second amendment rights.

One abortion executive order, formally titled an "executive memoranda," has led to the sale of aborted baby parts for medical resarch. On October 6th, Clinton issued an executive order protecting homosexuals in the Armed Services, even though they're not supposed to be there in the first place. President Clinton is the first president to use executive orders and presidential directives to aggressively pursue the military, social and economic agenda of international organizations such as the United Nations. A secret presidential directive assigns our troops to the U.N. and places them under foreign command.

A Clinton executive order on Angola, issued in compliance with a U.N. resolution, actually closed down a U.S. organization, the Center for Democracy in Angola, throwing its employees out of work and taking its web site off the Internet. This was a group opposed to the communist government of Angola.

In other cases, the Clinton-Gore Administration has decided that "international obligations" and the demands of ratified and unratified treaties take precedence over U.S. law and the U.S. Constitution.

Perhaps the most blatant example is the Kyoto global warming treaty. The Senate warned Clinton against it, but he signed it anyway, refuses to send it up for ratification, and implements part of it through an executive order mandating federal compliance with its provisions.

Similarly, the ABM treaty died with the collapse of the old Soviet Union but Clinton issued PDD-17 authorizing secret negotiations to preserve it. He renegotiated the treaty with Soviet successor states and refuses to submit the document to the Senate for ratification.

Clinton has issued an executive order, Number 13107, directing federal agencies to implement various U.N. human rights treaties, including those that the U.S. "may become a party to..." This move is hailed by the United Nations in its "Chronicle" magazine as an example of how the "UN system of governance" works in member-states by creating pressure to change a nation's domestic laws.

In a related matter, the World Trade Organization, which was created not through treaty but an executive agreement passed by Congress, has the actual power to order countries to overturn their laws.

Ladies and gentlemen, please go to our web site: usasurvival.org for a complete report on executive orders and presidential directives entitled "Crimes Against the Constitution.". Encourage those members of Congress who are trying to do something about the problem. Unfortunately, I have to warn you: a legislative approach runs the risk of a presidential veto, and failure.

Clinton Rossiter had argued that our most effective defense against the worst forms of a constitutional dictatorship was the president's "political and moral sense and the remote possibility of impeachment."

It is remote, especially when the president has already been impeached for abusing his power on matters unrelated to the problems we have been talking about here. The dirty little secret is that the Congress cannot impeach him for using and abusing powers that Congress has given him.

At this point, I plead with you -- support organizations like America's Survival, which dare to discuss and describe what has really been happening in America. Keep in mind that much of what passes for pubic debate in the media and Washington, D.C. is completely beside the point if it ignores the on-going constitutional problem of executive orders and national emergencies.

The problem will not be solved if "your guy" gets into the White House and uses these powers for your benefit. If that's your attitude, then you are part of the problem and have failed even to pay lip service to what our founding fathers gave us.

They gave us a constitutional republic -- if we could keep it. The present danger is that so many fail to understand how it is slipping away. Now that you know - get to work. The freedom you save may be your own.

 

America’s Survival, P.O. Box 146, Owings, MD 20736 www.usasurvival.org