Mass detention facilities--otherwise known as concentration camps--are being set up at a number of major U.S. military installations on the secret orders of President Ronald Reagan.
The SPOTLIGHT has learned that on April 5 the White House issued a highly classified National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) which sets forth urgent instructions for the "activation" of 10 huge prison camps at key defense commands located across the nation.
Less than 24 hours before this edition went to press, on April 11, The SPOTLIGHT received information from two trustworthy confidential sources--patriotic career Army officers--stationed at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas, revealing that preparations were being set in motion for an unprecedented roundup of aliens and "sercurity suspects" coast to coast.
According to these sources, the primary goal of the vast police operation, codenamed "Rex 84," is to detain and deport illegal immigrants.
But these sources say "Rex 84" has another, even more closely guarded and carefully orchestrated objective: To apply so-called "C&C" ("capture and custody") measures against political opponents, resisters or even outspoken critics whom the administration considers "dangerous."
According to the information obtained--and substantially confirmed--by The SPOTLIGHT, the four principal civilian concentration camps to be established under the "Rex 84" program will be located at Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas; Ft. Drum, New York; Ft. Indian Gap, Pennsylvania and at Camp A.P. Hill in Virginia. Each one of these camps is being laid out to hold 25,000 civilian prisoners under the guard of American troops.
Additional emergency custodial facilities are being readied at Oakdale, California (reportedly for 15,000 detainees) and at Eglin Air Force Base in southern Florida, at Vandenberg AFB in California, at Ft. McCoy, Wisconsin; Ft. Benning, Georgia; Ft. Huachuca, Arizona; and finally at the southern Justice Department detention and interrogation center known as Camp Krome near Miami, Florida.
A major national task force of federal intelligence and law-enforcement agencies--including the FBI, the CIA, U.S. marshals, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Customs, Coast Guard, and so forth--will join with local and state police in massive roundups to haul in lists of suspects who will fill these improvised stockades.
"The first roundup--and the publicly announced one--will be of illegal aliens and refugees," a military source told The SPOTLIGHT. "But under the secret provisions of 'Rex 84' there will be also broad arrests of security suspects, who can be held in these centers, under this emergency order, whether they're U.S. citizens or not."
Americans whom the administration suspects of belonging to so-called "violence-prone" groups, or of "supporting" such groups--which may mean only that a citizen subscribes to the wrong newsletter--may find themselves hauled in with hordes of illegal immigrants if the bureaucrats find them "dangerous."
Suspected or "potential" terrorists, subversives and draft resisters may eventually also find themselves caught in the broad "Rex 84" net, according to these sources.
Another category of anti-bureaucratic activists which may be bound for administrative detention under this directive is that of "major, organized tax resisters," one source close to the program has told The SPOTLIGHT.
This informant--a Pentagon policy analyst assigned to the National Security Council (NSC) in the White House--has identified Kenneth de Graffenreid, a special assistant to President Reagan, as the NSC official temporarily in charge of coordinating the preparatory phase of "Rex 84."
Not a single source interviewed by The SPOTLIGHT could cite a Constitutional or legal precedent for such a staggering mass roundup of civilians by American authorities in peacetime.
The nearest analogy provided by one expert emerged from the security sweeps ordered by the Austrian government of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in the late 1930s.
Prefiguring "Rex 84," these crackdowns were officially targeted at "illegal aliens"--that is, the many German-born residents of Austria whom the Dollfuss government suspected of being sympathetic to the National Socialist government of Adolf Hitler.
But the Austrian authorities' aim soon shifted to their own citizenry. They began tossing into camps like the giant Mollersdorf Center tens of thousands of Austrians whom the regime considered opponents or "subversives"--i.e., adherents of the banned National Socialist Party.
What criteria will be used in deciding who's "dangerous" and who isn't? Will it be based on the "hate list," drawn up by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith (SPOTLIGHT, Jan. 4-11, 1982; March 28, 1983 and others)?
In 1980, the United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) signed a contract with the ADL to prepare a report for the USCCR on "hate" groups in America. For $20,000 in taxpayer money, the ADL produced a report that focused on groups that support the Constitution.
The report was completed, submitted to and accepted by the USCCR. But, following standard procedure, the commission sent portions of the report to various groups mentioned, soliciting comments. The responses were scathing, and the groups did not stop at letting the USCCR know their feelings, but wrote their elected representatives as well.
As a result of the responses from groups mentioned, and inquiries from Capitol Hill, the USCCR decided not to publish and disseminate the ADL-written report. But in early 1983, the ADL came out with its own report, which was a re-write of the report submitted to the USCCR.
Interestingly, the report carries no mention of the Jewish Defense League, best known for perpetrating violence against those with whom it disagrees.
In response to an inquiry by a SPOTLIGHT reporter, Robert Blair, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), admitted that "Rex 84" was the designation of a "classified project" initiated only a week before our inquiry.
But Blair denied any knowledge of planned mass arrests. "I'm not aware of anyone having been detained," he told The SPOTLIGHT. "What you have (learned) may have been generated at a lower level or staff level--it's all mixed up."
But other sources confirmed that "Rex 84" was "the secret appendix"--as one official put it, asking not to be named--of a series of executive orders concerning emergency preparedness and national security being issued by the White House. The first phase of what is described as a complete revision of emergency and security preparations by the Reagan administration was marked on April 3 with the promulgation of Executive Order 12473, detailing the reorganization and federal control of national telecommunications systems in case of a major national emergency.
(The above was excerpted from the front page of THE SPOTLIGHT On Neutrality in Foreign Affairs, April 23, 1984.)
A highly classified document was signed on April 5, 1984, by President Reagan that could fill secret concentration camps throughout the U.S. with citizens opposed to government policy, and Canada has a similar plan prepared by former socialist PM Trudeau.
At least 12 of the concentration camps, each designed to hold up to 25,000 prisoners, are said to have been detected in ten states.
Columnist Carl Rowan gave a revealing treatise of this situation in his April, 1984 Reader's Digest article, "Mr. President, This Isn't Russia." Further media coverage is practically nonexistent.
But the Christian Inquirer has been sent two photos purporting to be of these camps.
The Inquirer has another photo of an installation said to be another such camp at Florence, AZ.
(The above article, excerpted from the Christian Inquirer, is accompanied by the photograph shown below, which is an aerial shot of a large compound or installation with a road and a water tower visible along with many buildings.
