Lost in the endless AM radio ranting by Glenn Beck and lesser Tea Party fanatics about “tyranny” and “protecting the Constitution” is an uncomfortable bit of 1980s history.
Wingnut hero—and most famous Philmonter—Oliver North was credibly alleged to have co-authored a 1982 plan to suspend their beloved Constitution.
While researching yet another TCI explosion in a microfilm archive, I stumbled upon the July 1987 United Press International report pictured above, and excerpted here.
Described as a “contingency plan” to be enacted “in the event of a national crisis,” a June 1982 memorandum “called for the suspension of the Constitution and imposition of martial law,” according to UPI.
The news agency obtained the memo authored by FEMA official John Brinkerhoff with the assistance of North, acting as the agency’s liaison to the National Security Council. Under the right conditions, “control of the United States” would be turned over to FEMA, which would appoint “military commanders to run state and local governments.”
Brinkerhoff denied the allegation, claiming the plan’s purpose was “emergency preparedness” and the maintenance of “civil rule.”
The ironies here would be hilarious, if Beck and his peers were not so deadly serious about banging the whole “we need more guns to defend Amerikka against Goblin King Barack Hussain Obama’s tyranny” drum.
Their endless-but-empty invocations of The Constitution and fear-mongering about FEMA camps are absurdly hypocritical, considering their elevation of North to near-saintly status.
