Gardens and Plots: Behold a Pale Horse pp. 135-142

First off let's discuss fonts. Beginning on Page 132, if we remember from last week, Cooper is claiming that the next few dozen pages are actually the warnings of someone named Dr. Pabst, clearly a Blue Ribbon Doctor even though I could not find this specific person. My first question is why does this section exist? Did Cooper ask Pabst for a report on FEMA camps, or did Pabst send this in after hearing Cooper's radio show? Remember also, I'm skeptical that this Pabst person is real. 

Cooper/Pabst does an interesting, if frustrating thing—both the size and style of the font change. We've been working with a Georgia font at 12pt but now we're on Times New Roman at 10. This is annoying because it reinforces that I am old and have to blow it up a bit to read it without confusion. It's also a little creative because it makes it look like someone else's writing. I wonder if this is the same in the print version of the book as well. Perhaps each page looks like he mimeographed it from a letter sent by Pabst. 

The section, after again misconstruing the executive orders, is labeled "Controlling the Masses." Haven't we done this already with "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars?" It all blends together. But, lo, this is not about mind control...yet, this is about physical control. Pabst warns us that the LEAA (Law Enforcement Assistance Administration) which was funded by the Department of Justice is attempting to form a national police force. They are the prime movers. The LEAA was a division of the DoJ (not funded by, but a part of) which offered assistance in both finances and training to state and local police agencies. They were not driving toward a national police force because we already have the FBI, ATF, Secret Service, US Marshall's Service, and ICE. His concern for the real thing is a bit late, but his concern isn't for a real thing. He's picturing Nazis walking through the streets of Paris, or some black-jacketed federal police officer in a rural town in Idaho. It's absurd, but the one thing about conspiracy theorists is that they really need to be the star of their own movies.

The LEAA did a few things: the first was to recommend the elimination of height requirements for law enforcement. This seems silly, but the point of this requirement was to prevent women from being able to sign up.  Throughout the 70s and 80s, they instituted a few programs such as the infamous counter-gang program "CRASH" used by the LAPD. 

The plan, according to Pabst, is to implement "Operation Garden Plot." Garden Plot was a real thing as well. It was created in response to the riots and domestic violence in the 1960s; specifically the summer of 1967 which saw deadly riots in Newark and Detroit spurned on, in part, by the opposition to the Vietnam War and racial unrest. For all the whining that these people do about the government and the Constitution "Garden Plot" is unique in that it directly cites Article I section 8 of the Constitution which states that Congress has the authority to use the militia (the well-regulated one) to suppress insurrections and repel invasions. Garden Plot is just a formalization of the plan because there had been so many riots and "insurrections" during the period. The government responded because these were left-wing protestors and that's usually when we get a federal response. 

The problem that Pabst sees is a government plan against protestors. That's quite understandable and I'm very sympathetic to it. He quotes from a 1976 Oakland Tribune article describing LEAF (Law Enforcement Assistance Force), a specialized military unit (I searched for the actual article but hit paywalls). As a quick aside Pabst claims that shortly after the 1976 article ran the editor died suddenly this isn't true, he died in 1974. 

The LEAF article describes a military unit trained specifically trained for "mass civil disobedience, protest demonstrations, and riots. In other words, breaking heads and taking names."

The article describes it as a frightening affront to civil liberties, goes into a very detailed list of the type of equipment that they carry, and paints a worrying picture of the militarization of a police force in 1976. The article does give a token representation of the other side, quoting Governor Jerry Brown's chief of staff Gray Davis (Pabst has him written as Gary Davis) imploring people not to be afraid, that the LEAF unit was an assistance force, not a replacement force. That's fine, but the article does not end honestly, instead, the writer likens the unit to a scenario in the fictional "Seven Days in May" where troops stop citizens at intersections, check IDs, etc. 

The article is worrisome, but luckily, in the future, know that no such thing ever happened. Well, the country did militarize the police with military equipment and training. And a good portion of us act as though wearing a badge gives an individual the ability to execute a citizen for minor infractions with no oversight or consequence. At least we are starting to change that second one. 

Pabst claims the LEAA has been ineffective against crime, he's right but for the wrong reason. It has been ineffective because it is not a law enforcement vehicle. The LEAA is just a way for departments to get that sweet federal money. The LEAA was ineffective with CRASH as well--in fact, CRASH created criminals. 

We should be skeptical of all of Cooper/Pabst's worries because of the chronology. The worries presented in this section are from the 70s. While society's response to the unrest in the 70s was a problem, it never blossomed into the martial law that is being described twenty years later. The proof of a thing cannot be a document from the past when we know that it never happened. 

We know from previous entries that Cooper wrote this book in late 1990, so he's had 14 years since LEAF for martial law. He's also had two years since the LEAA was disbanded. If we fast forward to the present day the militia movement would not be clamoring for fewer police. These are the people afraid of cities and anyone that doesn't look just like them.  They hate the law when the law isn't hurting people that they want it to hurt. 

While the criticisms of CRASH and the Detroit STRESS (Stop The Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets) are warranted as being programs that employed heavy use of racial profiling and illegal procedures; Pabst isn't concerned about that. His criticisms are based on a fictional work, a misinterpretation of several executive orders, and a sublime ignorance of historical context.