As the
COVID-19 coronavirus crisis comes to dominate headlines, little media attention
has been given to the federal government’s decision to classify top-level
meetings on domestic coronavirus response and lean heavily “behind the scenes”
on U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon in planning for an allegedly imminent explosion
of cases.
The classification of
coronavirus planning meetings was first covered by Reuters,
which noted that the decision to classify was “an unusual step that has
restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the
contagion.” Reuters further
noted that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS),
Alex Azar, and his chief of staff had “resisted” the classification order,
which was made in mid-January by the National Security Council (NSC), led by
Robert O’Brien — a longtime friend and colleague of
his predecessor John Bolton.
Following this order, HHS
officials with the appropriate security clearances held meetings on coronavirus
response at the department’s Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility
(SCIF), which are facilities “usually reserved for intelligence and military
operations” and — in HHS’ case — for responses to “biowarfare or chemical
attacks.” Several officials who spoke to Reuters noted that
the classification decision prevented key experts from participating in
meetings and slowed down the ability of HHS and the agencies it oversees, including
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to respond to the crisis
by limiting participation and information sharing.
It has since been speculated that the decision was made to
prevent potential leaks of information by stifling participation and that
aspects of the planned response would cause controversy if made public,
especially given that the decision to classify government meetings on
coronavirus response negatively impacted HHS’ ability to respond to the crisis.
After the classification
decision was made public, a subsequent report in Politico revealed
that not only is the National Security Council managing the federal
government’s overall response but that they are doing so in close coordination
with the U.S. intelligence community and the U.S. military. It states
specifically that “NSC officials have been coordinating behind the scenes with
the intelligence and defense communities to gauge the threat and prepare for
the possibility that the U.S. government will have to respond to much bigger
numbers—and soon.”
Little attention was given to
the fact that the response to this apparently imminent jump in cases was being
coordinated largely between elements of the national security state (i.e. the
NSC, Pentagon, and intelligence), as opposed to civilian agencies or those
focused on public health issues, and in a classified manner.
The Politico article also
noted that the intelligence community is set to play a “key role” in a pandemic
situation, but did not specify what the role would specifically entail.
However, it did note that intelligence agencies would “almost certainly see an
opportunity to exploit the crisis” given that international “epicenters of
coronavirus [are] in high-priority counterintelligence targets like China and
Iran.” It further added, citing former intelligence officials, that efforts
would be made to recruit new human sources in those countries.
Politico cited the official
explanation for intelligence’s interest in “exploiting the crisis” as merely
being aimed at determining accurate statistics of coronavirus cases in “closed
societies,” i.e. nations that do not readily cooperate or share intelligence
with the U.S. government. Yet, Politico fails
to note that Iran has long been targeted for CIA-driven U.S. regime
change, specifically under the Trump administration,
and that China had been fingered as the top threat to
U.S. global hegemony by military officials well before the coronavirus
outbreak.
A potential “9/11-like”
response
The decision to classify
government coronavirus preparations in mid-January, followed by the decision to
coordinate the domestic response with the military and with intelligence
deserves considerable scrutiny, particularly given that at least one federal agency,
Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), will be given broad, sweeping powers and will
work closely with unspecified intelligence “partners” as part of its response
to a pandemics like COVID-19.
The CBP’s pandemic response
document, obtained by The Nation,
reveals that the CBP’s pandemic directive “allows the agency to actively
surveil and detain individuals suspected of carrying the illness
indefinitely.” The Nation further notes that
the plan was drafted during the George W. Bush administration, but is the
agency’s most recent pandemic response plan and remains in effect.
Though only CBP’s pandemic response plan has now been made
public, those of other agencies are likely to be similar, particularly on their
emphasis on surveillance, given past precedent following the September 11
attacks and other times of national panic. Notably, several recent media
reports have likened coronavirus to 9/11 and
broached the possibility of a “9/11-like” response to
coronavirus, suggestions that should concern critics of the post-9/11 “Patriot
Act” and other controversial laws, executive orders and policies that followed.
While the plans of the
federal government remain classified, recent reports have revealed that the
military and intelligence communities — now working with the NSC to develop the
government’s coronavirus response — have anticipated a massive explosion in
cases for weeks. U.S. military intelligence came to the conclusion over a month
ago that coronavirus cases would reach “pandemic proportions”
domestically by the end of March. That military intelligence agency, known as
the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), coordinates closely with
the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct “medical SIGINT [signals
intelligence].”
The coming government
response, the agencies largely responsible for crafting it and its classified
nature deserve public scrutiny now, particularly given the federal government’s
tendency to not let “a serious crisis to go to waste,” as former President
Obama’s then-chief of staff Rahm Emanuel infamously said during the 2008 financial
crisis. Indeed, during a time of panic — over a pandemic and over a simultaneous major economic
downturn — concern over government overreach is warranted,
particularly now given the involvement of intelligence agencies and the
classification of planning for an explosion of domestic cases that the
government believes is only weeks away.
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She
has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research,
EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has
made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the
Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
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MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.