Former CIA Officer’s Enmity Toward ‘Right Wing’ Americans Shows Agency Priorities

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Former CIA Intelligence officer suggests using ‘counterterrorism’ strategies against ‘right-wing’ Americans,” Fox News reports. “[Marc] Polymeropoulos’ piece for NBC News Think warned that propagandists, whether Islamic terrorists or Republicans, should be subject to counterterrorism and counter-radicalization techniques.”

“Why are these propagandists so dangerous?” he asks, using that as the segue to spread a pre-election Democrat talking point that “conservatives” are responsible for the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi by a nudist Green Party member and illegal alien. “Because, while they might not supply weapons, they can effectively radicalize individuals to obtain them and put them to use — even from the comfort of their own homes via the internet.”

“The battle we engaged in with international terrorist groups like Al Qaeda wasn’t just with their legions of foot soldiers but with their highly effective propaganda arms as well,” Polymeropoulos declares. “The U.S. and our allies considered those propagandists fundamental cogs in a terror group’s machinery and just as culpable as any other terrorist. So we held them accountable when innocent civilians were killed.”

With charges we see leveled against, among others, Donald Trump for what he did and did not say leading up to the “mostly peaceful”  Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol protest, it’s hard for those who have questions and objections about that not to take it personally. Ditto for a host of other irreconcilable differences with administration positions on elections, COVID, the border, abortion, guns, and more, especially considering how opponents are then smeared as haters and traitors, all with the intent of building societal momentum for their cancellation and purging.

Some of us know firsthand what it’s like to be smeared as propagandists and insurrectionists.

But let’s take Polymeropolous at his word and forget for a moment, noting that as a CIA intelligence officer, he swore an oath to the Constitution. He is presuming to apply terror rules against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil for, in the case of gun owner advocates, exercising our First Amendment-recognized right to defend and promote our Second Amendment-recognized right.

That means he’s calling for what friend, colleague, and originator of the “Three Percent” concept, Mike Vanderboegh termed “Bill Clinton’s Rules of Engagement,” after the former president “include[d] the media, politicians, and ideological support structure of an enemy regime as legitimate targets of war.”

Vanderboegh made another observation when then-Brady Center law and policy wonk Dennis Henigan was pushing for a law on another made-up term, the “terror gap,” as a way to disarm anyone the government accused of being a “terrorist.”

“The prospect of the Federal government having the ability to designate anyone — ANYONE — a ‘terrorist threat,’ without the ability to challenge it, without even the ability of a federal judge to reverse it, is simply Star Chamber tyranny,” Vanderboegh cautioned. “It is constitutionally void. It is treasonous to the Founders’ Republic. Its enforcement would be a casus belli.”

Well, there you have it! Was he just calling for civil war? Talk about seditious conspiracy and justification for a forcible response! How did syndicated columnist Ted Rall put it in the case of protestors armed for self-protection?

“These town hall terrorists could be declared enemy combatants and bundled off to Bagram with the stroke of a pen. If ever there were a reason for suspending civil rights, this is it.”

So will Polymeropolous’ dream come to pass, where those of us wanting to “talk a little treason” who aren’t taken out by drones can be hauled off to a military tribunal and waterboarded to give up intel and set up our “co-conspirators”?

Fortunately, there are still a few inconvenient impediments to going full Stalin in this country (so far). As the Declaration of Independence reminds us:

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

And then there’s legal precedent, in this case, the Supreme Court’s 1969 opinion in Brandenburg v. Ohio, concluding:

“The Court’s Per Curiam opinion held that the Ohio law violated Brandenburg’s right to free speech. The Court used a two-pronged test to evaluate speech acts: (1) speech can be prohibited if it is “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and (2) it is “likely to incite or produce such action.” The criminal syndicalism act made illegal the advocacy and teaching of doctrines while ignoring whether or not that advocacy and teaching would actually incite imminent lawless action. The failure to make this distinction rendered the law overly broad and in violation of the Constitution.”

So it looks like, at least for now, we here at AmmoLand have more immediate concerns to occupy ourselves with than guest cages at Gitmo, but that’s not for lack of demands on the part of the “mainstream media” and top CIA sympathizers.

“At this point I LITERALLY view people who still support Donald Trump no different than the despicable, vile people who supported Bin Laden after 9/11,” CNN/MSN talking head Dean Obeidallah fumed. “Today’s GOP is no longer a political party, it’s a white nationalist, FASCIST movement that seeks to impose their EXTREME religious beliefs as the law of our land. It must be utterly defeated in order to save our Republic.”

“I agree. And I was the CIA Director,” retired Gen. Michael Hayden replied. This is the guy who endorsed sending “MAGA wearing unvaxxed to Afghanistan on board empty cargo planes,” and who once observed, “We kill people based on metadata.”

It’s instructive to note former CIA head John Brennan made a special point of citing the Constitution to justify his support for the Communist Party during the Cold War. It’s also instructive to note that its 1947 charter prohibiting it from spying on Americans didn’t stop it in the 60s through Operation Chaos, up to the present time via “an executive order to bypass privacy protections enacted by Congress.”

Should the abuses be reined in (and there’s little indication that there’s widespread political demand for that), we’ll still have the Department of Homeland Security “quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous.”

It’s enough to make a man believe the prime purpose behind the Second Amendment is to ward off tyranny should the day come when all pretenses by the ruling regime of adhering to Constitutional restraints are dropped. Or will that kind of talk get my name put on some list…?

About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.