Here’s another:

A Conspiracy Theory Takes Off

FEMA camp stories have been around a long time. Almost three decades ago, back in 1982, a newsletter of the extreme-right and anti-Semitic Posse Comitatus warned that “hardcore Patriots” would be imprisoned in FEMA detention camps. Some versions during the militia heyday of the 1990s had urban street gangs like the Bloods and the Crips, rather than domestic or foreign troops, rounding up antigovernment patriots.

Conspiracy theorists often point to a front-page story in The Miami Herald back in 1987 as proof that, in the words of one of them, “FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and thus will head up all operations.” The story reported that between 1982 and 1984, Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North had helped draft a secret contingency plan to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread domestic dissent, or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad. North would later become infamous for his part in the Iran-Contra affair, in which weapons were sold to intermediaries in Iran with the proceeds used to fund antigovernment “contra” rebels in Nicaragua.

The plan was written for President Ronald Reagan in case he ever wanted to take such action. The newspaper also obtained a copy of a FEMA official’s 1982 memo that it reported was similar to a paper then-FEMA director Louis Guiffrida had written 12 years earlier. In the 1970 document, Guiffrida reportedly advocated martial law in case of a national uprising by black militants and the transferring of at least 21 million “American Negroes” to “assembly centers or relocations camps.”

During the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987, Texas congressman Jack Brooks asked North about the newspaper’s findings. But Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Iran-Contra, rapidly silenced him, telling the Democratic congressman he was getting into a “highly sensitive and classified area.” That was further proof of their claims, conspiracy buffs contend.

But FEMA and its alleged plans for freedom-loving Americans are not the only government conspiracies that so-called Patriots and their fellow travelers love to hate. In a related vein, they also point to numerous presidential executive orders that they claim will allow the suspension of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

splcenter.org