BLACK HELICOPTER INVASION

Two black helicopters hovered over Ward last week, terrorizing the
townsfolk below. A mass hallucination? Too much ganja? Unfortunately,
no. The unmarked helicopters were real and it was, in fact, a
government mission to spy on the public. It was invasive and scary.

Paranoid Patriots had it right all along: Government really does spy
on the public from black helicopters. Only it's not the United Nations
working toward a "new world order." Instead, it's your friendly
neighborhood cops teaming up with Army troops to look for pot plants.

Holly Hughes was at the park with two small children the afternoon of
Tuesday, Aug. 29, when the helicopters came to town. "I was at the
park and these things came up and started circling," Hughes says. "It
made me want to duck for cover, essentially, and I didn't know if I
was safe to be there with the children. It was a beautiful sunny day
and I looked up at them and there were no markings. They're totally
black just totally ominous looking. It really scared me. They were
very low." Hughes tried to calm the frightened children and distract
them from the helicopters. But they were too close, too loud and too
scary for the fun to go on. She took the kids to the library for cover.

"You're playing, you're having a good time, and every time they took a
turn the blades did this loud 'thud, thud, thud, thud' noise, and it
sounded like gunfire," Hughes says. "They just kept going in circles
and circles for hours. It was a real invasion of privacy."

Hovering Hueys

The Bell "Huey" helicopters belong to the Colorado Army National
Guard, stationed at Buckley Air National Guard Base in Denver. They
arrived at the Boulder Airport the morning of Aug. 29 to pick up two
sheriff's detectives from the Boulder County Drug Task Force.

Detective Joe Burtness rode in a "black helicopter" and says it was
actually a very dark brown. The helicopters, each carrying a
detective, flew over Lafayette, the immediate Boulder Airport
vicinity, Nederland and Ward a sleepy village of mountaineers who've
left civilization for serenity and peace.

Flying at low altitude, the detectives examined fields, private yards
and even front and back porches for marijuana plants. It was Det.
Burtness's first helicopter drug mission. He was merely following
orders, and says it was fun. "I saw a black bear on the back side of
one of the Flatirons," Burtness says.

And he saw pot with his naked eye. He found plants growing in a field
near Lafayette and in another field near the airport. Drug Task Force
agents on the ground harvested and destroyed the plants. Authorities
have no idea who was growing them. "The National Guard routinely does
these fly-overs in cooperation with local law enforcement," says Det.
Bob Whitson, supervisor of the Boulder County Drug Task Force. "In
rural areas, particularly in eastern Colorado, it's fairly common to
find that someone has gone into the middle of an irrigated corn field
and cleared space to grow marijuana plants. The farmer usually doesn't
know it's there, because you can only see it from the air."

While hovering over Ward, Burtness spotted pot plants growing on a
family's front porch. He doesn't know how closely the helicopter was
to the house, but again he spotted plants without visual aids.
Burtness radioed sheriff's deputies on the ground and the two choppers
hovered while awaiting their arrival.

"We hovered closely enough that we'd see it if someone tried to grab
the plants before the ground crew arrived," Burtness says. Deputies
pulled up in a van and approached the home to make contact with the
occupant. They confiscated 19 plants from the front and back porches.

"The owner was very cooperative with us, and he allowed us to go into
the residence," Det. Burtness says. "We didn't have a warrant, and in
those situations we always make sure the occupant knows it's voluntary
to let us in." Inside the house, officers confiscated eight more
plants, bringing the total to 27. Occupants of the home told officers
the plants were strictly for personal use.

"That's what they were claiming, and we have no information they were
distributing or planning to distribute," says Whitson, adding that
charges against the occupants are pending.

"Can you believe they send up armed men in helicopters to go after
someone's personal head stash?" said a Ward resident at the Glacier
Gateway General Store. "It seems like a lot of taxpayer expense to
confiscate a few marijuana plants."

Un-American Mission

Worse than that, it's yet another example of government agencies using
military equipment and personnel against American citizens rather than
foreign aggressors. The practice is exactly what the Posse Comitatus
Act was intended to forbid. In the mid-1870s, in response to the
military presence in southern States during the Reconstruction Era,
Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act to prohibit the use of the
Army in civilian law enforcement. The Act embodies the traditional
American principle of separating civilian and military authority.

"Since the writing of the Declaration of Independence, Americans have
mistrusted standing armies and have seen them as instruments of
oppression and tyranny," says an article in the law review of
Washington University in St. Louis. "Over time, the military has
increased its esteem among the populace, but it has always been held
separate from civilian government and limited to its focused goal of
military preparedness and national security... In the last 15 years,
Congress has deliberately eroded this principle by involving the
military in drug interdiction. This erosion will continue unless
Congress renews the Posse Comitatus Act's principle to preserve the
necessary and traditional separation of civilian and military
authority." Some examples of the erosion that's turning our cops and
military personnel into soldiers at war with the American public: In
1981 and 1989, Congressional amendments established a partial drug
exception to the Posse Comitatus Act to facilitate the drug war, and
more specifically the National Guard's marijuana eradication program.

The Supreme Court Decision in Oliver v. United States (1984) allows
law enforcement to trespass on "open fields" without probable cause or
search warrants. As a result, rural America is barraged by low-level
flights and landings of dark helicopters loaded with camouflaged men
with machine guns.

In 1987 President Reagan ordered the Secretary of Defense and the
Attorney General to provide local law enforcement with briefings about
available Department of Defense assistance. A special office was
established to provide military assistance to civilian law
enforcement.

In 1989 Congress designated the Department of Defense as the "single
lead agency" in drug interdiction efforts. In 1993 Congress ordered
the Department of Defense to sell military surplus to state and local
law enforcement for use in counter-drug activities. Within one week of
the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, President
Clinton proposed an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act to allow
military aid to civilian authorities in investigations involving
"weapons of mass destruction."

In 1996 presidential candidate Bob Dole pledged to increase the role
of the military in the drug war, and candidate Lamar Alexander
proposed replacing the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the
Border Patrol with a new branch of the armed forces.

Show Of Force

The political push to win a needless drug war and to protect Americans
from domestic terrorism is clearly done at the cost of freedom. Are we
safer and better off as a society because helicopter crews found some
pot plants in Ward?

"Having helicopters flying over, doing this scary thing and invading
our privacy, is way worse than the thought of someone growing illegal
plants on a front porch in my neighborhood," says Hughes.

No one, including the cops, is terribly worried about pot plants on
private property in Ward. The plants were merely an excuse for police
and soldiers to send a message of zero tolerance with a show of force
against citizens. Armies, such as the Colorado Army National Guard,
are trained to kill enemies. They should have little in common with
cops, who are paid to keep peace.

Last week, Ward was at peace. Then black helicopters arrived, alarming
the villagers. Right wing extremists were right all along. Black
helicopters do spy on us. And governments as seen throughout history
eventually turn on the public.