Martial Law is Here!
By Ed Hohmann
Infowars.com Exclusive

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While everyone has been wondering what excuse the Federal Government will use to declare Martial Law, we have been living under it. For years, right here in Texas, US Army soldiers have been performing civilian law enforcement duties off base.

According to a US Army SWAT Entry Team Leader with the 38^th MP unit at Fort Hood, the City of Killeen has been using the Fort Hood SWAT Team to serve warrants and arrest civilians for at least the past two years. Apparently, Killeen does not have a SWAT Team of its own, so the city uses US Army soldiers instead. The Army, for its part, seems only too happy to oblige.

All of this came to light Wednesday morning when Mike Hanson, cameraman for documentary film maker Alex Jones, spotted a bus being searched on a blocked-off stretch of the feeder road along I-35 in the middle of Temple. Mike was on his way to Waco with a load of building materials for the new Mount Carmel Chapel. With his camera ever at the ready, Mike got off at the next exit and swung back around to film the incident. Other local media were already at the scene of what appeared to be an ordinary police search.

The subject of the search was a Greyhound bus that was stopped at 5:00 AM on its way from Dallas to San Antonio in response to a bomb threat. Lt. Best, the Temple police officer responsible for the media, immediately approached Mike and informed him that this was a military operation being conducted by the EOD group from Ft. Hood. Lt. Best requested that Mike not film the faces of the soldiers performing the search, but film them from the back only. Mike said that we did not have secret military police in this country, and wanted an explanation as to why these soldiers could not be filmed. Lt. Best responded, "They do stuff like this and they just don’t want the people to know what they’ve done."

Lt. Best outlined the search plan to Mike. First, the bus had been cleared by a bomb-sniffing dog and the passengers had been removed to a remote location. Currently, the passengers were being returned in small groups to retrieve their belongings to be searched. Then, the bus would be searched a final time, and the passengers would be free to board the bus and continue on their journey from Dallas to San Antonio.

Mike expressed his concern about the use of secret military units to perform this search, referring to the Delta Force exercises in South Texas earlier this year. Lt. Best’s response was, "These guys aren’t Delta Force. We all know these guys, we work with them all the time." Lt. Best refused to elaborate further about the relationship between the Temple Police Department and the US Army because "I don’t like how you do your business." What the lieutenant did not like was that Mike was questioning the extraordinary restrictions that were being placed on the media coverage, rather than meekly bowing in acceptance.

The Waco office of the Texas Department of Public Safety originally notified the Temple police department of the bomb threat. The Texas Department of Public Safety has a topnotch bomb disposal unit, yet they were not called out. Why were Army soldiers searching the passenger’s belongings? The local police should have performed this duty. The traveling public is not supposed to be stopped and searched by soldiers. That is what happens in third world countries. The US Army has no authority over the civilians. On the contrary, the United States Constitution places the Army under civilian control. Additionally, the Posse Commitatus Act (18USC1385) prohibits military personnel from executing local, state, or federal laws except as the Constitution or act of Congress authorizes.

Two blocks away from the bus, hidden in some woods was a staging area. As Mike was filming, two black Blackhawk helicopters rose above the treetops and flew away. According to US Army official sources, unmarked black helicopters are only used by Special Forces. Were the soldiers that hid their faces part of a Special Forces unit? If so, what unit? Why were they searching a Greyhound bus in Temple, Texas?

When Mike arrived at the scene in Temple, Alex Jones was just preparing for his Genesis Communications Network broadcast. Mike called in on the hotline and Alex started off his show with a live on-the-scene report from Mike. Listeners were able to follow the story as it unfolded. This was the first public broadcast reporting the use of US Army personnel engaging in an actual civilian law enforcement action. It is important to note that none of the other media present mentioned the military presence in their reports. The article in the Temple Telegraph by Nicole Edwards only mentions police, emergency personnel, and bomb detection experts.

Over the past several years, the Federal Government has been gradually setting the up the conditions for Martial Law. According to Alex Jones, we are currently in Stage 3 (on a scale of 1 to 10) of the implementation of Martial Law. Martial Law is being disguised under a variety of programs with innocuous sounding names, such as "Resource Sharing", in order to deflect criticism and keep the general populace ignorant of the actual situation.

Alex Jones’ documentary Police State 2000 shows actual US military training exercises being trained to arrest civilians and incarcerate them in concentration camps. For realism, paid actors are used to play the civilians, shouting, "You can’t do this to me! I am an American!" A resident of Hebron, Maryland was ordered by Marines to turn off his camera on a public street when he tried to film them.

There are several serious questions that need to be answered regarding the Temple bus search:

• Who called in the Army to perform this search?
• Why was the Texas DPS bomb disposal unit not called?
• Who were the soldiers in the unmarked car that were hiding their faces?
• Why were US Army soldiers in uniform hiding their identity?
• Why was a bus with a suspected bomb on board stopped at a gas station in a populated area?
• Was this a training exercise that inconvenienced unwitting, fare-paying travelers for nine hours?
• Was this a search for biochemical agents or even a suitcase nuke?

Certainly, this was not an ordinary response to a real bomb threat. At the very least, searching a Greyhound bus alongside a major freeway in a populated area on the busiest traveling day of the year served as a very visible desensitization exercise. Everyone driving through Temple that day could see the military working hand-in-hand with the local police. The absence of publicity in the local media gives the impression that this is a normal, everyday circumstance; nothing to worry about.

The Temple police handed Mike a letter that they had received from the Department of the Army, 47^th Ordnance Company (EOD), 52^nd Ordnance Group (EOD), Fort Hood, Texas. The letter is dated February 22, 1999, and it is addressed to local agencies. It states,

Although this letter sounds very reasonable and appears to be concerned with protecting public safety, it is important to note the exceptions and conditions it lists. These are actually the open doors leading to a military police state here in America.

Alex Jones has confirmed with a second MP, Sergeant Mark Waxler, at the Fort Hood MP office that the Special Response Team does indeed routinely serve civilian arrest warrants and executes search warrants off base.

On the day after the Temple bus search, Thanksgiving Day 1999, a Military Policeman shot and killed a civilian outside of Fort Bragg, North Carolina during a normal traffic stop. According to hospital sources, the victim, who was a passenger in a car that contained two small children, was shot several times in the back. Although the shooting was carried as a major story in the Fayetteville Observer, these details were not mentioned.

These recent events are the consequences of legislation such as Senate Bill 1059, Sections 1067 and 1084, and US Code Title 50 Chapter 32 Section 1520A. As stated in an October 7, 1999 article on the CNN website about the new US Joint Forces Command for dealing with domestic situations, "Pentagon officials say the idea behind the change is to give a president options short of martial law to deal with domestic crises."

While covering this breaking story on his radio broadcast, Alex Jones said, "I’ve been warning people for years not to look for a Hollywood-like proclamation from the Federal Government announcing martial law; look for incrementalism."

This is not speculation about the future, it is the reality of today, and it is the framework for America’s future unless the Constitution and the Bill of Rights can be restored.