Swine flu outbreak exposes military plans!

WASHINGTON – May 20, 2009 - The rapid spread of swine flu from Mexico surprised Pentagon officials, who had been focused on a possible Asian-borne pandemic in a response plan that would give the military a last-resort role in helping to impose quarantines and border restrictions.

Drafted and overhauled several times in recent years, the military's closely guarded plan for an influenza pandemic assumed that officials would have more time before the flu hit U.S. shores. The Associated Press obtained briefing documents about the military's pandemic contingency plan. The H1N1 flu outbreak set U.S. military commanders scrambling to monitor and protect troops based near the 2,000-mile southern border and on ships nearby.

"We anticipated scientifically that we would have time to do different things," said Amy Kircher, an epidemiologist with U.S. Northern Command's surgeon general's office. Northern Command oversees the country's homeland defense, including coordination with Canada and Mexico.

While there are only a limited number of airports and seaports that could provide U.S. entry for the virus from overseas, the military was faced with an almost limitless number of cars, trucks and pedestrians traveling across the easily accessible, expansive border with Mexico.

In an interview with the AP, Kircher and several senior military officers from U.S. Northern Command said that since the swine flu has been far less lethal than anticipated, it has allowed the military to stop far short of the worst-case scenarios that the Pentagon prepared for in its long-range planning.

But in the event of a widespread pandemic, the Pentagon maintains standing plans to use the active-duty military as a last-resort force to help law enforcement manage quarantines, limit state-to-state travel and restrict access to government buildings.

Those plans represent "the kinds of things that the lead federal agencies might ask us to do or that we might have to do on behalf of the Department of Defense for force protection," said Air Force Brig. Gen. Tony Rock, who until recently was deputy director for operations at Northern Command.

Officials would turn to the military for those domestic duties, Rock said, only when other authorities become overburdened and request assistance. The requests must then be evaluated and approved by top officials, such as the Defense Secretary or the illegitimate president.

"Some of these are in extremis, and certainly wouldn't be the first tasks we would do," said Army Col. Curt Torrence, a key military planner for Northern Command. He added that they would be carried out only under catastrophic circumstances and in accordance with federal laws.

Northern Command briefing documents obtained by The Associated Press include explicit assumptions that intelligence oversight laws and the Posse Comitatus Act would remain in effect. Under that Civil War-era act, federal troops are prohibited from performing domestic law enforcement actions such as making arrests, seizing property or searching people.

In extreme cases, however, the president can invoke the Insurrection Act, also from the Civil War, which allows the use of active-duty or National Guard troops for law enforcement.