The White House Crowd Control Manual

quizzicus writes "The Washington Post writes today about a sensitive White House document detailing how to screen for, silence, and remove protesters who show up at the President's public appearances. Obtained by an ACLU subpoena in the Rank v. Jenkins case, the Presidential Advance Manual (PDF) is dated October 2002. It lays out strategies such as searching audience members at the door for hidden protest material, strategically placing 'rally squads' throughout the crowd to intercept and shout down hecklers, and forcefully removing dissenters who cannot be squelched. The manual advises, however, that staff should 'decide if the solution would cause more negative publicity than if the demonstrators were simply left alone.'"

nothing new here

[downix]

People have spoken of this issue since Bush was even campaigning. Are you surprised that they actually had a manual for it?

Re:How low can you go?

[faloi]

30% is still better than Congress [pollingreport.com] right now. There's room to slide.

tag: redacted

[Nimey]

What's the point of releasing this document if half of it's been censored?

Re:tag: redacted

[Nimey]

Make that rather more than half. Pages 36 to 66 have been censored.

Re:Tagged Republican?

[0xdeadbeef]

Know who else put six million people in a permanent free speech zone?

The But But! corollary: In any discussion of traditional political malfeasance, someone will find a similar but much less egregious offense by someone slightly less conservative and claim equivalence, and therefore, that no offense has taken place at all.

Feel free to add "Democrats" to a gun-grab or MPAA pandering, but the Republicans own this kind of shit, and that ain't ever going to change.

Re:What's really entertaining

[RevHawk]

As a white member of the denomination Barack is part of, and someone who has attended many services, known many of it's clergy (including head pastor, and been friends with many members, I can say the church he belongs to is anything but racist. Yes, they are strongly afro-centric. But white people CAN attend (and are welcomed warmly), as well as join. So before going off, why don't you seek to understand WHAT they say and believe? Or is tossing out insults and soundbytes just too easy and convenient?

Re:What's really entertaining

[xappax]

When the president does it, it's not illegal [landmarkcases.org].

Re:After reading through the manual my opinion is:

[Dausha]

"You gotta wonder...if an open admission that this administration is actively working to squelch the First Amendment rights of American citizens wasn't redacted, what was?"

What the Court said could be redacted, most likely to ensure operations of the Secret Service that safeguard the President are keep off /.

You should remember that in cases like this, the Secret Service exerts a great deal of influence. Their job is to protect the President and First Family (and political candidates in the right context). They are zealous in that endeavor. How they operate should be protected as a national secret to protect the Office of the President (not necessarily the man himself).

What you should ask yourself is this: since this is an "open" President, what about other recent Presidents (e.g. Clinton, Reagan, etc.)? You assume malice, when you could just be reading the way things have been done for a generation. Presidents complain (after they leave office) that they are increasingly isolated from "the real world" by their security detail and staff. This isn't a Bush-only issue.

Re:What's really entertaining

[Anarke_Incarnate]

No, touching someone is technically BATTERY not assault. Assault is the threat of an action. Battery is the unlawful touching of another person.

Before we get into a hissy fit about this..

[N3WBI3]

"BBC NEWS Wednesday, 1 December, 1999, 21:53 GMT Hundreds arrested in Seattle Seattle police have arrested about 200 activists protesting at the world trade talks as they tighten security ahead of a speech by President Bill Clinton." http://www.sbindependent.org/node/898 [sbindependent.org] "According to Little, it was not the Secret Service that expressed concern to the police, but rather a member of Sen. Clinton's political staff." And protesters were removed..

Re:After reading through the manual my opinion is:

[Kjella]

Presumably all the technical details on how they operate? Security zones, agent placement, infiltrator placement (probably in any big crowd), sniper placement, escape route strategy, alert conditions, evacuation conditions, how to handle panics and stampedes and so on. Remember some of that military docs that weren't properly censored? It was basicly full of what to us was trivia on a small section of Iraq, but to them it was classified details on how they operate. It's not necessarily so that the information they were most interested in protecting is the most important for the public.