In France in 2015, after the coordinated attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, the government of Fran?ois Hollande declared a “state of emergency” that banned political protests. I was in France a week after those horrific events and it was striking that, though the attackers had targeted a concert, a football stadium, restaurants, and other emblems of daily Parisian life, it was only outdoor political activity that was not permitted. Large concerts, Christmas markets, and sporting events—the sorts of places that were likely targets for further attacks—were all free to carry on as usual.
In the months that followed, the state-of-emergency decree was extended again and again—until it had been in place for well over a year. It is currently set to remain in effect until at least July 2017—the new normal. And this took place under a center-left government in a country with a long tradition of disruptive strikes and protests. One would have to be naive to imagine that Donald Trump and Mike Pence wouldn’t immediately seize on any attack in the USA to go much further down that same road. We should be prepared for security shocks to be exploited as excuses to increase the rounding up and incarceration of large numbers of people from the communities this administration is already targeting: Latino immigrants, Muslims, Black Lives Matter organizers, climate activists. It’s all possible. And, in the name of freeing the hands of law enforcement officials, Sessions would have his excuse to do away with federal oversight of state and local police.
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that, in the aftermath of an attack, judges would show the same courage in standing up to Trump as they did immediately after his inauguration. As much as they position themselves as neutral arbiters, courts are not immune to public hysteria. And there is no doubt that the President would seize on any domestic terrorist attack to blame the courts. He made this abundantly clear when he tweeted, after his first travel ban was struck down: “Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system.”
The Dark Prince Is Back
Trump has made no secret of his interest in torture. “Torture works,” he said on the campaign, “only a stupid person would say it doesn’t work.” He also pledged to fill up Guantanamo with new “bad dudes, believe me, we’re gonna load it up.”
Legally, this won’t be easy. Ever since the George W. Bush administration found loopholes it could exploit to take a turn toward sadism, the US courts have made it harder for future administrations to follow suit, as has the Senate, which passed an amendment in 2015 clearly stating that all interrogation techniques must follow the Army Field Manual.
Still, if the country found itself in the grip of a large-enough security crisis, there is no reason to expect that a Republican-controlled House and Senate would refuse the White House the powers it demanded. And Mike Pompeo, Trump’s CIA director, has indicated an alarming openness to going backward. After originally stating unequivocally in his confirmation hearing that he would not allow torture tactics to return, he followed up with an addendum: “If experts believed current law was an impediment to gathering vital intelligence to protect the country, I would want to understand such impediments and whether any recommendations were appropriate for changing current law.” He has also called for a reversal of the limited restrictions on digital surveillance put in place after Edward Snowden’s revelations.
Even without the blessing of Congress or the CIA, an administration that is determined to violate the law can, unfortunately, find a way. The likeliest route for Trump is to outsource this dirty work to private contractors. None other than Blackwater founder Erik Prince (who happens to be the brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos) has been counseling Trump behind the scenes. Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, who wrote an award-winning book on Blackwater, reports that Prince not only donated $100,000 to a Trump-friendly political action committee but actively advised the transition team “on matters related to intelligence and defense, including weighing in on candidates for the Defense and State departments.” And in April, the Washington Post published a report revealing that
the United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials. The meeting took place around Jan. 11—nine days before Trump’s inauguration—in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said.
Prince, the Post reported, “presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump.” Through a spokesperson, Prince described the account as “a complete fabrication. The meeting had nothing to do with President Trump.”
Prince’s appearance in all this is alarming for reasons that go well beyond the revelation of yet another link between the Trump team and Russia. In the wake of a long line of lawsuits and investigations (in 2014, a US federal jury found four Blackwater employees guilty on charges including first-degree murder in a massacre in Baghdad’s Nisour Square that left seventeen people dead), Prince attempted to rename Blackwater and finally sold the company. He now has a new firm: Frontier Services Group. He is getting in on the anti-immigrant frenzy sweeping the globe, pitching the company as the most efficient way to keep migrants from successfully crossing borders. In Europe, he makes the case that by paying his company to work in Libya, countries can “secure land borders and so prevent migrants from reaching the Mediterranean.” Writing in the Financial Times in early 2017, Prince explained that if his plan were implemented, “there would be nowhere for migrant smugglers to hide: they can be detected, detained and handled using a mixture of air and ground operations”—all private, all for-profit.
Prince’s resurfacing is a reminder that there are many backdoor ways around constitutional practices. And Trump, as well as other leaders, can turn to companies like his for surveillance, interrogation, and massively ramped-up border controls.
No, They Don’t Need to Plan It