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The Pentagon expects to have 20,000 soldiers inside the U.S. by 2011 to work with state and local officials in the event of a terrorist attack or another disaster, a controversial move that civil liberties groups say violates a federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement, The Washington Post reported in a front-page story Monday.

"The Pentagon's plan calls for three rapid-reaction forces to be ready for emergency response by September 2011," the Washington Post reported. "The first 4,700-person unit, built around an active-duty combat brigade based at Fort Stewart, Ga., was available as of Oct. 1, said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of the U.S. Northern Command.

In October, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request after an Army Times report said the Army deployed an active military unit inside the United States under Northern Command, which was established in 2002 to assist federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

The deployment marked the first time an active unit had been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command.

"The military's deployment within U.S. borders raises critical questions that must be answered," said Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, after the Army Times report was published. "What is the unit's mission? What functions will it perform? And why was it necessary to deploy the unit rather than rely on civilian agencies and personnel and the National Guard? Given the magnitude of the issues at stake, it is imperative that the American people know the truth about this new and unprecedented intrusion of the military in domestic affairs."

"This is a radical departure from separation of civilian law enforcement and military authority, and could, quite possibly, represent a violation of law," said Mike German, ACLU national security policy counsel and former FBI Agent. "Our Founding Fathers understood the threat that a standing army could pose to American liberty. While future generations recognized the need for a strong military to defend against increasingly capable foreign threats, they also passed statutory protections to ensure that the Army could not be turned against the American people. The erosion of these protections should concern every American."            

Gene Healy, the vice president of the Cato Institute, warned of "a creeping militarization" of homeland security by training soldiers for domestic security.

"There's a notion that whenever there's an important problem, that the thing to do is to call in the boys in green," Healy told The Post, "and that's at odds with our long-standing tradition of being wary of the use of standing armies to keep the peace.

The Pentagon says the response units will be subject to the Comitatus Act, "that only 8 percent of their personnel will be responsible for security and that their duties will be to protect the force, not other law enforcement. For decades, the military has assigned larger units to respond to civil disturbances, such as during the Los Angeles riot in 1992," the Post reported.

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