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'Just Keeping You Safe': The Cheka Checks In

"What are you doing here?" Paul asked the armed stranger who had materialized outside his workplace.

"Just keeping you safe," replied the interloper, who had invaded the property without invitation or explanation.

The visitor was clad in what Paul described as a SWAT-style dark blue jumpsuit, mirrored sunglasses, and a baseball cap. He had arrived in a white SUV equipped with running lights and displaying police markings advertising that it belonged to the Department of Homeland Security.

Through sheer tenacity Paul managed to obtain a business card identifying the visitor as Mark Cerchione.

His title is – take a deep breath – Inspector for Region 10 of the East Command for the Department of Homeland Security's National Protection and Programs Directorate, Federal Protective Service.

This vital human cog in the State's apparatus of public order has an office located at 550 West Fort Street, Room 370 in Boise.

www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w186.html

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Think of it for a second: What kind of government refers to its subdivisions as "Directorates"? That designation is as alien to the American political vocabulary as -- well, the expression "Homeland Security" itself. The term "Directorate" makes a much better fit for the components of the Soviet secret police, whether known as the Cheka, KGB, or FSB.

The subdivision of the American Cheka that employs Mr. Cerchione is the DHS's equivalent of the KGB's Ninth Chief Directorate, which supplied bodyguards for the CPSU's ruling elite and maintained security at significant government installations. In fact, the current version of that Directorate under the FSB (the re-named KGB) has exactly the same title as its American counterpart: Federalnaya Sluzhba Okhrany, which in English is generally rendered "Federal Protective Service."

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One of the hallmarks of an authoritarian government is its fixation on hiding everything it does behind a wall of secrecy while simultaneously monitoring, invading and collecting files on everything its citizenry does. Based on the Francis Bacon aphorism that "knowledge is power," this is the extreme imbalance that renders the ruling class omnipotent and citizens powerless.

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