Sandy Hook, Part 3: What’s the Legal Position on the Use of Crisis Actors?

Sandy Hook, Part 3: What’s the Legal Position on the Use of Crisis Actors?

For a 2016 drill about a potential plane crash at Sydney, mannequins and cardboard cutouts, as well as live actors, were used    Photos: Cameron Richardson at DailyTelegraph.com.au

by Mary Maxwell, LLB

It’s a sad world we live in today, with all the lying, hoaxing, and surrealism visible everywhere. But we mustn’t give in to it.  The antidote is to talk about reality, and also to call out the instances of fakery.

In this article, I will try to pin down any criminality that exists in the use of so-called crisis actors. But first I’ll inventory the circumstances in which it is OK to play-act.

1. It’s OK to play act a scene in a drama on stage. The audience knows that when they bought a ticket, they were going to see play-acting. Romeo struts onto the stage with Juliet in the balcony doing her monologue. How can anyone complain of being fooled?

2. It’s also OK when an actor poses in a TV ad as a satisfied customer. “I love using this furniture polish on my dining room table.” Quite possibly she has never polished furniture in her life; maybe she does not even have a dining room table, but it’s OK because we have long accepted the custom of a business hiring an actor to show off its product.

3. Now for “puffery.” Someone says, in an ad (or writes it on the packaging), “The sharpest razor in the world.” It is by no means the sharpest in the world but “we all understand” that the promoter could not have measured the sharpness of all the world’s razors. Thus, since we can guess that it’s a meaningless claim, we won’t fuss about it. I was surprised to learn in law school that the promoter won’t be suable for telling lies, as it is considered “mere puffery.”

4. But it’s not so OK if an actor proclaims, in an ad, that he is a doctor (or dresses like one). When he says “This pill is excellent for migraines” the audience absorbs his doctor-like image and the claim about the medication into one message: Doctors have checked the science or have had experience with real patients that made him evaluate the migraine pill positively.

Note: As far as I know, society has not complained that this is wrong.  But it is wrong. The pill manufacturer should get a real doctor to make the statement, giving his real name, too. This isn’t the same as the lady actor who promotes furniture polish.

Crisis Acting

5. Now let’s talk about actors who play a part in a scene that is meant to look authentic and be shown as News. Here, there won’t be a chance for folks watching it to discount it, in the way we’d discount an advertisement as self-serving; it is being presented to us as reality, as history in the making. I say that it’s not OK. So let’s pause to grade different types of crisis-acting scenes:

6. Type A — a publicly announced drill. In the photo shown above, public announcements were made that, on a certain date there would be an exercise to help prepare for a putative plane crash onto the streets of Sydney. Locals were told that 700 persons would be playing the role of injured, bereaved, and spectators. While it was true that fake blood would be dropped on the ground and some “canned” wailing would be heard, no one would go away thinking they had just seen the victims of a real crash. I judge this to be OK.

7. Type B — the practice of making warlike scenes for soldiers, before they have left their base to go to battle, to give them an idea of what they may encounter. For example, they may encounter a soldier whose leg has just been blown off. I judge this to be OK, not because the men were advised of the exercise — maybe they weren’t advised — but because it is beneficial for them to see horrible injuries and then be taught how to cope with it. (The guys playing the role of the legless would be an actor who was a real amputee, or for whom there is a way to hide the leg.)

8. Type C — crisis actors are hired to make it look like some awful thing has occurred, for purposes of scaring people in general. This is not OK and is the crime of assault — the onlookers are assaulted mentally, or could even suffer a heart attack.

9. Type D — crisis actors are hired to play the part of, say, “far-right wingers” or “Muslim jihadists,” creating chaos or murder, for the purpose of having this group suffer damage to its reputation. This is a form of libel and is not OK. It may be charged as a crime of fraud.

10. Type E — which is sometimes intertwined with type D — has the group doing wrong so that new laws can be passed to criminalize certain behavior. The common examples are laws against gun-toting and laws against terrorism. Of course, this is not OK. I have recently heard it referred to as SCAD — state crimes against democracy. That idea needs to be developed — after all, if the result is a lessening of democracy, this (criis acting of a fake event) must somehow be criminal.

Is There a License To Lie?

It appears that persons who are hired to do Type D and E crisis-acting are told that they won’t be — or can’t be — sued or charged with crime. They are protected by “a new law that aids national security.”

Where is that new law?   I don’t believe it exists. On a case-by-case basis, an individual who has been sued or prosecuted may be able to hide behind the national security mantra. This was seen in the 1953 Reynolds case.  Some widows of Air Force men civilians who were in a military plane crash asked for damages. The defendant, the United States military, wormed out of providing Discovery by saying the cause of the (domestic) crash was classified.

As a result, the plaintiffs lost the case. The military, on pretext of doing something for the nation (I say pretext because it turned out later that the national security claim was bogus), was protected.  I believe it is proper for national security to make lying OK, in specific circumstances, but not across the board.

Anyway, the word has passed around that the “new law” that okays crisis acting is contained in the 2012 NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act.   Every two years Congress authorizes all up-coming expenses for the army, navy, air force, and now the space force. Most Congresspersons are eager to vote for the passage of the bill as it contains some pork for their constituents. Often something gets snuck into the NDAA at the last minute (as “amendment”).

In 2012, the bill called for a repeal of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948.  That law had funded US overseas broadcasts such as by the Voice of America and Liberty Radio.  This was just after World War II ended, and the plan was to downtool a bit.  Smith-Mundt forbade the stuff we send overseas from doubling back onto the US audience as propaganda.

The 2012 NDA Act, officially called the Thornberry Act, does not — as some have reported — suddenly allow the government to try to influence public opinion. It only lifts some of the restrictions formerly imposed on the State Department.  Propaganda is still a no-no in America.

My answer to the question “Is there a license to lie?” is: Of course not!  My answer to the question “Is it legal for the US government to propagandize the citizenry in any way, shape, or form?”  is: “Surely you jest.”

The Northwoods Memo “Authorizes” a False Flag against Cuba

We turn now to the declassified Northwoods Memo of 1962.  It describes a false flag operation that the Pentagon would create for the purpose of justifying a US war against Cuba. We would PRETEND that Cubans had hurt us by downing a plane carrying some American passengers. We would go through the motions of attending those passengers’ “funerals.” (You can imagine the lugubrious language to be used, concerning the tragedy of those “deaths.”)  Here is the Northwoods Memo:

From: Gen. Jay Lemnitzer, March 23, 1962. For: The Secretary of Defense …Joint Chiefs of Staff are to indicate brief but precise description of pretexts, which they consider, would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba….

World opinion, and the United States forum should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to peace. a. Sabotage ship in harbor; large fires naphthalene ….

Conduct funerals for mock victims… c. Commence large-scale … military operations….   We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, or other Florida cities and even in Washington…. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated).

We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized… C-46 type aircraft could make cane-burning raids at night. Soviet Bloc incendiaries could be found…

Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft should appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the government of Cuba….  It is possible to create an incident, which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to Jamaica. An aircraft at Eglin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization.

 [It] would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone. At precisely the same time that the aircraft  was  presumably shot down, a submarine or small surface would disburse F-101 parts…. [Emphasis added, of course]

The first thing that has to be said is “All’s fair in love and war.” For Thomas Hobbes writing in 1651 “Force and Fraud are in warre the two Cardinall vertues.” That is, it is just fine and dandy to kill and also to deceive the enemy. Honesty is not appropriate between adversaries.

All people have a big double standard in regard to moral responsibility to others. So it is not surprising that General Lemnitzer said: “We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, or other Florida cities and even in Washington…. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized.”

Wait a minute! A terror campaign in Florida and Washington is going to hurt Americans. Sinking a boatload of civilians is a war crime. And the wounding of refugees means persons already here in the US. And on top of all that, consider the SCAD involved.  Lemnitzer’s plan is a State Crime against Democracy, isn’t it? It is for Congress, not the Executive, to decide that we will go to war.

Non-Disclosure Agreements

Finally, what is the legal position on contracting with someone to commit a crime? Let’s say I hire you to participate as an actor in a false flag event. No one is meant to be harmed, and in fact no one suffers physical harm. But the audience — the nation — will be deceived into thinking a tragedy occurred (a bombing, a shooting spree, etc.).

Assume that I pay you, perhaps handsomely, for your work as an actor. Our contract includes an obligation on your part that you will not tattle. I might even explain this secrecy to you as a requirement for national security.

Maybe I’ll go so far as to instruct you that if you do break the secrecy (“non-disclosure”) agreement, the government might prosecute you for violating national security.

Possibly this sort of thing does go on when crisis actors are being hired. Let this article stand as a warning to crisis actors that there is no such protection for them.  At the very least, contracts are not enforceable in court if the enforcing would assist crime.