GARDEN PLOT

Opening

On 10 September 1968, Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C. 20310, issued the Department of the Army Civil Disturbance Plan, nickname GARDEN PLOT. It tells the services how to use federal troops when a disturbance is beyond city and state forces, and says that employment is normally authorized by a presidential directive or an executive order.

The Center of Military History at Fort McNair released it on 24 March 2009. The posted PDF, cover sheet included, is 256 pages and still shows the original Confidential marking.

Timeline

1 February 1968An earlier Army civil disturbance plan of that date already exists. The September plan says it will supersede it on order, not merely by being printed.

8 June 1968Department of Defense Directive 3025.12, Employment of Military Resources in the Event of Civil Disturbances, is the authority the September plan cites for making the Secretary of the Army the executive agent.

The riots that prompted this paperwork are not uses of it. Detroit and Newark burned in July 1967, and federal troops were in Washington after the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, all before the September plan. The February plan existed by the time of the Washington deployment, but no record ties those troops to this nickname.

30 August 1968A memorandum of understanding with the Coast Guard, of this date, is folded into the plan for coastal and inland water patrols.

10 September 1968The plan is effective for planning on receipt and for execution on order. Messages and correspondence on civil-disturbance plans and operations are to include the nickname GARDEN PLOT. The heading's time zone is Greenwich Mean Time.

15 November 1968Air Force Reserve Operations Plan 355-10, on employment of Air Force resources in civil disturbances, carries the same nickname. It is a separate document.

4 May 1971The New York Times reports about 10,000 federal troops in Washington for the May Day protests, backing city police and the D.C. National Guard, without naming the plan. Later accounts say Garden Plot was put into effect that weekend. No order saying so has surfaced.

The cover sheet on the 2009 release lists two later Army editions under the nickname, dated 3 August 1978 and 15 February 1991.

1 May 1992President George H. W. Bush signs Proclamation 6427 and Executive Order 12804 after Governor Pete Wilson reports that violence in and about Los Angeles, and in other districts of California, is beyond state law enforcement, National Guard included. The proclamation follows the blank form in Annex C of the 1968 plan: the governor's report, Chapter 15 of Title 10 of the United States Code, and an order to cease and desist and disperse. The executive order authorizes the Secretary of Defense to use the armed forces and call up National Guard units. Neither paper prints the words GARDEN PLOT.

Major General James D. Delk, military field commander for the California Army National Guard during the riots, described GARDEN PLOT in a 15 November 1995 briefing as the federal response plan. He said its standard was 24 hours to be staged and 36 hours to be on the street, and that the federal troops met it.

Christopher M. Schnaubelt, a brigade intelligence officer in the 40th Infantry Division during the deployment, wrote in Parameters in 1997 that the force at its height was more than 10,000 California National Guard troops, 2,000 active-component soldiers and 1,500 Marines. Major General Marvin L. Covault commanded Joint Task Force-Los Angeles. Delk's briefing puts the active-duty Army brigade with the 7th Infantry Division from Fort Ord, and the Marines, about 1,500, with the force from Camp Pendleton.

9 September 2009. governmentattic.org posts the March release, which also appears at publicintelligence.net. Its cover sheet says the nickname was superseded after 11 September 2001 by U.S. Northern Command Concept Plan 2502, also called CONPLAN 3502. That is the poster's note, not a page of the 1968 plan.

Key figures

The plan names offices, not people. The Secretary of the Army acts as executive agent through the Chief of Staff in the continental United States. Stanley R. Resor held the post that September, and the plan does not carry his signature. A Directorate for Civil Disturbance Planning and Operations, under the Chief of Staff, is the point of contact, and the sample warning order is signed in the name of Lt. Gen. G. R. Mather as its director.

The Attorney General names a senior civilian representative when federal troops are drawn in, and is advised before ground units are pre-positioned. State adjutants general write the state plans. The task force commander keeps liaison with the Justice representative and recommends when the Guard returns to state control and federal troops leave.

For Los Angeles the names on the record are Bush, Wilson, Covault and Delk, whose briefing uses the plan's title for the Justice post in the city: Senior Civilian Representative of the Attorney General.

Physical and documentary trail

The plan has a preface, the basic plan, and annexes for forces, intelligence, operations, logistics, personnel, information, communications, command, planning, reports, and aid short of intervention, plus the Coast Guard memorandum.

The preface states the authority plainly. The Constitution and statutes allow the President to send federal armed forces into the states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and U.S. possessions and territories for three purposes: to aid state authorities at the state's request, to enforce federal law, and to protect the civil rights of citizens within a state. Military resources may also assist short of intervention under conditions the plan sets out.

The situation paragraph leaves primary responsibility for life, property, and law and order with local and state governments. Federal employment "will normally be authorized by a Presidential Directive or an Executive Order directing the Secretary of Defense to restore law and order in a specific state or locality." Three exceptions are written in: a sudden emergency endangering life or federal property, or disrupting federal activities; a local commander's provision of resources at the request of civil authorities, under a separate annex; and protection of federal property and functions.

The mission paragraph is marked unclassified. When the President directs, the Secretary of the Army, through military commanders, employs federal forces "to assist local authorities in the restoration and maintenance of law and order."

The planning assumption is wide. Disturbances needing federal intervention may occur at the same time in up to 25 objective areas, with up to five 2,000-man brigades plus support in each, except Washington, where the figure is 30,000. Any other single area gets a minimum of 2,000 and a maximum of 10,000 plus supporting troops. Continental Army Command is to keep 17 regular brigades available, and the Commandant of the Marine Corps four regular regiments. Twenty-six task force headquarters are to be ready, two of them for Washington. A brigade task force is normally commanded by a major general, a division-size force by a lieutenant general.

Quick-reaction forces of brigade size, one oriented east and one west, have reaction times that are not to be exceeded: 6 hours for a company immediate ready element, 12 for a battalion, 24 for a brigade. Companies are about 150 to 200 soldiers, battalions about 600 to 800, brigades about 1,800 to 2,600.

Annex B is where the prose stops sounding like a movement table. It treats "racial unrest" and dissatisfaction with national policy "as manifested in the anti-draft and anti-Vietnam demonstrations" as factors that might lead to demonstrations and "violent attacks upon the social order." It says those conditions could lead to insurgency "should external subversive forces develop successful control of the situation," and that federal intervention might then be needed to preserve life and property and "maintain normal processes of governments." Its indicators include unemployment, crime, housing and school segregation, lack of jobs, and police brutality.

Annex C contains a blank presidential proclamation and a blank executive order, both citing Chapter 15 of Title 10. The proclamation orders persons engaged in the violence to cease and desist and to disperse and retire peaceably. The order authorizes the Secretary of Defense to use the armed forces, call Army and Air National Guard units to active duty, and order reserve units up under a public law the form expects the 90th Congress to enact.

The letter of instruction requires minimum force and riot-control agents before live ammunition. Deadly force is not authorized for minor offenses such as curfew violations, and shooting "should not normally be used to prevent looting." Civilian police take people into custody when they can. Soldiers may detain when police are absent, and give the police the information for an arrest form. Detention is assigned to civil police, possibly with local Justice personnel. The scan breaks off before that sentence finishes.

One coordinating instruction requires measures against the capture of arms and ammunition, "including the capture, destruction, and compromise of nuclear weapons and components." In context it is about keeping weapons from being taken during a deployment, not about using them.

The classification is Confidential, "because of the sensitivity of content and to protect information regarding plans for employment of United States military resources," with outside dissemination on a need-to-know basis.

Things you might not know

• The president's name is a blank. The proclamation in Annex C leaves the name, state, city and date empty.
• Delk's clock was not the plan's. The 24-hour staging and 36-hour street standard he cited for Los Angeles is not the 1968 table of 6, 12 and 24 hours.
• No warning shots. When soldiers must shoot, the letter of instruction says, they aim to wound rather than to kill.
• Los Angeles already had a command post assigned. The prewired-city list names city police headquarters as the primary task force post and the central jail as the alternate. Newark, Detroit and Chicago are on the same list.
• Commanders were told not to penetrate. The same Annex B bars task force commanders, before or during a disturbance, from penetration and from any collection that would break the counterintelligence regulation it cites.
• The Canal Zone was written out. Disturbances in the Panama Canal Zone stay under section 35 of Title 2 of the Canal Zone Code, 1962.
• The aviation task included a disperser. Continental Army Command was to provide aircraft that could disperse riot-control agent and broadcast by loudspeaker, plus helicopter lift for one 200-man company in each continental army.

Competing explanations

Ordinary support to civil authorities under Chapter 15 of Title 10. The mission requires presidential direction, the verb is assist, and law and order stays with the city and the state until that direction comes. The Confidential stamp covers employment details, not a claim of extraordinary power.

A martial-law blueprint. Writing in that vein pairs this plan with REX 84, a 1984 readiness exercise about emergency detention, which is a different plan. The 1968 text does not suspend the Constitution or vest command in anyone but the President and the chain he directs. Annex B's insurgency estimate is in the document. It is not a grant of authority, and it is why the darker reading has a sentence to point at.

A coup already underway. Execution is "on order" through a directive that names a place, and the task force commander recommends the return to civil control. There is no date of execution, no list of officials to remove and no standing occupation. The 25-city assumption and prewired command posts show scale, which is what a contingency plan is for.

Later life of the case

The checkable text is the 1968 plan. The 1991 edition would have been current for Los Angeles if nothing replaced it, and without its text there is no way to say whether the 1968 reaction times, city list or rules of engagement still applied in 1992.

What 1992 does show is a proclamation and order in the shape of Annex C, and Delk's later account. A Center for Strategic and International Studies account says the Pentagon activated the plan and formed Joint Task Force-Los Angeles. No deployment message carrying the nickname has surfaced. After 2001, the only public word on what replaced it is the cover sheet's note on Concept Plan 2502.

Finding

GARDEN PLOT is the nickname of the Army's civil disturbance plan of 10 September 1968. The text is military support to civil authorities under presidential order, not a secret coup and not a claim of power to set the Constitution aside. The 1992 Los Angeles papers follow its form in public without printing the nickname, and the military tie for that week is Delk's account plus the task force that carried out the President's order.

What still will not resolve: the February 1968 plan this one replaced, the 1978 and 1991 rewrites, and whether any Los Angeles message carried the nickname the 1968 rules required. Annex B's insurgency language is on the page. What anyone later did with it is not.