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Re: Use of Deadly Force

Since posting my recent analysis of the alleged use of deadly force by
the Cammo Dudes outside the military border at Groom Lake
(http://www.ufomind.com/area51/list/1997/jul/a17-003.shtml), I have
received some interesting mail from readers bringing up the need for
further clarification on this subject.

One correspondent informed me that state laws are not valid on military
lands, and that, in my previous posting, I was not making a sufficiently
clear distinction between military law and civilian law, which have
little in common with each other.  As an ex-military man, he points out
that at highly sensitive military installations, military personnel are
authorized to aim their guns at non-violent intruders and shoot them if
they breathe funny.  Thus, wandering onto a secure military facility is
NOT to be equated with simple trespassing of the civilian variety.  One
would, by doing the former, presumably be violating some
fearsome-sounding piece of military law which has no equivalent on the
civilian books, and one could perhaps be legally assaulted or killed for
doing it.  As I pointed out in my previous posting, military personnel
operating on military property do indeed have broader authority to use
deadly force than does a private citizen on civilian land, although I
have little specific knowledge regarding the extent of that sort of
military authority.  On civilian land, deputized law enforcement
officers have slightly broader deadly-force powers than do private
citizens, although those powers are very limited, and are not
necessarily the same as in the military case.  What makes Area 51
interesting is that, as far as we know, most of the Cammo Dudes are
neither military personnel nor deputized law enforcement officers.  They
appear to be civilian contractors who wear no insignia of authority,
drive around in unmarked cars both inside and outside the border, and
refuse to say for whom they work.  What is equally interesting is that
if Mr. Vogtís unpleasant encounter with the Cammo Dudes
(http://www.ufomind.com/area51/testimonials/vogt.txt) occurred, as
claimed, on civilian land, then the Dudes had absolutely no legal
authority (that I am aware of) to threaten him at gunpoint, regardless
of whatever powers they might possess inside the border.  Unfortunately,
as another correspondent points out, if you are travelling outside the
border and the Cammo Dudes ambush you and point their guns at you when
you are posing no immediate threat to them, there really isnít much you
can do about it, even though they are breaking the laws of the State of
Nevada by acting this way.  The only enforcer of state law in Lincoln
County is the sheriff, who is, of course, in cahoots with the Cammo
Dudes.  However, I do wish to give our friends in cammo a bit of credit
here.  I think one reason why the Dudes usually seem to run away from
civilians outside the border is to avoid getting into a potentially ugly
confrontation on civilian land, where they have no authority.

The purely hypothetical scenario of using a gun to defend yourself
against armed assault by a Cammo Dude on public land was presented in
the previous posting merely as a thought-experiment to illustrate some
basic precepts of civilian legal doctrine and to point out that the
Cammo Dudes who ambushed Mr. Vogt at gunpoint outside the border were
probably committing a very serious criminal offense under civilian
jurisdiction, if the story is completely accurate.  As I stated
previously, it would be unwise to offer armed resistance in such a
situation, even if you think you are on civilian land and you believe
the law to be on your side.  My best guess is that a lone hiker who
violently resists the Cammo Dudes in the middle of the desert is likely
to be killed.  Either he will be killed by the Dudes against whom he is
offering immediate armed resistance, or by their compatriots who will
pursue him in their jeeps, or by men in unmarked helicopters armed with
machine guns.  Question:  Would the Dudes then bury their victim in an
unmarked grave, or would they cremate him on-base in one of those
toxic-waste burn ditches?

While my previous posting quite thoroughly deals with the legal and
moral priciples governing armed confrontations on civilian land,  what
remains highly unclear to me is the exact nature of the authority the
Dudes possess while operating on USAF land inside the border.  I donít
know the official rules regarding private security contractors operating
on military property.  Are they identical to the rules governing
military personnel operating on military land?  Anyone who has such
information is invited to either post it or e-mail it to me.  It would
appear that the Cammo Dudes do not possess the full authority of
military policemen, because they canít perform arrests inside the
border.  Note that intruders are handed over to the Lincoln County
Sheriffís deputies, who do the actual arresting.  For someone to have
legal authority to initiate deadly force against peaceful
border-crossers while lacking the authority to arrest them seems a bit
odd, but apparently this is the case (although one correspondent
suggested, plausibly, that maybe the Dudes really are MPs or secret
sheriffís deputies who try to avoid exercising their powers so they
wonít have to appear in court or submit publicly-inspectable reports).
Things are made even more interesting by the complete lack of any
physical barrier, such as a fence or a wall, at the Groom Lake military
border, plus the fact that the boundary is not clearly marked
everywhere.  At all other secure military installations that Iíve read
about, one would have to make a deliberate effort to penetrate the
boundary, such as using bolt-cutters to break through a chain-link
fence, and an intruder should therefore not be surprised to find himself
staring down the barrel of a gun (presumably wielded by a uniformed
military guard).  At Groom Lake, however, a hiker could easily wander
across the border without knowing it.  One would think that any guard
who threatens such a wanderer with deadly force ought to be wearing
proper military insignia and should clearly identify himself as an
authorized military person.  Since this is not what appears to happen at
Groom Lake, we have a strange situation.  It seems that unidentified
civilian contractors displaying no symbols of authority can legally
assault you with deadly weapons just because you hiked across an
invisible line in the middle of the desert.  This seems kind of
un-American to me, but we may presume that there exists somewhere an
obscure peice of military law making it legal.  I, for one, am curious
to see the text of that law.

The crucial point I wish to make is that aiming a gun at another human
being is very serious business, no matter where it occurs.  The laws
(both civilian and military) governing such actions ought to be more
clearly undersood, and blatant violations of the law on civilian land
(such as the incident described by Mr. Vogt) should be investigated.
What we have with the Cammo Dudes is a fascinating gray area.  My main
reason for doing all this writing is to shed what little light I can on
the grayness and to invite others to shed more light on it.  Perhaps we
can get the Air Force to explain exactly what rules they have laid down
for the Cammo Dudes, and from what section of the U.S. Code they derive
the legal authority to make such rules.

Nelson Clayton
e-mail: nclayton@ix.netcom.com