May 1970: Officials Discuss Civil Disturbance Plans Following Exercise Cable Splicer III

Participants in a California civil disturbance exercise, codenamed Cable Splicer III, hold an “After Action Conference” to discuss the results. The exercise was designed to pracitce Operation Cable Splicer, a regional subplan of the Pentagon’s Operation Garden Plot (see Winter 1967-1968). The participants, which include Army officials, local police officers, and private executives, spend much of the conference pronouncing their disgust for leftists and other activists. According to New Times magazine, speakers at the conference condemn “university administrators who demur at giving the police free rein on the campuses; parents of ‘would-be revolutionaries’ who support their children; and legislators who investigate police actions.” Political demonstrators are referred to as “guerrillas,” “modern day barbarians,” “Brown Shirts,” “kooks,” and “VC.” Los Angeles Police Department Inspector John A. McAllister gives a lecture listing activities that “require police action,” including “loud, boisterous, or obscene” behavior on beaches, “love-in type gatherings in parks where in large numbers they freak out,” disruptions by “noisy and sometimes violent dissidents,” peace marches and rock festivals where “violence is commonplace and sex is unrestrained,” and “campus disruptions—which in fact are nothing more than mini-revolutions.” [New Times, 11/28/1975]