Department of Defense Directive 1404.10

In early 2009, Alex Jones was desperately trying to misrepresent things to convince his audience that newly-inaugurated President Barack Obama was working swiftly to force the general public into shock troops to implement his tyranny. Years later, it is clear that Obama was not doing this, and in effect, this was an entirely fraudulent perception that Alex himself was working hard to create.

One of the pieces of his evidence is the DoD Directive 1404.10. Here is a clip from his March 20, 2009 show where he discusses the directive:

According to Alex, this directive says that “management retains the authority to direct and assign civilian employees, either voluntarily, involuntarily, or on an unexpected basis to accomplish the DoD mission.” This is fair enough. The report does technically contain those words, but Alex is depriving them of any context to make them mean something completely different than they do.

Alex uses this, along with lies about House Resolution 1388 (or as Alex calls it, “the Mandatory Service Bill”) to create the perception that, any day now, Obama is going to force you or your children into servitude for the federal government. Nothing in any of his supposed proof says anything even close to such a thing.

The first problem with Alex’s take on the DoD directive is that he doesn’t acknowledge that this is talking about “civilian employees” of the Department of Defense. The word “civilian” is included because many of the people employed by the DoD are employed in enlisted positions, and there are different rules for the different classifications of employees. This is clearly indicated in the Glossary section on page 19 of the report:

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This is not saying that the Department of Defense is giving itself the authority to conscript any citizen of the USA to engage in whatever missions they want them to go on, it is just saying that people in management positions have the authority to reassign DoD employees to fit the needs of the DoD.

The section just before the part Alex quotes reads:

“DoD civilian employees in E-E or NCE positions may be directed to accept deployment requirements of the position. However, whenever possible, the DoD Civilian Expeditionary Workforce will be asked to serve expeditionary requirements voluntarily. ”

E-E means “Emergency Essential” and NCE means “Non-Combat Essential” (which is to say a position that is essential, but does not involve combat). This entire section is about how, as it relates to essential positions within the Department of Defense, the management reserves the right to reorganize their staff as necessary, and will try their best to make sure everyone is in a position they want to be in. That’s pretty much all it’s saying.

It is true that the Civilian Expeditionary Workforce, or CEW, does accept volunteers, but these volunteers are under no expectation to accept a “mission” that they do not feel comfortable with. From their own FAQ page, in response to the question, “As a volunteer, are there any negative consequences if I must decline an opportunity?”: “As an employee volunteer, you cannot be directed to serve an expeditionary requirement.”

There is extensive training and rigid requirements that go into people being deemed eligible for one of these positions, and they are pretty high paying, so the very idea that this is some kind of program where the government is going to encroach on citizen’s rights and force them to enlist is ludicrous.

The thing that adds extra dishonesty to this story Alex is telling is that he and his crew are pretending that this is a new thing that Obama is announcing.

Steve Watson’s article about the directive starts: “The Defense Department has established a "civilian expeditionary workforce" that will see American civilians trained and equipped to deploy overseas in support of worldwide military missions.”

Problem is, DoD Directive 1404.10 is really just an updating of an already existing directive. Here is the version from 1992, which still explicitly includes nearly identical language about deployment of civilian employees of the Department of Defense. Also, this was from April 1992, so it’s not like Alex can just yell “Bill Clinton” and pretend he still has a point.

Also, here is a Department of Defense revision to their manual regarding employees, in this case, civilian employees serving overseas. It is from 1988.

Ultimately, this story serves as yet another time that Alex Jones and his team have taken something out of context to completely lie about what it means. This time, it is absolutely knowingly pretending they have no idea what “civilian” means when it’s being used in a Department of Defense document.

On the scale of Intentional Misrepresentations, we rate this one "Pathetic.”