One of Secretary Vance’s recommendations after Detroit was to create a joint service command unit to oversee the mission of controlling civil disturbances when the Army was called to deploy troops by a Governor and the President. Thus was born the Department of Defense’s Department of Civil Disturbance Planning and Operations. DCDPO had an Army Lieutenant General in command, with an Air Force Major General as his Deputy. Immediately prior to my arriving at CIAD, the then classified Department of the Army, Civil Disturbance Plan (Code Name-Garden Plot), was published on September 10, 1968.
When I began my work at CIAD in November 1968, I was given the task of reviewing domestic intelligence relating to the likelihood of the Amy being called again to deploy troops to American cities. With this background in mind, I would be called upon to provide information needed by DCDPO for both planning and operational purposes. My reading diet for this task included classified government documents primarily and voluminously produced by the FBI and to a lesser extent the Army. I found open source, non-classified material was usually of more utility than the classified sources in making judgements about whether and when Regular Army troops needed to be alerted for deployment and possible employment.
By the mid-1970s, I was back in civilian life, and the country had become considerably calmer. I imagine DCDPO withered away with the changing times, and a half-century would pass before the country again saw widespread civil unrest in the early 2020s.
