Joe Miller: Communist East Germany a Model for Border Security

October 19, 2010
Joe Miller: Communist East Germany a Model for Border Security
by Stephanie Condon
CBS News

The United States should borrow ideas from Communist East Germany to keep its borders secure, Alaska's Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller suggested at a town hall Sunday night.

"The first thing that has to be done is secure the border," Miller said when asked about illegal immigration into the United States, Alaskan blogger Steve Aufrecht first reported.

Miller continued, "East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow. Now, obviously, other things were involved. We have the capacity to, as a great nation, secure the border. If East Germany could, we could."

The Tea Party-backed candidate, who is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, explained that he once served at the Fulda Gap, a point on the former East-West German border. East Germany's border troops were given orders to shoot anyone trying to flee East Germany.

Following the same town hall meeting, a reporter for the Alaska Dispatch was handcuffed and detained by private security guards working for Miller while trying to ask Miller a question.

The San Diego Fact Check Blog

My favorite story so far from the new San Diego Fact Check Blog is "The Hills Have No Eyes."



Photo by Sam Hodgson: The federal government says that there are plants here.

The Hills Have No Eyes.
January 20, 2010
by Rob Davis

Statement: The barren, vegetation-free hillsides in Border Field State Park created by construction of a new 3.5-mile section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence are neither barren nor vegetation-free, a top federal border security official said in November.

...Jayson Ahern, the acting chief of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, sent a letter to Congresswoman Susan Davis, who'd raised questions about the fence's environmental impact. Plants were growing, he told Davis. You just can't see them.

"[T]he existing re-vegetated areas are currently dormant and brown ... and, thus, difficult to see from afar," Ahern said.

Determination: Huckster propaganda

Analysis: I saw the hills before and after he made his claim. Both times: No plants. Since he made that false claim, his agency has said it will install a temporary irrigation system to make sure plants do grow.