Military police contemplated deploying a type of military heat ray against Washington D.C. protesters during the June 1 protest in which Trump now-infamously posed for a photo in front of a church in Lafayette Square while holding a bible.
Instead, federal police officers cleared the area using smoke and tear gas. However, NPR reports that just hours before doing so, the lead military police officer in the Department of Defense for the D.C. region asked the D.C. National Guard if they were in possession of a military heat ray that could be used against demonstrators.
In written testimony to the House, Major Adam DeMarco of the D.C. National Guard said that he was copied on an email from the Provost Marshal of Joint Force Headquarters National Capital Region who was looking for a piece of equipment called the Active Denial System (ADS) and another called a long-range acoustic device (LRAD), a type of sound cannon.
The military created the ADS around 20 years ago to use when disbanding crowds, but there have been doubts about its utility. NPR writes that the device employs “millimeter wave technology to essentially heat the skin of people targeted by its invisible ray.”
In his written response, DeMarco directly cited an email that he said was written by the Provost Marshal. “ADS can provide our troops a capability they currently do not have, the ability to reach out and engage potential adversaries at distances well beyond small arms range, and in a safe, effective, and non-lethal manner," the email read, according to DeMarco.
The email added that the ADS can point a beam toward a group, which “provides a sensation of intense heat on the surface of the skin," to produce an effect that is "overwhelming, causing an immediate repel response by the targeted individual.”
In late August, The New York Times revealed that in 2018, U.S. border officials were contemplating whether to use the “heat ray” on migrants in the weeks before that year’s election. The outlet writes that Kirstjen Nielsen, who was the Secretary of Homeland Security at the time, told an aide that she "would not authorize the use of such a device, and that it should never be brought up again in her presence.”
However, DeMarco said it was something the DOD’s lead military police officer thought was still an option on the morning of June 1. DeMarco wrote in his testimony that he responded around a half-hour later that “the D.C. National Guard was not in possession of either an LRAD or an ADS.”
The Trump administration has come under fire for the methods it used to disperse crowds that day, one of which was believed to be a form of tear gas.
