US Continuity of Govt exercise 19 June 06

by **wintler** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 8:17 am

As a poster on oildrum.com said, they've been practicing this stuff for decades, but this sounds like a big'un. The WaPo article has a little history on CoG and plays heavy ion the 'inept govt' pedal, posting really to see if anyone knows more, or more occurs (as a Skip my interest is obviously limited). <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/02/AR2006060201410.html">www.washingtonpost.com/wp...01410.html</a> BACK TO THE BUNKER By William M. Arkin Sunday, June 4, 2006; Page B01 On Monday, June 19, about 4,000 government workers representing more than 50 federal agencies from the State Department to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will say goodbye to their families and set off for dozens of classified emergency facilities stretching from the Maryland and Virginia suburbs to the foothills of the Alleghenies. They will take to the bunkers in an "evacuation" that my sources describe as the largest "continuity of government" exercise ever conducted, a drill intended to prepare the U.S. government for an event even more catastrophic than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The exercise is the latest manifestation of an obsession with government survival that has been a hallmark of the Bush administration since 9/11, a focus of enormous and often absurd time, money and effort that has come to echo the worst follies of the Cold War. The vast secret operation has updated the duck-and-cover scenarios of the 1950s with state-of-the-art technology -- alerts and updates delivered by pager and PDA, wireless priority service, video teleconferencing, remote backups -- to ensure that "essential" government functions continue undisrupted should a terrorist's nuclear bomb go off in downtown Washington. But for all the BlackBerry culture, the outcome is still old-fashioned black and white: We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on alternate facilities, data warehouses and communications, yet no one can really foretell what would happen to the leadership and functioning of the federal government in a catastrophe. After 9/11, The Washington Post reported that President Bush had set up a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work outside Washington on a rotating basis to ensure the continuity of national security. Since then, a program once focused on presidential succession and civilian control of U.S. nuclear weapons has been expanded to encompass the entire government. From the Department of Education to the Small Business Administration to the National Archives, every department and agency is now required to plan for continuity outside Washington. Yet according to scores of documents I've obtained and interviews with half a dozen sources, there's no greater confidence today that essential services would be maintained in a disaster. And no one really knows how an evacuation would even be physically possible. Moreover, since 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, the definition of what constitutes an "essential" government function has been expanded so ridiculously beyond core national security functions -- do we really need patent and trademark processing in the middle of a nuclear holocaust? -- that the term has become meaningless. The intent of the government effort may be laudable, even necessary, but a hyper-centralized approach based on the Cold War model of evacuations and bunkering makes it practically worthless. That the continuity program is so poorly conceived, and poorly run, should come as no surprise. That's because the same Federal Emergency Management Agency that failed New Orleans after Katrina, an agency that a Senate investigating committee has pronounced "in shambles and beyond repair," is in charge of this enormous effort to plan for the U.S. government's survival. Continuity programs began in the early 1950s, when the threat of nuclear war moved the administration of President Harry S. Truman to begin planning for emergency government functions and civil defense. Evacuation bunkers were built, and an incredibly complex and secretive shadow government program was created. At its height, the grand era of continuity boasted the fully operational Mount Weather, a civilian bunker built along the crest of Virginia's Blue Ridge, to which most agency heads would evacuate; the Greenbrier hotel complex and bunker in West Virginia, where Congress would shelter; and Raven Rock, or Site R, a national security bunker bored into granite along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border near Camp David, where the Joint Chiefs of Staff would command a protracted nuclear war. Special communications networks were built, and evacuation and succession procedures were practiced continually. When the Soviet Union crumbled, the program became a Cold War curiosity: Then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney ordered Raven Rock into caretaker status in 1991. The Greenbrier bunker was shuttered and a 30-year-old special access program was declassified three years later. Then came the terrorist attacks of the mid-1990s and the looming Y2K rollover, and suddenly continuity wasn't only for nuclear war anymore. On Oct. 21, 1998, President Bill Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive 67, "Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations." No longer would only the very few elite leaders responsible for national security be covered. Instead, every single government department and agency was directed to see to it that they could resume critical functions within 12 hours of a warning, and keep their operations running at emergency facilities for up to 30 days. FEMA was put in charge of this broad new program. On 9/11, the program was put to the test -- and failed. Not on the national security side: Vice President Cheney and others in the national security leadership were smoothly whisked away from the capital following procedures overseen by the Pentagon and the White House Military Office. But like the mass of Washingtonians, officials from other agencies found themselves virtually on their own, unsure of where to go or what to do, or whom to contact for the answers. (more at link)

by **HMKGrey** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 12:44 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Vice President Cheney and others in the national security leadership were smoothly whisked away from the capital following procedures overseen by the Pentagon and the White House Military Office.<hr></blockquote> So curious how that's always a given, yet the fact that Bush was not "smoothly whisked" anywhere remains something the media and most people choose to completely ignore.

by **Rigorous Intuition** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 1:08 pm

So curious how that's always a given, yet the fact that Bush was not "smoothly whisked" anywhere remains something the media and most people choose to completely ignore. I think Bush that day had his Bill Hicks moment: "I have this feeling that whoever's elected president...no matter what promises you make on the campaign trail - blah, blah, blah - when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist scumfucks that got you in there, and this little screen comes down... and it's a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you've never seen before, which looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll.... And then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new president, 'Any questions?'" Remember the <a href="http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a600assassination">unexplained</a> apparent assassination attempt that morning? And "Air Force One is next"?

by **PeterofLoneTree** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 1:15 pm

Was going to put this on a "new" thread but thought this was helluva good place for it. "Blackwater USA has a 6,000 acre training facility as part of its headquarters, in North Carolina." Wanna take an interesting trip? GoogleSearch BLACKWATER USA I first became aware of Blackwater USA about 2 years ago around the time this story appeared: Saturday, April 3, 2004 (CNN) -- "Military officials are investigating whether the horrific attack that killed four U.S. civilian contractors (Blackwater) in Fallujah, Iraq, this week was planned." <a href="http://tinyurl.com/fnbef">tinyurl.com/fnbef</a> Now comes this Counterpunch article about Blackwater in New Orleans: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/l27tj">tinyurl.com/l27tj</a> "A Mercenary Army" By ALAN MAASS Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist who reports frequently for the Nation magazine and the Pacifica radio program Democracy Now! His investigations have exposed the role of the Blackwater USA security firm in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. MAASS:WHAT IS Blackwater USA? Scahill: BLACKWATER USA is the most rapidly growing and, arguably, the most successful mercenary firm in the world today. A few years ago, no one had ever heard of it. The company was founded by a very right-wing fundamentalist Christian and former Navy SEAL by the name of Erik Prince. Prince comes from a family that was a major bankroller of far-right-wing causes. His father was a close friend of GaryBauer and helped him to found the Family Research Council. Blackwater started in the late1990s as a firm that was going to train law enforcement, and supplement the work of the U.S. military. When the Bush administration took power and then September 11 happened, the company absolutely exploded--and turned into an all-out mercenary firm. Blackwater was awarded the prize contract in Iraq to provide security for the original head of the U.S. occupation, Paul Bremer. At the time, it was a $21 million contract, but more important than the money was the prestige that came with being the guys who were guarding the head of the U.S. occupation. Then in March 2004, four Blackwater contractors were ambushed and killed in the Iraqi city of Falluja, with two of their bodies hung from a bridge. That really put Blackwater on the map. The company viewed this as a great moment to profit. The day after those guys were killed, Erik Prince hired the Alexander Strategy Group, a very powerful lobbying and p.r. firm. Now, it's a disgraced firm, but at the time, it was very powerful--it had been set up and staffed by former senior aides to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. And that really began a massivewar profiteering and disaster profiteering boom for Blackwater--not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but here at home as well. Maass: YOU WERE probably the first journalist to discover that Blackwater was on the scene in New Orleans, in the days right after Hurricane Katrina struck. How did you come across them? Scahill: BLACKWATER'S MEN actually beat the federal government, FEMA, the Red Cross and all these organizations to the hurricane zone. In fact, I interviewed Cofer Black--the former head of counterterrorism at the CIA, and now one of the top people at Blackwater--at a mercenary conference, and he told me that they sent a helicopter and a bunch of their guys down there without any contracts at first. Clearly, they saw this as an opportunity to really cash in on the disaster of Katrina. Within days of their guys deploying down there, Blackwater was handed a very lucrative $409,000 contract--literally to guard a morgue in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Fourteen guys, four vehicles, for 22 days--and they were paid $409,000. That contract, which was not open to public bids, was awarded to Blackwater, and it would kick off a contract spree that in just four months would amount to over $30 million for Blackwater. They were billing the federal government some $950 per day per man in the hurricane zone. I had Blackwater men who told me that they were getting paid $350 a day, plus a modest per diem. So that's $600 that Blackwater had to play with, above what they were paying their guys. I came across Blackwater quite by accident. I was in the French Quarter talking to two New York police officers, when this car with no license plates sped up, and these huge mercenary types--wearing all khaki, carrying M4 machine guns, with ammo strapped to every part of their body, wearing sunglasses with the foam strap around the back--got out. And they asked the officers, "Do you know where the rest of the Blackwater guys are?" The police officers said, "Yeah, they're all over the place," and one sort of pointed them in the direction down the street where they needed to go. Then, an hour later, we saw those guys again, and went up and started talking to them. I don't know for what reason, but they ended up talking to me for an an hour and a half. We had a wide-ranging discussion. Some of them had been on Paul Bremer's security detail. One guy had gotten back from Iraq two weeks before being deployed in New Orleans. He said, "When they told me I was going to New Orleans, I asked what country that was in." So these guys who literally had just been in the thick of things in Iraq were now marching around the streets of New Orleans, with automatic weapons. They told me that one of their roles was to stop looters and confront criminals. One of the guys showed me a Louisiana state law enforcement badge and said they'd been deputized. The reporting that I did down there ended up sparking a congressional demand for an investigation. So the Department of Homeland Security did, in fact, investigate Blackwater, but what came out of that internal investigation was a whitewashing of the situation. Ultimately, the Department of Homeland Security's inspectors general's office defended Blackwater's contract. MAASS: YOU'VE WRITTEN that the Department of Homeland Security plans to keep its contract with Blackwater for two to five years. What are they supposed to be doing? Scahill: THAT'S A very good question. We don't know at this point, and one of the reasons that we don't know is that not even members of Congress can see these contracts. We were able to get about four months of Blackwater's contracts, but that's only because of the uproar that was created by the presence of mercenaries on the streets of a U.S. city. I was just in Washington, meeting with some congress people, and one member of Congress told me that she's not even allowed to see any of the contracts in general, but when she is, she has to go into a padded room. She's not allowed to bring in any kind of writing equipment or paper, and she's not allowed to say what she saw in that room after she's viewed the contracts. That should be a cause of great concern among people, because what little oversight actually did exist in the federal government in this country has really been thrown out the window by this administration. So the answer to your questionis that we don't know what Blackwater is tasked with doing at this very moment. I did have Cofer Black confirm to me that Blackwater's men are still deployed in New Orleans and in the hurricane zone, but he wouldn't say what they were doing. MAASS: HOW DOES the tens of millions that Blackwater is making compare to what is being spent in New Orleans on school reconstruction or affordable housing? Scahill: WE REALLY don't know how much Blackwater has been paid. We know that they were paid $30 million for the first four months. Well, now we're nearing the first year anniversary of the hurricane, and we don't have the updated amount of money that they've been paid. But this is just is just one company. There are scores of private security companies on contract with the federal government. This other company, DynCorp, is itching to get more of the action, offering their guards at $700per day. There's very little irony in all that, given that we're talking about a place that has been utterly devastated, and people are being told that we don't have the resources to rebuild their homes, and they're going to have to live somewhere else in the country. Yet they have all the money in the world to pour into guns and mercenaries. Chris Kromm, who is one of the editors of the really great Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch, points out that there are tons of projects that have received basically no money. Among those are education programs, repatriation programs to bring people back into the city, healthcare, food distribution. And perhaps most importantly, they still haven't reconstructed the levees to withstand anything more than a Category 2 hurricane, and hurricane season is here. MAASS: CAN YOU talk how contracts like these are part of the drive toward privatization and the neoliberal agenda? Scahill: THIS BECOMES very frightening on a number of levels. On the one hand, you have this happening across the board. For example, this administration is attacking the public school system--de-funding it, and putting resources in the hands of fundamentalist Christian schools instead of bolstering the public school system. You see the Wal-Martization of U.S. society. And now you have contractors being used all over Iraq and Afghanistan. They are alleged to have been involved in the torture at Abu Ghraib. They have acted with impunity. Not a single contractor has been prosecuted for any crimes committed in Iraq. So you're left with one of two conclusions. Either they haven't committed any crimes, which I think we have the evidence to show isn't the case. Or no one's paying attention to accountability issues right now. But it's not just about accountability. What we see happening is the federal budget being pilfered by friends of the administration, and that's what we see in the case of Blackwater, where they're billing $950 a day. This is a very, very frightening prospect that we face in this country. Bush is talking about sending 6,000 National Guard troops down to the border, and Blackwater is itching to get involved in those operations. They're itching to get involved in Darfur right now. We have to step back from this and say: Do we want to live in a country that runs a mercenary army. I think that most people, if they were asked if they wanted these kinds of trained killers patrolling their streets and interacting with ordinary folks, would say no. We've seen the consequences of their impunity in Iraq and Afghanistan. <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/maass06022006.html">www.counterpunch.org/maass06022006.html</a>

by **jingofever** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 1:38 pm

<a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0318-14.htm">www.commondreams.org/views04/0318-14.htm</a> Choice quotes: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Rumsfeld and Cheney were principal actors in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan Administration. Under it U.S. officials furtively carried out detailed planning exercises for keeping the federal government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The program called for setting aside the legal rules for presidential succession in some circumstances, in favor of a secret procedure for putting in place a new "President" and his staff. The idea was to concentrate on speed, to preserve "continuity of government," and to avoid cumbersome procedures; the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and the rest of Congress would play a greatly diminished role.<hr></blockquote> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Their [Cheney and Rumsfeld's] participation in the extra-constitutional continuity-of-government exercises, remarkable in its own right, also demonstrates a broad, underlying truth about these two men. For three decades, from the Ford Administration onward, even when they were out of the executive branch of government, they were never far away. They stayed in touch with defense, military, and intelligence officials, who regularly called upon them. They were, in a sense, a part of the permanent hidden national-security apparatus of the United States—inhabitants of a world in which Presidents come and go, but America keeps on fighting.<hr></blockquote>

by **FourthBase** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 1:50 pm

Who were the people heading up the CoG projects?

by **dugoboy** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 2:11 pm

yea this idea of bush administration incompetence goes much farther than just 911 or katrina. its supposed to encompass everything, but there comes a point where incompetence meets basic human reasoning. is it 'incompetence' to cut homeland security funding to NYC or new orleans? to send half the troops you need to secure a country the size of california? its by design. ___________________________________________ "BUSHCO aren't incompetent...they are COMPLICIT." -Me "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act" -George Orwell

by **HMKGrey** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:25 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>Remember the unexplained apparent assassination attempt that morning? And "Air Force One is next"?<hr></blockquote> Good points. That sets my mind off in to all kinds of deep, dark politics scenarios. Did Bush stay at the school precisely because it was a school and he was thus surrounded by kids? (And so felt somehow protected? Heavy irony at the thought off Bush using de facto human shields here...) Given that Jeb Bush signed an EO the previous week effectively declaring marshall law in Florida it actually makes me think that they knew the plan BUT didn't 100% trust Cheney or whoever was running the show. They felt a bit vulnerable and so took steps to make sure they were safe. They didn't want a complete coup taking place. And that also expalins why Bush didn't go back to DC very quickly. There would have been a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on - he wanted his personal safety assured and felt compelled to let the dust settle a little. It's an interesting twist, isn't it?

by **PeterofLoneTree** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 5:22 pm

"...didn't 100% trust Cheney or whoever was running the show." -- HMKGrey I believe it's accurate to say that few, perhaps none, of "them" can trust each other. They're not the "Borg". They're not a "collective". Yet.

by **professorpan** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:12 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>I believe it's accurate to say that few, perhaps none, of "them" can trust each other. They're not the "Borg". They're not a "collective". Yet.<hr></blockquote> Word. And therein lies our potential escape from the collective nightmare. <img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/14/Yertle.jpg/150px-Yertle.jpg" style="border:0;"/> On the far-away island of Sala-ma-Sond, Yertle the Turtle was king of the pond. A nice little pond. It was clean. It was neat. The water was warm. There was plenty to eat. The turtles had everything turtles might need. And they were all happy. Quite happy indeed. They were... untill Yertle, the king of them all, Decided the kingdom he ruled was too small. "I'm ruler", said Yertle, "of all that I see. But I don't see enough. That's the trouble with me. With this stone for a throne, I look down on my pond But I cannot look down on the places beyond. This throne that I sit on is too, too low down. It ought to be higher!" he said with a frown. "If I could sit high, how much greater I'd be! What a king! I'd be ruler of all that I see!" So Yertle, the Turtle King, lifted his hand And Yertle, the Turtle King, gave a command. He ordered nine turtles to swim to his stone And, using these turtles, he built a new throne. He made each turtle stand on another one's back And he piled them all up in a nine-turtle stack. And then Yertle climbed up. He sat down on the pile. What a wonderful view! He could see 'most a mile! "All mine!" Yertle cried. "Oh, the things I now rule! I'm the king of a cow! And I'm the king of a mule! I'm the king of a house! And, what's more, beyond that I'm the king of a blueberry bush and a cat! I'm Yertle the Turtle! Oh, marvelous me! For I am the ruler of all that I see!" And all through the morning, he sat up there high Saying over and over, "A great king am I!" Until 'long about noon. Then he heard a faint sigh. "What's that?" snapped the king And he looked down the stack. And he saw, at the bottom, a turtle named Mack. Just a part of his throne. And this plain little turtle Looked up and he said, "Beg your pardon, King Yertle. I've pains in my back and my shoulders and knees. How long must we stand here, Your Majesty, please?" "SILENCE!" the King of the Turtles barked back. "I'm king, and you're only a turtle named Mack." "You stay in your place while I sit here and rule. I'm the king of a cow! And I'm the king of a mule! I'm the king of a house! And a bush! And a cat! But that isn't all. I'll do better than that! My throne shall be higher!" his royal voice thundered, "So pile up more turtles! I want 'bout two hundred!" "Turtles! More turtles!" he bellowed and brayed. And the turtles 'way down in the pond were afraid. They trembled. They shook. But they came. They obeyed. From all over the pond, they came swimming by dozens. Whole families of turtles, with uncles and cousins. And all of them stepped on the head of poor Mack. One after another, they climbed up the stack. Then Yertle the Turtle was perched up so high, He could see fourty miles from his throne in the sky! "Hooray!" shouted Yertle. "I'm the king of the trees! I'm king of the birds! And I'm king of the bees! I'm king of the butterflies! King of the air! Ah, me! What a throne! What a wonderful chair! I'm Yertle the Turtle! Oh, marvelous me! For I am the ruler of all that I see!" Then again, from below, in the great heavy stack, Came a groan from that plain little turtle named Mack. "Your Majesty, please... I don't like to complain, But down here below, we are feeling great pain. I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, But down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights. We turtles can't stand it. Our shells will all crack! Besides, we need food. We are starving!" groaned Mack. "You hush up your mouth!" howled the mighty King Yertle. "You've no right to talk to the world's highest turtle. I rule from the clouds! Over land! Over sea! There's nothing, no, NOTHING, that's higher than me!" But, while he was shouting, he saw with suprise That the moon of the evening was starting to rise Up over his head in the darkening skies. "What's THAT?" snorted Yertle. "Say, what IS that thing That dares to be higher than Yertle the King? I shall not allow it! I'll go higher still! I'll build my throne higher! I can and I will! I'll call some more turtles. I'll stack 'em to heaven! I need 'bout five thousand, six hundred and seven!" But, as Yertle, the Turtle King, lifted his hand And started to order and give the command, That plain little turtle below in the stack, That plain little turtle whose name was just Mack, Decided he'd taken enough. And he had. And that plain little lad got a bit mad. And that plain little Mack did a plain little thing. He burped! And his burp shook the throne of the king! And Yertle the Turtle, the king of the trees, The king of the air and the birds and the bees, The king of a house and a cow and a mule... Well, that was the end of the Turtle King's rule! For Yertle, the King of all Sala-ma-Sond, Fell off his high throne and fell Plunk! in the pond! And to say the great Yertle, that Marvelous he, Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see. And the turtles, of course... all the turtles are free As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.

by **Iroquois** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:21 pm

From Rigorous Intuition: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Remember the unexplained apparent assassination attempt that morning? And "Air Force One is next"?<hr></blockquote> For me, the assassination of the leader of the Northern Alliance and the reported attempt on Bush, Jr. were more of indicators of the scope of the problem once I'd decided that the official 9/11 story suffered from major, fatal flaws than possible indicators of MIHOP or even LIHOP by major "native" players. Maybe that's just because I thought of those events differently at the time. (Though, personally I doubted the Bush story. I was cynical, just not cynical enough. By the way, HMKGrey, my take on staying at the school, from the second the he appeared on the air with that carefully arrayed gaggle of wide-eyed children around him during his 9/11 morning press conference was that his handlers kept him on site to produce just that image.) The Air Force One shoot down story on other hand, was a jaw dropper when I first read some of the details only a few weeks ago. This is from the one article I saved. The original has a link to another, more timely one. <blockquote>Quote:<hr> The Home Front by Gary North White House Shoots Down Air Force One Story On September 11, President Bush was lecturing to a class of elementary school students in Florida. He was called outside the room and briefed on the attacks on the World Trade Center. He then went back into the room, briefly mentioned the deaths, and then departed for the airport. A few hours later, he surfaced on national TV from a military air field in Shreveport, Louisiana. He spoke a few words, got back on the plane, and it took off. A few hours later, he surfaced in Omaha, at the Strategic Air Command site. The next day, he returned to Washington. He took some heat from columnists who thought that he had belonged in the Capitol, not in Omaha. The most influential of these critics was William Safire, the New York Times columnist. In his column for September 12, he made critical remarks about the President's absence. At that point, the President's spinmeisters got to work. Someone with enough clout to be described by Safire in his September 13 column as a high White House official then called him. He gave Safire the official explanation for the President's absence. Because the Times makes old columns available only for a fee, I rely here in the summary of events provided by the World Socialist Web Site (Sept. 2<img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif ALT="8)"> .  Stung by such criticisms, Bush's chief political strategist Karl Rove and other top administration officials worked feverishly to reassure the political, corporate and military establishment, and bolster Bush's authority among the population at large. By the afternoon of September 12, the Associated Press and Reuters were carrying stories, widely circulated throughout the media, that were intended to diffuse criticism of Bush's actions the previous day. They quoted a White House spokesperson saying, "There was real and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were targets of terrorist attacks and that the plane that hit the Pentagon was headed for the White House." White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer repeated this claim at an afternoon news briefing that same day, saying the Secret Service had "specific and credible information" that the White House and Air Force One were potential targets. In a further column in the New York Times on September 13, entitled "Inside the Bunker," Safire described a conversation with an unnamed "high White House official," who told him, "A threatening message received by the Secret Service was relayed to the agents with the president that 'Air Force One is next.' " Safire continued: "According to the high official, American code words were used showing a knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible." Safire reported that this information was confirmed by Rove, who told him Bush had wanted to return to Washington but the Secret Service "informed him that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts."  Safire fully understood the threat to the nation that a break of security regarding the code would mean.  Safire pointed to one such question in his September 13 New York Times column. Referring to the White House claim that the terrorists had knowledge of secret information about Air Force One, Safire asked: "How did they get the code-word information and transponder know-how that established their mala fides? That knowledge of code words and presidential whereabouts and possession of secret procedures indicates that the terrorists may have a mole in the White House – that, or informants in the Secret Service, FBI, FAA, or CIA."  <hr></blockquote> The URL to the full article on lewrockwell.com is here: <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north60.html">www.lewrockwell.com/north/north60.html</a> PS Sorry to contribute to the continued divergence from the topic of the very interesting article, fist I've heard of that too. But, there were so many other interesting tangential tid-bits thrown in already, I didn't see the harm.

by **HMKGrey** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:42 pm

The brilliant thing about the 'Air Force 1 is next' theory is that right after that threat was supposedly made Bush spent the rest of the day ON THE DAMN PLANE. It should also be noted that it took off from the airfield near the school WITHOUT a fighter escort even though there was an AFB near by. Oh, I'd love to piece this all together.

by * » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:59 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr> Who were the people heading up the CoG projects?<hr></blockquote> <a href="http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=979bc356fbfc082be8930f269e2bde50">Cheney- Rumsfeld Surveillance Plans Date Back to 1980s</a> ".. Many actions of the Bush presidency resemble not only what Nixon did in the 1970s, but what Cheney and Rumsfeld had planned to restore under COG in the 1980s in the case of an attack. Prominent among these have been the detention of so-called "enemy combatants," including U.S. citizens, and placing them in special camps. Now as before, a policy of detentions outside the Constitution has been accompanied by a program of extra-constitutional surveillance to determine who will be detained. As Cheney told reporters on his return last month from Pakistan, "Watergate and a lot of things around Watergate and Vietnam, both during the '70s served, I think, to erode the authority" of the president. But he defended as necessary for national security the aggressive program he helped shape under President Bush, which includes warrantless surveillance and extrajudicial imprisonment -- in effect, a new Imperial Presidency..." and <a href="http://prorev.com/2005/09/amazing-scary-history-of-fema.htm"> THE AMAZING, SCARY HISTORY OF FEMA</a> "...According to Chardy, the plan called for 'suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to the Federal Management Agency, emergency appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and declaration of martial law.' The proposal appears to have forgotten that Congress, legislatures and the judiciary even existed. In a November 18, 1991 story, the New York Times elaborated: "Acting outside the Constitution in the early 1980s, a secret federal agency established a line of succession to the presidency to assure continued government in the event of a devastating nuclear attack, current and former United States officials said today. "The program was called 'Continuity of Government.' In the words of a recent report by the Fund for Constitutional Government, "succession or succession-by-designation would be implemented by unknown and perhaps unelected persons who would pick three potential successor presidents in advance of an emergency. These potential successors to the Oval Office may not be elected, and they are not confirmed by Congress." According to CNN, the list eventually grew to 17 names and included Howard Baker, Richard Helms, Jeanne Kirkpatrick James Schlesinger, Richard Thornberg, Edwin Meese, Tip O'Neil, and Richard The plan was not even limited to a nuclear attack but included any "national security emergency" which was defined as: "Any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States." This bizarre scheme was dismissed in many Washington quarters as further evidence of the loony quality of the whole Iran/contra affair. One FEMA official called it a lot of crap while a representative for Attorney General Meese described it as 'bullshit." The problem is that there is a long history of compatibility between madness and totalitarian takeovers, Adolph Hitler being a prime but far from lone example. Further, there is plenty of evidence in this case that the planning was far more than simply an off-the-wall brainstorm. At least one report found that the US Army had even gone so far as to draft a legal document providing justifications for martial law. Nor was the planning limited to crises involving the total breakdown of society as in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. Among the justifiable uses of martial law were "national opposition to a US military invasion abroad" and widespread internal dissent. . ." just google Continuity Government Cheney Rumsfeld

US Continuity of Govt exercise 19 June 06

US Continuity of Govt exercise 19 June 06

Re: US Continuity of Govt exercise 19 June 06

Re: US Continuity of Govt exercise 19 June 06

Re: US Continuity of Govt exercise 19 June 06

Rumsfeld and Cheney have a hard-on for this kind of thing

Can anyone tell me...

Re: US Continuity of Govt exercise 19 June 06

Re: US Continuity of Govt exercise 19 June 06

Re: US Continuity of Govt exercise 19 June 06

Re: US Continuity of Govt exercise 19 June 06

Re: White House Shoots Down Air Force One Story

Re: White House Shoots Down Air Force One Story

Re: Can anyone tell me...

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