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100 officials work secret { March 1 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20584-2002Feb28.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20584-2002Feb28.html
Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret
After Attacks, Bush Ordered 100 Officials to Bunkers Away From
Capital to Ensure Federal Survival
By Barton Gellman and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 1, 2002; Page A01
President Bush has dispatched a shadow government of about 100
senior civilian managers to live and work secretly outside
Washington, activating for the first time long-standing plans to ensure
survival of federal rule after catastrophic attack on the nation's
capital.
Execution of the classified "Continuity of Operations Plan" resulted
not from the Cold War threat of intercontinental missiles, the
scenario rehearsed for decades, but from heightened fears that the al
Qaeda terrorist network might somehow obtain a portable nuclear
weapon, according to three officials with firsthand knowledge. U.S.
intelligence has no specific knowledge of such a weapon, they said,
but the risk is thought great enough to justify the shadow
government's disruption and expense.
Deployed "on the fly" in the first hours of turmoil on Sept. 11, one
participant said, the shadow government has evolved into an
indefinite precaution. For that reason, the high-ranking officials
representing their departments have begun rotating in and out of the
assignment at one of two fortified locations along the East Coast.
Rotation is among several changes made in late October or early
November, sources said, to the standing directive Bush inherited
from a line of presidents reaching back to Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Officials who are activated for what some of them call "bunker duty"
live and work underground 24 hours a day, away from their families.
As it settles in for the long haul, the shadow government has sent
home most of the first wave of deployed personnel, replacing them
most commonly at 90-day intervals.
The civilian cadre present in the bunkers usually numbers 70 to 150,
and "fluctuates based on intelligence" about terrorist threats,
according to a senior official involved in managing the program. It
draws from every Cabinet department and some independent
agencies. Its first mission, in the event of a disabling blow to
Washington, would be to prevent collapse of essential government
functions.
Assuming command of regional federal offices, officials said, the
underground government would try to contain disruptions of the
nation's food and water supplies, transportation links, energy and
telecommunications networks, public health and civil order. Later it
would begin to reconstitute the government.
Known internally as the COG, for "continuity of government," the
administration-in-waiting is an unannounced complement to the
acknowledged absence of Vice President Cheney from Washington
for much of the pastfive months. Cheney's survival ensures
constitutional succession, one official said, but "he can't run the
country by himself." With a core group of federal managers
alongside him, Cheney -- or President Bush, if available -- has the
means to give effect to his orders.
While the damage of other terrorist weapons is potentially horrific,
officials said, only an atomic device could threaten the nation's
fundamental capacity to govern itself. Without an invulnerable
backup command structure outside Washington, one official said, a
nuclear detonation in the capital "would be 'game over.' "
"We take this issue extraordinarily seriously, and are committed to
doing as thorough a job as possible to ensure the ongoing operations
of the federal government," said Joseph W. Hagin, White House
deputy chief of staff, who declined to discuss details. "In the case of
the use of a weapon of mass destruction, the federal government
would be able to do its job and continue to provide key services and
respond."
The Washington Post agreed to a White House request not to name
any of those deployed or identify the two principal locations of the
shadow government.
Only the executive branch is represented in the full-time shadow
administration. The other branches of constitutional government,
Congress and the judiciary, have separate continuity plans but do not
maintain a 24-hour presence in fortified facilities.
The military chain of command has long maintained redundant
centers of communication and control, hardened against
thermonuclear blast and operating around the clock. The
headquarters of U.S. Space Command, for example, is burrowed
into Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs, Colo., and the
U.S. Strategic Command staffs a comparable facility under Offutt
Air Force Base in Nebraska.
Civilian departments have had parallel continuity-of-government
plans since the dawn of the nuclear age. But they never operated
routinely, seldom exercised, and were permitted to atrophy with the
end of the Cold War. Sept. 11 marked the first time, according to
Bush administration officials, that the government activated such a
plan.
Within hours of the synchronized attacks on the Pentagon and the
World Trade Center, Military District of Washington helicopters
lifted off with the first wave of evacuated officials.
Witnesses near one of the two evacuation sites reported an influx of
single- and twin-rotor transport helicopters, escorted by F-16
fighters, and followed not long afterward by government buses.
According to officials with first-hand knowledge, the Bush
administration conceived the move that morning as a temporary
precaution, likely to last only days. But further assessment of terrorist
risks persuaded the White House to remake the program as a
permanent feature of "the new reality, based on what the threat looks
like," a senior decisionmaker said.
Few Cabinet-rank principals or their immediate deputies left
Washington on Sept. 11, and none remained at the bunkers. Those
who form the backup government come generally from the top
career ranks, from GS-14 and GS-15 to members of the Senior
Executive Service. The White House is represented by a
"senior-level presence," one official said, but well below such
Cabinet-ranked advisers as Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and
national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Many departments, including Justice and Treasury, have completed
plans to delegate statutory powers to officials who would not
normally exercise them. Others do not need to make such legal
transfers, or are holding them in reserve.
Deployed civilians are not permitted to take their families, and under
penalty of prosecution they may not tell anyone where they are going
or why. "They're on a 'business trip,' that's all," said one official
involved in the effort.
The two sites of the shadow government make use of local
geological features to render them highly secure. They are well
stocked with food, water, medicine and other consumable supplies,
and are capable of generating their own power.
But with their first significant operational use, the facilities are
showing their age. Top managers arrived at one of them to find
computers "several generations" behind those now in use, incapable
of connecting to current government databases. There were far too
few phone lines. Not many work areas had secure audio and video
links to the rest of government. Officials said Card, who runs the
program from the White House, has been obliged to order
substantial upgrades.
The modern era of continuity planning began under President Ronald
Reagan.
On Sept. 16, 1985, Reagan signed National Security Decision
Directive 188, "Government Coordination for National Security
Emergency Preparedness," which assigned responsibility for
continuity planning to an interagency panel from Defense, Treasury,
Justice and the Office of Management and Budget. He signed
additional directives, including Executive Order 12472, for more
detailed aspects of the planning.
In Executive Order 12656, signed Nov. 18, 1988, Reagan ordered
every Cabinet department to define in detail the "defense and civilian
needs" that would be "essential to our national survival" in case of a
nuclear attack on Washington. Included among them were legal
instruments for "succession to office and emergency delegation of
authority."
The military services put these directives in place long before their
civilian counterparts. The Air Force, for example, relies on Air Force
Instruction 10-208, revised most recently in September 2000.
Civilian agencies gradually developed contingency plans in
comparable detail. The Agriculture Department, for example, has
plans to ensure continued farm production, food processing, storage
and distribution; emergency provision of seed, feed, water, fertilizer
and equipment to farmers; and use of Commodity Credit Corp.
inventories of food and fiber resources.
What was missing, until Sept. 11, was an invulnerable group of
managers with the expertise and resources to administer these
programs in a national emergency.
Last Oct. 8, the day after bombing began in Afghanistan, Bush
created the Office of Homeland Security with Executive Order
13228. Among the responsibilities he gave its first director, former
Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, was to "review plans and
preparations for ensuring the continuity of the Federal Government in
the event of a terrorist attack that threatens the safety and security of
the United States Government or its leadership."
Staff researcher Mary Lou White contributed to this report.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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