Shadow Government Ordered After Attacks, Post Says (USA)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush has set up a "shadow government" to ensure that the government would continue to operate in the event of catastrophic attack on the U.S. capital, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

The newspaper said in the first hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush deployed a "shadow government" of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work outside Washington, in the first-ever activation of a classified "Continuity of Operations Plan."

The report cited three officials with first-hand knowledge of the operation as saying the Cold War era plan was enacted because of heightened fears that the al Qaeda network might somehow obtain a portable nuclear weapon.

The Post said U.S. intelligence has no specific knowledge of such a weapon, but officials thought the risk was great enough to justify the expense and deployment of a shadow government.

One participant told the newspaper that the first deployment came "on the fly" in the first hours of turmoil on Sept. 11 and that the plan has evolved into an indefinite precaution.

Under the plan, high-ranking government officials representing various departments have begun rotating in and out of the assignment at one of two fortified locations along the East Coast, the Post said.

A senior official involved in managing the program said the civilian force present in the underground bunkers usually numbers 70 to 150, and "fluctuates based on intelligence" about terrorist threats.

In the event of an attack, 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, the report said.

The Washington Post said it agreed to a White House request not to name any of those deployed or identify the two principal locations of the shadow government.

[High Five Slap!]

Fun, but they come at a very high cost, I'm afraid. Right this minute, sink is pasting our pictures (that he's drawn) onto his cubicle wall and scrawling ENEMY! BAD! underneath them.

Gasp! Shudder! Can you bear the burden of that knowledge?

Well, he will anyway, as soon as all the puffing goes out of his chest.

Ya' just gotta laugh sometimes, ya' know?

You don't even know who's involved, yet you insist on making SWAGs that support your Birchite hysteria.

Its not a secret. We know about it.

So which is it sink-a-link-a-ding-dong?

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting sinkspur, the only man who has managed to figure out how to both have his cake and eat it too!

Gratz man, good job, you da' man!

Thank you, thank you, I'll be in town all week. Tip the help.

Lumberjack has a legitimate issue, and instead of throwing spitwads at him to show you're the coolest kid in class, you might engage the issue. Nobody is edified by a micturition contest, and that goes for both of you.

It wasn't Lumberjack who was mumbling about underground conspiracies and posting pictures of people dressed up as Morlocks. He raised the question, okay, if "the government" is going to be 150 people from the executive agencies, how does this preserve the republican form of government guaranteed by the Constitution?

If the numbers cited here don't allow a Congressional quorum to be convened in order, then what is the purpose of summoning a rump Congress, and who has the right to say who gets invited, and who gets left to burn up in the firestorms? Do RiNO's get invited, and congressmen from large, urban districts? Will the Black Caucus be invited, or do they get to take their chances? Who's on the list -- is it Pamela Harriman's old "A" list? Names drawn by lot?

And where is the President? Presumably, flying around in "Kneecap", he would remain in communication with this group. But would it really be a constitutional government, or an emergency junta? And if there is a constitutional arrangement to be made for contingencies, what harm is there in our knowing it, at least to the extent of a sanitized public Plan? Why all the hugger-mugger, unless it is to conceal the settled opinion of knowledgable and responsible people, that constitutional government simply couldn't continue under general thermonuclear attack?

As far as I can remember from documentaries, magazine articles, and newsreel items propagated in the Fifties and Sixties, government planners always told the public that constitutional government would continue, and that the Congress and the Supreme Court would be preserved to continue governing. I think Lumberjack is confronting the possibility that we may only have been told that, while something more.....modest......that didn't meet constitutional scratch, may have been planned for instead. It wouldn't be the first time an Administration planned a switcheroo: Abraham Lincoln did it, and his pretext was another emergency.

It's a fair question. Care to have a go?

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