Back to the Bunker
I had an article in the Outlook section of the print newspaper today:
Back to the Bunker
By William M. Arkin
Sunday, June 4, 2006; 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.
In the aftermath, the federal government was told to reinvigorate its continuity efforts. Bush approved lines of succession for civil agencies. Cabinet departments and agencies were assigned specific emergency responsibilities. FEMA issued new preparedness guidelines and oversaw training. A National Capital Region continuity working group established in 1999, comprising six White House groups, 15 departments and 61 agencies, met to coordinate.
But all the frenetic activity did not produce a government prepared for the worst. A year after 9/11, and almost three years after the deadline set in Clinton's 1998 directive, the Government Accounting Office evaluated 38 agencies and found that not one had addressed all the issues it had been ordered to. A 2004 GAO audit of 34 government continuity-of-operations plans found total confusion on the question of essential functions. One unnamed organization listed 399 such functions. A department included providing "speeches and articles for the Secretary and Deputy Secretary" among its essential duties, while neglecting many of its central programs.
The confusion and absurdity have continued, according to documents I've collected over the past few years. In June 2004, FEMA told federal agencies that essential services in a catastrophe would include not only such obvious ones as electric power generation and disaster relief but also patent and trademark processing, student aid and passport processing. A month earlier, FEMA had told states and local communities that library services should be counted as essential along with fire protection and law enforcement.
None of this can be heartening to Americans who want to believe that in a crisis, their government can distinguish between what is truly essential and what isn't -- and provide it.
Just two years ago, an exercise called Forward Challenge '04 pointed up the danger of making everyone and everything essential: Barely an hour after agencies were due to arrive at their relocation sites, the Office of Management and Budget asked the reconstituted government to identify emergency funding requirements.
As one after-action report for the exercise later put it in a classic case of understatement: "It was not clear . . . whether this would be a realistic request at that stage of an emergency."
This year's exercise, Forward Challenge '06, will be the third major interagency continuity exercise since 9/11. Larger than Forward Challenge '04 and the Pinnacle exercise held last year, it requires 31 departments and agencies (including FEMA) to relocate. Fifty to 60 are expected to take part.
According to government sources, the exercise will test the newly created continuity of government alert conditions -- called COGCONs -- that emulate the DEFCONs of the national security community. Forward Challenge will begin with a series of alerts via BlackBerry and pager to key officials. It will test COGCON 1, the highest level of preparedness, in which each department and agency is required to have at least one person in its chain of command and sufficient staffing at alternate operating facilities to perform essential functions.
Though key White House officials and military leadership would be relocated via the Pentagon's Joint Emergency Evacuation Program (JEEP), the civilians are on their own to make it to their designated evacuation points.
But fear not: Each organization's COOP, or continuity of operations plan, details the best routes to the emergency locations. The plans even spell out what evacuees should take with them (recommended items: a combination lock, a flashlight, two towels and a small box of washing powder).
Can such an exercise, announced well in advance, hope to re-create any of the tensions and fears of a real crisis? How do you simulate the experience of driving through blazing, radiated, panic-stricken streets to emergency bunker sites miles away?
As the Energy Department stated in its review of Forward Challenge '04, "a method needs to be devised to realistically test the ability of . . . federal offices to relocate to their COOP sites using a scenario that simulates . . . the monumental challenges that would be involved in evacuating the city."
With its new plans and procedures, Washington may think it has thought of everything to save itself. Forward Challenge will no doubt be deemed a success, and officials will pronounce the continuity-of-government project sound. There will be lessons to be learned that will justify more millions of dollars and more work in the infinite effort to guarantee order out of chaos.
But the main defect -- a bunker mentality that considers too many people and too many jobs "essential" -- will remain unchallenged.
William M. Arkin writes the Early Warning blog for washingtonpost.com and is the author of "Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operations in the 9/11 World" (Steerforth Press).
By William M. Arkin |
June 4, 2006; 5:10 PM ET
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Next: More About THE PLAN
Posted by: MediaMan | June 29, 2006 5:56 PM
I've been worried about this for a while now. If the gop is thinkin that their time is up in the near elections, they just might blow us all up to preserve their "integrety"
Posted by: watch out | June 20, 2006 7:30 AM
Yeah, Yeah, Bill, We know what's the gov'ts got in store for us, we know. We are preparing....
Posted by: | June 19, 2006 9:31 PM
does anyone know of a good escort service?
Posted by: warhornee | June 19, 2006 4:40 PM
" The Telescope Ends, Where the microscope Begins....
Wich Of The Two, Has
The Grander View ??? "
I'd bet the farm that if you took ANYONE, and I mean ANYONE !!! From Planet EARTH with a cause, religion, political standpoint, ethnic issue, nationalist view, theory, economic class, gender, physical status, fundamentalist, hell- CLONES !!!!, And take that person for
A ride aboard the shuttle, for an un-tethered spacewalk, and let that person (sic.) , spend two weeks gazing down at the BLUE MARBLE, My Bet Is They Would Return With A Whole New Outlook On HUMAN KIND, And Just What Shakespear Was Really
Trying To Relate When He Said "To Be, Or Not To Be....'
Life is short,
What Will YOU, Do With Your
Time Here ?
cart00nman.
Posted by: Patrick Collins | June 17, 2006 8:26 AM
Looks like they're preparing for an another attack.. Everyone shuold be very aware of this date.. They were also practicing war game drills the morning of 9/11 as it happened. Can they be the same thing,,,? america needs to wake up!
1) Strange power outages at the Capitol on April 3rd.
2) Some 4, 000 government officials are going to be put in a bunker on June 19th.
3) Funds were just cut to NY port security by Congress.
4) Expectations for a counter-attack is high due to the death of Al Zarqawi.
Seems like it's becoming more imminent.
Posted by: JOe | June 12, 2006 3:53 AM
Considering the latest polls...Only 11 percent of the American Public think Congress is "Doing a Good Job". The Only Group Lower than Congress is the "Media"! Perhaps we should consider including Key Media Representatives in the "Continuity of Government Evacuation Exercise"! We sure have a long ways to go to clean up our image around the World. Hopefully, this November will serve as a Wake-Up-Call
to those who have failed to represent us!!!
Continuity of Government?
Posted by: M. Stewart | June 6, 2006 3:30 PM
M. Stewart,
For a minute there I was in total agreement, with respect to what you said about the permanent evacuation of America's bureaucrats and officials. I concluded one more thing, i.e., that perhaps we could lock them, along with their lobbyists sidekicks, inside of their respective bunkers, provide them with food and water, as the rest of us would go about the business of getting this country back on track.
We could call that day something catchy like, Independence or Freedom Day! We could have speeches like, Thank God Almighty I'm Free At Last...!
Then it occurred to me, what would we do with all of the people who benefit from their scurrilous and get rich policies, particularly those who make money when the country goes to war? For these are the same folks who voted the majority of them into office, and who would quickly replace them with ideologues from the same genre, and who speak the same langage?
Being a Reverend, I apologize to God and the Cable Guy again, for I know that I should not have said thought or said that!
TRFKA
Posted by: | June 6, 2006 11:09 AM
The real heroes of Katrina are the survivors' fellow citizens...who to this day are still helping to rebuild/repair the Gulf Coast house-by-house and block-by-block. The evacuation of senior bureacrats and politicians should be looked on as a positive event! Get them out of the way. Perhaps it might not be a bad idea for all of us to send our Representative and Senators a box of Laundry Soap and a Bar of Soap on a Rope with instructions...Don't Return Until Consumed...Such a Taxpayer donation would lend a Whole New Meaning to the phrase "Clean House".
Posted by: M. Stewart | June 6, 2006 7:00 AM
heard tonight on Jim Lehrer's News Hour that the cost of Katrina in property damage to insurerers was at least 2 x
the cost of 9/11/01 property damage ..
... we've spent how much on domestic anything v chasing down - UNSuccessfully -
the Taliban in Afghanistant and _____ in Iraq?
and we're spending critical staff time worrying about an attack, that relatively few could deliver????
how much do we spend on defense v domestic protections???
Posted by: Mill_of_Mn | June 6, 2006 2:21 AM
The Russians have certainly been given a heads up to calibrate their spy satellites and sigint stations to "watch" where certain officials (using trackable pagers and mobiles) and cars go.
They have more than enough warheads to hit hardened bunkers in the Washington area.
I take it, therefore that the exercise is preparing for a lesser threat.
WMD terrorist explosions in Washington or (presumably) single warhead missile strikes from rogue states (or China)?
Posted by: Pete | June 6, 2006 12:44 AM
in the event of nuckuleer war,
if we have one, there's some money to be made....
he's a sharp one,
crush him.
.
Posted by: one thing you can be sure of with this president.. | June 5, 2006 7:24 PM
you mean the rumour of a violent military power that is out to get us that has been foisted on the American Public
by a PNAC inspired agenda? a falsehood foisted on the American public by a complicit Democratic and Republican congress....if you look at McCain, you know he was in the inside of this deal...
yes, you were going to "war," opportunistic invasion, before this president was elected....did Gore really lose?
or did the nation?
would he have been this bad?
would he have been positing gay marriage as the reason the country was failing?
as he tried to sneak estate tax ban through the congress?
is gay marriage just a "look over here,?"
is he pandering to the demagoguery vote?
is he creating hatred?
give it back to him, arrest him, and terminate his ability to do this again...ever, this lifetime or his descendants...
speaking of perpatrators,
do you mean the false flag perpatrators,
the CIA/HAYDEN/CHEYNEY/RUMSFELD/NEGROPONTE/NSA
you know the DOD, monied cabal that wants to have war for life so they don't have to worry about the future....
you mean the people that served alongside George H.W. Bush with the cia/mafia/bayofpigs fiasco, which became the Nixon watergate fiasco?
and how did we get into Iraq?
oh yeah, April Glaspie talking to Saddam Hussein while we let the Kurds burn in hell after Desert Storm....women, children freezing without food on the border between Iraq and Turkey after we said we'd support them if they helped us in the invasion of Iraq?
so we could gain control of a region and assist our friends
THE FRIGGIN SAUDIS AND UAE who risked their lives flying planes into the world trade center for us so we could have a rallying cry that was cool....
remember 9/11....so many died....right,
like about 1/4 of the number that died in firearms related crimes that year...
kiss my a-ss
what a load of crap.
.
and who trained Al Quaeda...the friggin CIA DID...
you gotta problem with that, them being on our friggin side?
because they are....they're the presidents boyz...they're going bass fishin this weekend...
after he damages a few qu_eers...
.
Posted by: hello clueless morons, it's me...smart man.. | June 5, 2006 7:23 PM
nice article, but you should have admitted that the resultant firestorms from just four or five nukes would incinerate such vast areas that it wouldn't really matter who survived.
I'm far more concerned with the number of people who will die from heat stroke this year than the theoretical risk from a not happening attack. Even the best al-Qaeda dirty bomb has at most 20 people dying from it.
Posted by: Will in Seattle | June 5, 2006 12:36 PM
Coop must be referring to those other idiots (apparently his favorite pejorative), like himself!
Thank God that some Americans are and have been trying to get America to change its past and present course of preemption. Hans Blix said yesterday on Meet The Press, that America itself needs to cooperate with the treaties... So far, America has refused. Blix said that America wants to tell everyone else not to smoke (enrich Uranium and build nuclear bombs), while it continues to smoke (owns and is improving its own Nuclear Arsenal) itself! Just more American policy-hypocrisy.
I say that interfering with and bullying nations and other people around the world simply to have it America's way, and rebuking behavior that America engages in itself has resulted in America being retaliated against, and more recently, despised by many nations around the world. Not even America's allies agree with America's unilateralism and obstructionist behaviors. Only Coop and a few people like him, apparently still do!
Finally, America's present strategy, i.e., to prepare to hide is a concession in my mind, simply stated, that America is saying that the bestdefense is to prepare to hide, given that the American government will get you into skirmishes, that it cannot protect you from, i.e., when the other side decides to fight back.
America, once one of the most revered and respected countries in the world should go back and review, and find out, what was it that once made America one of the most respected nations in the world? Some believe that it was America's democratic principles, I believe that it was something else!
TRFKA
Posted by: The Reverend Formerly Known As | June 5, 2006 10:53 AM
Ant of you ever go west on I-66 on Friday afternoon during rush hour, especially when there is an event at Nissan Pavillion? Now picture a nuke blowing in downtown DC, or a bio attack. Wonder what that traffic jam would look like? I bet it would take you a week to get to Front Royal from DC, and that would probably only be possible on foot. Think the govt can fix that? Get real.
Posted by: COOP bird | June 5, 2006 10:37 AM
What about essential, phone throwing, Aussie tourists in Washington?
How do we fit into The Plan?
Posted by: Spooky Pete | June 5, 2006 9:25 AM
First, FEMA should prepare for the most likely hazard, which is probably a hurricane or just a massive power outage hitting DC, not a bomb. Second, they could make the system disaster resistant if they wanted by permanently scattering many of the jobs to regional parts of the country. This is good in that your emergency system gets lots of practice. Third, the federal government was not damaged at all during Katrina, and though parts worked well, the command system failed miserably. In fact, it could be argued that the command and coordination system across 50 federal agencies is not even functioning right now.
Fourth, if Mr. Bush is truly a beleiver in small government, here is a great time to decide what is really needed and what is not. What can't the states do without the feds?
Posted by: gimlet | June 5, 2006 9:23 AM
Having been on a few COOP exercises, I can vouch that the only way they could be worse is if I was trapped with Arkan as a hot rack mate.
As for all of you idiots that wonder how the govt will save you in case of an attack or natural disaster, how about a little personal responsibility? I'm teaching my kids that when its planet of the apes the rule of the day will be "neighbor, the other white meat".
Posted by: COOP bird | June 5, 2006 9:22 AM
Stop putting the rest of Americans at risk, given your policies, while you prepare to hide!
I ask, and what steps have our Federal Government, that could not protect its citizenry on 911, taken to protect the public in the event of a similar future attack? Oh, I know, color yellow, color orange..., or better yet, if you are a hostage flying overhead in an commercial jet liner, get word to the government, who will save the intruders from murdering you, instead the government will dispatch jet fighters to blow you out of the sky themselves in order to protect themselves!
I know that I angered some of you before, when I said that not only did the government fail to protect Americans on 911, when too many Federal Government officials were evacuated to or ran off to their hiding places, but where was the military that we have spent trillions of national defense dollars on to protect this country, i.e., that same military that many of you who believe that war is the answer, have placed your confidence in for so many years? They were no where to be seen. And they were completely caught off guard, oops!!
They are only good at, it would appear, attacking weaker nations. What was their solution to appease Americans, following 911. Er herm, to trapse off to a country and in the same manner that they were attacked, kill, displace and maim citizens in yet another country. That made too many Americans proud. Some who personally told me that we had to show them, that you don't mess with America. The problem, America conducted itself in the same manner that its intruders did, i.e., as cowards!
Someone said before, that the Secretary of Defense was seen helping to carry the wounded, outside of the Pentagon. He was outside of the Pentagon, because despite all of his sabre rattling and mischief around the world, he could not protect his own Headquarters or you or me or the remainder of the American citizenry at large. It is sad when pseudo-patriotism shuts down reason.
I give a shout out to all of the police personnel, firefighters, school crossing-guards and others for risking their own lives to preserve life and to protect the American public, while many Federal Government Officials and the military hid on that dreaded day. The American public needs to wake up!, and the warhawks in the Federal Government, need to stop listening to the war-is-the-answer to all problems, portion of the electorate.
Since the Federal Government and its military cannot protect us, the Federal Government needs to invest more of its time in coming up with new, coherent, realistic and sober policies that will render all Americans safe, as we learn to respect and live among the other nations and families of the world, instead of being the world's bully nation!.
The Reverend Formerly Known As...
P.S. Hans Blix is more to be trusted more than anyone in the American Administration...
Posted by: The Reverend Formerly Known As | June 5, 2006 9:03 AM
I fear for America when people can't tell the difference between news and opinion. This piece contains both, and they're both very interesting.
Posted by: Homeland Stupidity | June 5, 2006 5:02 AM
And to think Arkin would use a government induced distraction for his own....
Arkin, if you are so incapable of providing actual news, then pehaps you should get off the line.....
Put down your talking points..... or get off the line....
Posted by: Mike T. | June 5, 2006 12:18 AM
whenever anyone complains about what the administration is not doing....
it waves it's hand as_if, that were sufficient....
"Mission Accomplished," yeah and 12 to 20 MILLION ILLEGAL FRIGGIN ALIENS walk across the border,
because no ones guarding it.
we need oil so we invade another country, any right thinking citizen, would have formed a cabal to find an alternative energy form...
not one that ensures that Dad's old friends got to sell their oil down to the last drop and the boyz in DOD kept there job even if "hell froze over,"
so when someone complains about the fact that we're not looking for alternative fuel sources....
bush does a photo op and talks about it in California, not before he goes to war to intervene....pre emptive attack...
and once the ILLEGAL FRIGGIN IMMIGRANTS start becoming an issue with the rest of us, he's all like, I want people that hire them to be arrested.....like he doesn't know anyone that hires _illegals_ check his families ranches out...
and now, that it's been mentioned about 190 times in the press that the 9/11 Commision said that he ignored all of their advice and did nothing to protect America, post 9/11 (because he planned it), why he's making a big show of "look, I'm thinking of you!"
that's why he sent the National Guard to Iraq with no real combat training....
Katrina, it's a photo-op, bet you didn't hear about the 130 New Orleans residents that got on a plane to Houston and ended up at Dulles did you?
they were pissed, why were they flown there?
photo-op...
too little too late,
I care about you? shure you do shugah...
like any lord cares for his slaves, his peasants, his serfs...
he needs them to work the land, sure, he'd rather have slaves, don't have to treat them nice....or how about those new serfs....you can get two or three for the price of one of the old ones....
just let the old ones die off, and replace them with the smaller less expensive ones....the old ones are called "citizens?," that's odd I thought they were servants or serfs, lord knows when I'm driving drunk I'm not worried about being pulled over or taken to task for being a draftdodger, cokehead or alcoholic, even though I ran for public office....
and guess what, I didn't, you really have to ask yourselves why George W. Bush was not taken to task for his record and isn't being taken to task now....
need an arrest interrupted? just call George, he's got your back if you've got his....
it's not about honor, it's about family...
.
are you in his family?
.
Posted by: what's interesting it this... | June 4, 2006 11:50 PM
This is reminiscent of the book/movie Seven Days in May.
Posted by: Frederick March | June 4, 2006 11:13 PM
How many private sector people, to whom the public sector bureacrats are supposed to be mere servants, will be evacuated to safe facilities? Or will the whole coutry be public sector, i.e. communist, after any nuclear attack?
Posted by: Gordon Ritchie | June 4, 2006 9:58 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
What this country needs is a return to the draft! Some recent news stories depicted well-past draft and retirement age women sitting in on a recruiting office demanding that they be enlisted. The notion was they had nothing else to do with their lives. Their husbands were deceased. Their grandkids had grown up. And they were sick and tired of playing cards at the senior center. Hey, I say, if they are healthy -- and LOTS of retired folks are very healthy -- give them some basic training and a gun. Similarly some gays were challenging the don't ask/don't tell, demanding their right to be enlisted. Fine with me! I served my time eons ago. And I have no desire to get shot at again. :)If anyone can run two miles with a backpack, sign them up!