The Shadow Government
Copyright © 1994 Constitution Society. Permission is hereby granted to copy for noncommercial use.

Secret Rule
It is becoming increasingly apparent to American citizens that government is no longer being conducted in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, or, within states, according to state constitutions. While people have recognized for more than 150 years that the rich and powerful often corrupt individual officials, or exert undue influence to get legislation passed that favors their interests, most Americans still cling to the naive belief that such corruption is exceptional, and that most of the institutions of society, the courts, the press, and law enforcement agencies, still largely comply with the Constitution and the law in important matters. They expect that these corrupting forces are disunited and in competition with one another, so that they tend to balance one another.

Mounting evidence makes it clear that the situation is far worse than most people think, that during the last several decades the U.S. Constitution has been effectively overthrown, and that it is now observed only as a façade to deceive and placate the masses. What has replaced it is what many call the Shadow Government. It still, for the most part, operates in secret, because its control is not secure. The exposure of this regime and its operations must now become a primary duty of citizens who still believe in the Rule of Law and in the freedoms which this country is supposed to represent.<1>

Transition to Oligarchy
It is difficult to identify a single date or event that marks the overthrow, but we can identify some critical steps.

The first was the Dick Act of 1903, which repealed the Militia Act of 1792 and tried to relegate the Constitutional Militia to the National Guard, under control of what is now the U.S. Defense Department. The second was the Federal Reserve Act, which established a central bank only nominally under the control of the government.

Further erosion of constitutional governance was motivated by several challenges which the powerful felt required them to put aside their differences and unite. The first was the Great Depression of 1933-1941. The second was World War II and the threat from fascism, followed by the Cold War and the threat from Soviet imperialism and from communism.

The third defies credibility, but cannot be avoided. UFOs and aliens. Despite the lack of hard evidence accessible to ordinary citizens, there is enough testimonial evidence to compel a reasonable person to conclude three things: UFOs exist, they are intelligently directed, and they are not ours.<2> Even if that were all that the government knew about them, minds already paranoid from the Cold War could hardly help but perceive such things as a significant potential threat, one that required secrecy, preparation, and disregard for provisions of a Constitution that were inconvenient. There are, however, enough leaks from government officials to indicate that the government knows a great deal about them that it is concealing from the public.

The fourth is the eco-crisis, which combines both the ecological and economic crises. Many leaders have recognized for a long time that we are headed for disaster, not a kind of cyclical downturn like the Great Depression, but an irreversible decline brought about by a combination of resource depletion, environmental degradation, and overpopulation, playing out in an anarchic international system of disparate nation- states, national currencies, national banks, and multinational corporations, exacerbated by traditional tribal rivalries, class conflict, and different languages and religions.<3>

Confronted with the political fact that to deal with the problems faced in the last half of the 20th century, it was difficult enough to pass legislation thought to be needed, without having to also adopt the amendments to the U.S. Constitution necessary to make such legislation constitutional, it became too easy to just adopt more and more legislation without worrying about its constitutionality, and depend on compliant officials and judges to go along with it, which for the most part, they have done. This was facilitated by the lack of sufficiently strong protests from the people, many of whom, ignorant of constitutional rights and limitations on governmental powers, and focused on the problems to be solved, supported much of the legislation.<4>

We can also identify several insidious developments which seemed necessary and harmless at the time, but which led to the present situation. One was the rise of military and civilian intelligence organs during World War II. The need to prevent leaks of military secrets brought a censorship apparatus that gained substantial control over the flow of information through the press, the broadcast media, telephonic and telegraphic communications, and the mail. However, instead of dismantling that apparatus when the war was over, we immediately transitioned to the Cold War, and the information control apparatus only went underground and became somewhat less obtrusive. This led to the present situation in which the intelligence apparatus maintains effective control over the major media, can tap anyone's phone without a court order, reads people's mail, monitors their finances, and gathers information on citizens and their activities that threatens their privacy and liberties.

1947 was a critical year. It was the year in which UFOs became a matter of public concern, and in which it appears we recovered at least one crashed vehicle and perhaps at least one of its occupants. It is also the year that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was established, ostensibly to bring together the disparate intelligence agencies that had often been operating at cross-purposes. It was also the beginning of the use of "black budgets" for government programs, the existence of which was kept secret from both the public and most if not all members of Congress. This led later to the establishment of more agencies, such as the National Security Agency, whose entire budget was black, thus preventing effective oversight.

The situation had evolved to the extent that, at the end of President Eisenhower's second term, he warned in a speech of the potential danger to our freedoms from a "military-industrial complex". In fact, by that time, it had become a "intelligence- military-industrial-financial-political-media- criminal" complex, which reached into almost every institution in this country, and into many around the world.

What had developed was beginning to look more and more like the system of political control that prevailed in the Soviet Union, in which real decisions of government were made not by the official organs of government, but by the parallel structure of the Communist Party, backed by the KGB. In competing with the Soviets, we had taken on their methods and attributes of political control.

But this apparatus did not seem to function as an effective Shadow Government, able to make and enforce decisions apart from the official government, until it came together to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. That was the watershed event. After that, too many people had too much to hide to allow the situation to return to governance as usual.

Since then, the Shadow Government has grown and tried to strengthen its grip on every sector of the society, motivated in part by honest concern about the very real threats we have faced, and in part by venality and greed, which brought increasing corruption and the effective incorporation of organized crime into the mainstream of government.

It appears that 1963 is also the year in which the Establishment Media sector of the Shadow Government was given effective control over computerized voting in the United States, through its National Election Service, as part of a deal in which they went along with the coverup of the Kennedy Assassination through the Warren Commission. While campaign money continued to buy influence over elected officials, if it was not sufficient, the Shadow Government had other options. It put officials in compromising situations, then used its evidence to blackmail them into compliance. Failing that, it could easily select the winner of any election, and suppress the support which third-party candidates might attain.

Structure and Decisionmaking
A key question about the Shadow Government is how does it make decisions and carry them out. Where is the center? Some think it lies in a few major financial institutions. Others that it lies in the intelligence apparatus. Still others that it has no permanent center, but operates by consensus, with shifting factions that confer through various mechanisms. Some think that those mechanisms are reflected in public associations such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Tri- lateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, the Federal Reserve, the World Bank, or the International Monetary Fund.<5>

That the key personalities in every major institution should associate and confer through various associations is not in itself a matter of concern, if all that was involved was the development of a consensus. But there is evidence that a centralized decisionmaking process exists, because too much is done that could not otherwise occur, and that the process is contemptuous of the Constitution and increasingly willing to violate it. That suggests a permanent apparatus, a bureaucracy, and that points to the intelligence and financial bureaucracies. Therefore, the real decisions may be made not by public figures, but by faceless persons operating in secret.

Most available evidence indicates that the center is in the intelligence apparatus, and that it largely controls all the other components of the system, including the financial. However, it also appears that the control is imperfect, subject to resistance if it tries to go too far.

It also appears that there are some distinct factions involved, the two major contenders being those more highly motivated persons concerned about meeting the challenges we face, the other being the more corrupt ones trying to expand their power and wealth. The alliance between these factions appears to be increasingly strained as growing corruption begins to impair the effectiveness of the institutions of society to meet the perceived challenges.

An analogy might be to a sinking ship, in which some want to build and equip lifeboats and others who want to make sure they are the ones who get to go in them. Each needs the other, for the time being, but the latter are beginning to threaten the production and seaworthiness of the lifeboats.

What we have is in many ways a classic oligarchy, with multiple components in an uneasy alliance with one another. No one individual is paramount, and anyone can be replaced if he gets too far out of line, by some combination of the others, each of whom derives his power from the institutions and assets under his influence.

Of course, the ones who get trampled under this regime are the ordinary people, who receive just enough under the deal to keep them quiet. The Powers That Be fear above all that the people might rise up and overthrow them, something that the people could still do if they could ever act in concert. Social control therefore becomes a matter of keeping them placated, divided, and misinformed.

Unfortunately for their scheme, they face the same problem the Roman Empire did. To keep the people placated, they are forced to pay them off, and meet increasing demands for such payoffs, while growth of the productive sector falters, or even shrinks relative to the population. Economic growth and the solutions to our social problems are being impaired by the depredations of the corrupt elements of the Shadow Government, who are concentrating assets in a way and at a rate that threaten the viability of the economy. The Romans solved the problem of keeping their citizens supplied with bread and circuses by predation of outlying provinces. Modern capitalist nations tried the same thing, but that imperial order is breaking down, and the only thing left is economic growth. If that growth falters, the welfare state fails, and with it the social stability on which the Established Order depends.

Shadow Finance
Some of the best indications that the Shadow Government is not centered in the financial sector are the things it has to do to finance itself. Shadow Government is expensive. We can identify the main sources of its revenue:

(1) Black budgets. This is the core of its operations, but is not enough to secure its control over the country and the world.

(2) Drug trade. It has seized control of the major part of the illegal traffic in addictive substances, in part by using the organs of law enforcement to eliminate competition, and by gaining control of the money and the ways it gets re-introduced into the economy.

(3) Raiding financial institutions. This is what was done with the S&Ls, and is being done, more slowly, with the banks. It involves several aspects: diversion of the funds, seizure of smaller institutions by a few large ones under Shadow Government control, with the seizure financed by the taxpayers, and acquisition under distressed prices of the assets of those institutions, many of which are well-positioned business enterprises that give the Shadow Government both control of the key enterprises in most business sectors and sources of revenue. The Savings & Loan raid was used to finance a major expansion of the Shadow Government. However, it is not a method that can be repeated.

(4) Public authorities. These are quasi- governmental enterprises that control substantial assets, often taxpayer-subsidized, without effective accountability. They include housing, port, energy, water, transportation, and educational authorities.<6> To this might also be added various utilities, and both public and publicly-regulated private monopolies, like local telephone and cable companies. They are also a major source of government contracts.

(5) Government contracts. Major source of diverted funds, but must often be shared with others involved.

(6) Arms trade. Another major source of funds, both direct and diverted. But requires payoffs to local officials.

Shadow Control
The problem with secret government is that to remain secret, it cannot involve too many people who are aware of the situation. The more that become involved, the greater the chance that some of them who retain some sense of honor might defect. An occasional defector can be disabled, killed or discredited, but a flood of them could be disastrous. That is what brought down the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union.

Shadow control therefore consists largely of the placement of shadow agents in key positions in all of the institutions that are to be controlled. Since they cannot reveal their true role, they are also somewhat constrained in the actions they can take. What they do has to fit their jobs and not conflict in an obvious way with the mission of the organization, even if they head it. Some of the main targeted institutions are the following:

(1) Top and key lower positions in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Key judges, especially presiding judges who assign cases.

(2) Staff positions under the top positions, such as the congressional staff members who really run Congress.

(3) Intelligence agencies. The CIA<7>, NSA and various military intelligence divisions. Among their functions are death squads that eliminate troublesome persons, although they usually avoid doing that to more prominent ones. They also have developed mind control techniques that can be used to mess up the minds of people they want to discredit or disable.<8> Actually, almost every department of government has an intelligence function, and that function is the Shadow Government's main point of control of the department.

(4) Military organizations, law enforcement, and taxing agencies, especially the IRS. Not only federal, but also state and local, at least in the major cities. The IRS and other agencies are used to harass persons considered troublesome, and sometimes to prosecute them on trumped up charges, in which evidence is planted or manufactured and government witnesses perjure themselves.

(5) Major banks, insurance companies, pension funds, holding companies, utilities, public authorities, contractors, manufacturers, distributors, transport firms, security services, credit reporting services. Forbidden by law from maintaining dossiers on citizens not the subject of criminal investigation, the agencies get around the restriction by using contractors to maintain the data for them, and have amazingly detailed data on almost everyone. When you hire one of the major security services, you are turning over the keys to your premises to the shadow government.

(6) Major media. Newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations. Together, they control the National Election Service, which in turn controls the outcome of computerized elections.<9> They suppress coverage of certain subjects, and are the channel for the Shadow Government's propaganda and disinformation campaigns. A major part of the budget of the CIA is for film and video production. They aren't making training films.

(7) Communications networks. Telephone, telegraph, cable and satellite. The Shadow Government can bug any communication they wish, without bothering with a court order, and they regularly monitor dissidents and other key figures. Major holes in their control here are the Internet and public-key encryption, which the Shadow Government is trying to suppress. Although the Internet can be monitored, it cannot be effectively controlled, and it is emerging as a major threat to Shadow control.

(8) Organized crime. Despite occasional convictions, they are now mostly treated as a profit center and as the executors of the dirty jobs. They are also the providers of vices for the corrupt members of government, which vices are also used to blackmail and control people.

(9) Education. Universities and public education. Universities are the least effectively controlled components, but still important, largely for recruitment. Main aim here is to divert student activists into unproductive channels, or to get students so involved in careerism that they ignore the important issues.

(10) Civic, political, and labor organizations. The two major political parties. Political action committees. League of Women Voters. Trade and professional associations, such as the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association. Labor unions.

(11) International organizations. The United Nations, NATO, the IMF. Multinational corporations.

(12) Governmental and nongovernmental institutions of other countries. We are doing many of the same things there that are being done in the United States, especially in the more advanced countries.

Concentration of Power
A major aim of Shadow Government control has been to bring most of the assets and revenues of the economy under the control of fewer and fewer people. Part of this is causing the failure of smaller organizations and the absorption of them by a few large chains. This is being done with banks and other financial institutions, newspapers and magazines, television and radio stations, agriculture and mining producers, distributors and retailers, computer manufacturers, energy and chemical companies, medical providers, and pharmaceutical companies. Anti-trust enforcement has been weak, used only in a few sectors, and then only after major concentrations of economic power has already been achieved.

The process goes beyond normal tendencies toward monopoly or restraint of trade, or the economies of scale that support the old adage that "the rich get richer". It is an attempt to consolidate political control. The result has been for a smaller and smaller proportion of the population to control a larger and larger proportion of the assets and revenues of the economy, while the middle class shrinks. We are moving away from the original model of the universal middle class, and toward a third-world model of a small upper class and a large poor class, with a small middle class that mainly serve as minions of the rich.

The Shadow Plan
The Shadow Government appears to be operating according to some plan. Many commentators have dubbed this plan the "New World Order", suggested by the use of that phrase in a speech by George Bush, referring to the state of affairs following the end of the Cold War. Actually, that phrase goes back to the beginning of the Republic, and appears on the Great Seal of the United States as the motto, Novus Ordo Seclorum. What the Shadow Government itself calls the plan is uncertain, however, some of its elements are now emerging.

One element is the disarming of the people.<10> There are serious plans and preparations for a general warrantless sweep of every location in the country to confiscate weapons. Information about these plans comes from military and intelligence personnel who are involved in preparing to carry them out. Such an action would mean seizing more than 300 million firearms from more than 70 million citizens. Obviously, after such a sweep there would be so much public outrage that there could not be another election. Therefore, it would also be the formal overthrow of the Constitution.

There are indications that after things settled down, the Shadow Government would allow the establishment of a parliamentary system that would provide a façade of democracy, just as it does in other countries that have such a system, without effective limits on the powers of government, where "rights" endure only as long as there is a sufficiently strong constituency that defends them. Such a system is not a republican form of government, based on the Rule of Law, or a representative democracy, but merely a tool for control by an oligarchy.

There is also suspicious circumstantial evidence that part of the plan is the release of diseases, of which HIV/AIDS is one, to reduce the world population, selectively.

A key part of the plan seems to involve the development and use of mind control techno logies, both electronic and chemical, which allow the elite to disable or discredit dissidents and keep the people compliant and productive. The experimentation that has been done on this is one of the great coverups and abuses of human rights of our time, far exceeding that of the radiation experiments that are now coming to light.<11>

Restoring Constitutional Governance
The restoration of constitutional governance need not require a violent revolution, and we should avoid violence if possible. It can be brought about in much the way it happened in the Soviet Union. This involves several elements:

(1) Exposure ("glasnost"). The Shadow Government, even more than the old Soviet regime, depends on secrecy. Uncover it and it loses most of its power. We need to end black budgets, require the declassification of most classified documents, especially those pertaining to UFOs and aliens, and adopt and enforce sunshine laws to require full disclosure of not just meetings and agreements among officials, but also among major organizations of all kinds which may exercise an undue influence on political decisions. We must also require independent audits of all such organizations.

(2) Restructuring ("perestroika"). We need to enforce strengthened anti-trust laws to break up large enterprises into many competing firms, not just two or three, and forbid interlocking directorates, beginning with the broadcast media and the press. Intelligence and law enforcement agencies need to be broken up into several competing ones, which can serve as effective checks on abuses by one another.

(2) Infiltration and defection. We need to get patriots inside key organizations and encourage insiders to become patriots. The most important are military and law enforcement organizations, whose members must be conditioned to come over to the side of the people if there is a confrontation. We must also provide effective protection for whistleblowers.

(3) Harassment. Lawsuits. Liens. Freedom of Information Act requests. Surveillance of principals. Local prosecution of federal agents.

(4) Local organization and publicity. Revive the constitutional Militia on the Swiss model<12>, set up independent investigation teams, alternative newspapers, talk radio, alert networks. We need to inform the public on what is happening, and to reach those who now are all too willing to trust the government to protect them.

(5) Civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance. Protest demonstrations. Tax protests. Defiance of unconstitutional laws. Refusal of juries to convict.<13>

(6) Armed resistance. This must involve non- provocative, but firm, defense of persons from illegal abuses, and exclusion of illegal governmental actions from local areas, county by county, state by state, with insistence on constitutional compliance.

(7) Transition plan. The oligarchy cannot be expected to come up with a plan for an orderly return to constitutional governance. The process must be conducted carefully, to avoid a disastrous collapse.<14> We will need some constitutional amendments, to make legal some of the things the national government can do best. The government needs to end budget deficits and acquire the stock of the Federal Reserve.<15>

Conclusion
The myth is that World War II ended with the defeat of fascism, but what really happened is that fascism got a grip on those fighting it, and is becoming increasingly pervasive and powerful. As it grows, it will induce a reaction, the outcome of which will be a final confrontation. We can all hope that the confrontation will not be a bloody one, and that it will be resolved while we still have time to solve our other pressing problems.

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