The United States has been in a declared state of emergency from September 2001, to the present.
The
White House website states that, on 9/14/01, the government declared a continuing state of emergency based upon the 9/11/01 attacks, which is continuing into 2008:
"Consistent with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency I declared on September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect to the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, New York, New York, the Pentagon, and aboard United Airlines flight 93, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.
Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, last extended on September 5, 2006, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2007. Therefore, I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency I declared on September 14, 2001, with respect to the terrorist threat."
A separate announcement on the
White House website states:
"Because the actions of these persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States, the national emergency declared on September 23, 2001, and the measures adopted on that date to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 23, 2007. Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism."
Confirmed
here .
The Washington Times
wrote on September 18, 2001:
"Simply by proclaiming a national emergency on Friday, President Bush activated some 500 dormant legal provisions, including those allowing him to impose censorship and martial law."
Whether or not the Times is correct, it is clear that a state of emergency is a very serious condition under which the United States has been operating for many years.
Continuity of Government Plans were Implemented for the United States on 9/11.
Continuity of Government ("COG") measures were implemented on 9/11. For example, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, at page 38:
"At 9:59, an Air Force lieutenant colonel working in the White House Military Office joined the conference and stated he had just talked to Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. The White House requested (1) the implementation of continuity of government measures, (2) fighter escorts for Air Force One, and (3) a fighter combat air patrol over Washington, D.C."
Likewise, page 326 of the Report states:
"The secretary of defense directed the nation's armed forces to Defense Condition 3, an increased state of military readiness. For the first time in history, all nonemergency civilian aircraft in the United States were grounded, stranding tens of thousands of passengers across the country. Contingency plans for the continuity of government and the evacuation of leaders had been implemented."
The
Washington Post states that Vice President Richard Cheney initiated the COG plan on 9/11 (“From the bunker, Cheney officially implemented the emergency continuity of government orders . . . .”)
See also footnotes cited therein and
this webpage.
Continuity of Government Measures Were Kept in Effect For Several Months, At The Least; Congress Was Kept In the Dark
CNN reports that -- 6 months later --
Because Bush has decided to leave the operation in place, agencies including the White House and top civilian Cabinet departments have rotated personnel involved, and are discussing ways to staff such a contingency operation under the assumption it will be in place indefinitely, this official said.
Similarly, the Washington Post stated in March 2002 that "
the shadow government has evolved into an indefinite precaution." The same article goes on to state:
"... 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."
As a
CBS article makes clear, virtually none of the Congressional leadership knew that the COG had been implemented or was still in existence as of March 2002:
Key congressional leaders say they didn’t know President Bush had established a “shadow government,” moving dozens of senior civilian managers to secret underground locations outside Washington to ensure that the federal government could survive a devastating terrorist attack on the nation's capital, The Washington Post says in its Saturday editions.
Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) told the Post he had not been informed by the White House about the role, location or even the existence of the shadow government that the administration began to deploy the morning of the Sept. 11 hijackings.
An aide to House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) said he was also unaware of the administration's move.
Among Congress's GOP leadership, aides to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.), second in line to succeed the president if he became incapacitated, and to Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (Miss.) said they were not sure whether they knew.
Aides to Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) said he had not been told. As Senate president pro tempore, he is in line to become president after the House speaker.
Similarly, the above-cited CNN article states :
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, said Friday he can't say much about the plan.
"We have not been informed at all about the role of the shadow government or its whereabouts or what particular responsibilities they have and when they would kick in, but we look forward to work with the administration to get additional information on that."
Indeed, as documented below, the White House has specifically refused to share information about Continuity of Government plans with the Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. Congress, even though that Committee has proper security clearance to hear the full details of all COG plans.
What Are Continuity of Government Plans?
Continuity of government plans are contingency plans which create a new government in the case of an alleged threat to the ability of the American government to continue operations. America's COG plans were created to deal with nuclear war, but they have been discussed in many other contexts as well.
What would things look like if the COG plans were already being implemented?
- Top leaders of the “new government” called for in the COG would entirely or largely go into hiding, and would govern in hidden locations
- Those within the new government would know what was going on. But those in the “old government” – that is, the one created by the framers of the Constitution – would not necessarily know the details of what was happening
- Normal laws and legal processes might largely be suspended, or superseded by secretive judicial forums
- The media might be ordered by strict laws – punishable by treason – to only promote stories authorized by the new government
See
this,
this and
this.
Therefore, COG plans are of vital importance to America, because their implementation suspends the normal Constitutional form of government, separation of powers, and traditional American rights.
Has the Government Maintained COG to the Present?
Could the White House have maintained COG operations to the present day? One hint may be contained in the
above-cited CNN article:
Bush triggered the precautions in the hours after the September 11 strikes, and has left them in place because of continuing U.S. intelligence suggesting a possible threat.
Concerns that al Qaeda could have gained access to a crude nuclear device "were a major factor" in the president's decision, the official said. "The threat of some form of catastrophic event is the trigger," this official said.
This same official went on to say that the U.S. had no confirmation -- "and no solid evidence" -- that al Qaeda had such a nuclear device and also acknowledged that the "consensus" among top U.S. officials was that the prospect was "quite low."
Still, the officials said Bush and other top White House officials including Cheney were adamant that the government take precautions designed to make sure government functions ranging from civil defense to transportation and agricultural production could be managed in the event Washington was the target of a major strike.
As is apparent from a brief review of the news, the government has, since 9/11, continuously stated that there is a terrorist threat of a nuclear device or dirty bomb. That alone infers that COG plans may still be in effect.
In addition, one of the top investigative journalists in the country, Larisa Alexandrovna (the lead journalist at Raw Story), writing about the 2001 Department of Justice memorandum that found that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations, wrote:
"it seems to me that this administration has justified its crimes by NOT suspending the state of emergency that went up on September 11, 2001. They are using emergency powers if you look at the whole of the spying, military actions inside the US, etc. I would wager that if asked, this administration will admit that we have been in a state of emergency for their tenure in office."
Alexandrovna not only believes that we have been in a state of emergency since 2001 (which the White House itself has verified, see above), but that the government has been
using its emergency powers -- i.e. powers justified by a state of emergency -- in spying, carrying out military actions inside the U.S. (see
this), and taking other extra-Constitutional actions.
Is that why the government:
- Has been spying on Americans?
Are all of these actions based upon a COG form of government?
Remember also that provisions of the Homegrown Terrorism are
already being implemented, even though the Senate has not yet approved that law (and see
this). How could that happen if COG plans were not in effect?
Additionally, Vice President Cheney’s recent claim that his office is not part of the Executive branch of government may be one more piece of circumstantial evidence that COG plans are still be in effect, with Cheney a participant in the extra-constitutional government.
Specifically, last summer, Cheney’s office stated that “
the Vice President's office is not an 'entity within the executive branch”. As summarized in
Time Magazine:
“Vice President Dick Cheney has been resisting even his own Executive Branch's efforts to find out what kind of secret material his office has been stashing away over the last four years.
Cheney's office, according to a story first reported by the Chicago Tribune, has resisted attempts by a tiny federal agency to compile information — in accordance with an executive order signed by George Bush himself — on the classified documents being held by the Vice President's operation. Cheney's office argued that the Vice President's office, because it has both executive and legislative branch duties, is exempt from the order.”
It is, of course, possible that Cheney’s response to the request for documents is simply based upon a desire to avoid handing over documents. However, given that
Cheney has been instrumental in creating and practicing Continuity of Government plans for 20 years, and the increasingly strong circumstantial evidence that Continuity of Government plans are currently in effect, Cheney’s statement that he is not within the Executive branch, and that he is also part of the legislative, may be based on his being a key participant in a COG government. In other words, COG leaders, such as perhaps Cheney, would have key roles not only in the executive, but also the legislative branch, to the extent those “branches” (separation of powers is apparently not part of the COG plans) even exist. See
this.
Presidential Directive NSPD-51
In 2007, President Bush issued Presidential Directive NSPD-51, which purported to change Continuity of Government plans. I have
argued elsewhere that issuance of NSPD-51 does not prove that Continuity of Government plans are not in effect currently.
However, even if COG plans are not currently in effect, and were somehow secretly rescinded between September 2001 and the present
despite the continuing declaration of state of emergency, it is important to note the following:
“Beyond cases of actual insurrection, the President may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack, or to any ‘other condition.’ Changes of this magnitude should be made only after a thorough public airing. But these new Presidential powers were slipped into the law without hearings or public debate.”
Everyone from "conservative activist Jerome Corsi [to] Marjorie Cohn of the [liberal] National Lawyer's Guild have interpreted [the COG plans contained in Presidential Directive NSPD-51] as a break from Constitutional law ...."
As a reporter for Slate concluded after analyzing NSPD-51: "I see nothing in the [COG document entitled presidential directive NSPD51] to prevent even a "localized" forest fire or hurricane from giving the president the right to throw long-established constitutional government out the window"
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said that "because of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the American public needs no explanation of [Continuity of Government] plans"
Indeed, in the summer 2007, Congressman Peter DeFazio, on the Homeland Security Committee (and so with proper security access to be briefed on COG issues), inquired about continuity of government plans, and was
refused access. Indeed, DeFazio told Congress that
the entire Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. Congress has been denied access to the plans by the White House (video; or
here is the transcript). The Homeland Security Committee has
full clearance to view all information about COG plans. DeFazio concluded: "
Maybe the people who think there’s a conspiracy out there are right”.
Given the above, even under a
best-case scenario -- that is, assuming that COG plans are
not currently still in effect -- it is urgent that Congress and the public pay attention to this issue. Congress, the Courts, and the American people must demand that any and all COG plans be rescinded to the extent they:
(1) allow the plans to be unilaterally implemented without adequate justification by the White House (e.g. a local fire);
(2) do not have strict time limits, so that they are terminated the minute they are no longer absolutely necessary for the survival of our country;
(3) do not include Congress in the planning process; or
(4) unnecessarily destroy Constitutional protections, when our country could still be protected if such protections were respected.
http://constitutionally.blogspot.com/
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