anyone care to speculate on what might be in the "annexes" to Directive 51?

[Syrinx]

National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 51 is, of course, the Bush plan for continuity of government in the event of some grand national emergency.

Though the base text of the directive is public, as is "Annex A," it has a number of other addenda that are classified.

Okay, it's understandable, I guess, that such information would be kept out of the public realm. But why would the White House withhold this information from a member of the House Homeland Security Committee?

"I just can't believe they're going to deny a member of Congress the right of reviewing how they plan to conduct the government of the United States after a significant terrorist attack," DeFazio says.

"We're talking about the continuity of the government of the United States of America," DeFazio says. "I would think that would be relevant to any member of Congress, let alone a member of the Homeland Security Committee."

"Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right," DeFazio said.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/118489654058910.xml&coll=7

Anyone care to speculate what is in there that they don't want DeFazio to see?

[Kutjara]

1. Whatever the specifics...

...you can bet your last dime it will involve concentration camps, ubiquitous surveillance and lots of "Christianity." Oh, and God help you if you suffer from being brown.

[leveymg]

5. Their model is "Down Under" in "A Boy and His Dog". That's the basic idea.

A Boy and His Dog is a 1975 post-apocalyptic science fiction film directed by L. Q. Jones and based on the Harlan Ellison short story of the same title, which originally appeared in 1969. A revised and expanded version was printed in Ellison's 1976 story collection The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, and Ellison continued the story in the graphic novel Vic and Blood. The film version is often cited as an inspiration for George Miller's Mad Max though Miller has said he didn't view Jones' film until after he had completed his own.

SNIP



This is a post-apocalyptic tale in which the earth's surface is devastated by nuclear war, and the few survivors who stayed above ground must forage and fight for food, ammo, and women. Of these necessities, women are the rarest finds; as explained in the movie, most survivors are male because while the males were off fighting the war, their leaders bombed their enemies' cities and destroyed their homes.

The main character, Vic, played by Don Johnson in a notable early role, is a 18-year-old boy focused on stealing food and fulfilling his sexual needs. He is accompanied by a well-read and wise-cracking telepathic dog named Blood, an "experienced female provider."

SNIP



Most of civilization has gone into the "downunder" (a subsurface setting). One underground city, "Topeka," fashioned in a disturbing mockery of 1950s rural innocence and brave-new-worldian madness, solves its need for exogamous reproduction by forcibly extracting fluids from sperm donors. But the city is running low on viable donors. Quilla June (played by Susanne Benton), the daughter of one of Topeka's committee leaders, is sent to the surface to bait Vic into "service." Vic takes leave of his lifelong friend Blood and pursues the young lady into the downunder. He soon learns the harsh reality of the authoritarian committee and of its need for his semen.

SNIP



Speculation: the death sentence "Going to the Farm" refers to the practice of killing problem citizens and harvesting their flesh and other "useful" components for use in perpetuating life in Topeka. Keep this in mind while Jason Robards' character inspects and chooses a sandwich from the deli tray during Vic's introduction to Topeka.

[snot]

2. K & R -- let's get some hopefully informed discussion on this -- nt

[EST]

3. Every time it has been needed, citizens have had no trouble

ginning up a government, should one be needed.
"Continuity of government" is not what it says it is. It is actually continuity of regime.
If there is one thing we need less than the continuity of this government, it is difficult to discern.
When a government is more bad and more trouble than whatever good it does, it should not continue.

[formercia]

4. You can bet that Liberal and progressive members of Congress

won't get an invite into the bunker when the balloon goes up.

[Octafish]

6. The Armageddon Plan - Cheney and Rumsfeld got LOTS of practice in 1980s

These warmongers and the men they serve are, at essence, insane traitors.

The Armageddon Plan

by James Mann
Published in the March, 2004 issue of The Atlantic

At least once a year during the 1980s Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld vanished. Cheney was working diligently on Capitol Hill, as a congressman rising through the ranks of the Republican leadership. Rumsfeld, who had served as Gerald Ford's Secretary of Defense, was a hard-driving business executive in the Chicago area—where, as the head of G. D. Searle & Co., he dedicated time and energy to the success of such commercial products as Nutra-Sweet, Equal, and Metamucil. Yet for periods of three or four days at a time no one in Congress knew where Cheney was, nor could anyone at Searle locate Rumsfeld. Even their wives were in the dark; they were handed only a mysterious Washington phone number to use in case of emergency.

After leaving their day jobs Cheney and Rumsfeld usually made their way to Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington. From there, in the middle of the night, each man—joined by a team of forty to sixty federal officials and one member of Ronald Reagan's Cabinet—slipped away to some remote location in the United States, such as a disused military base or an underground bunker. A convoy of lead-lined trucks carrying sophisticated communications equipment and other gear would head to each of the locations.

Rumsfeld and Cheney were principal actors in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan Administration. Under it U.S. officials furtively carried out detailed planning exercises for keeping the federal government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The program called for setting aside the legal rules for presidential succession in some circumstances, in favor of a secret procedure for putting in place a new "President" and his staff. The idea was to concentrate on speed, to preserve "continuity of government," and to avoid cumbersome procedures; the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and the rest of Congress would play a greatly diminished role.

The inspiration for this program came from within the Administration itself, not from Cheney or Rumsfeld; except for a brief stint Rumsfeld served as Middle East envoy, neither of them ever held office in the Reagan Administration. Nevertheless, they were leading figures in the program.

A few details about the effort have come to light over the years, but nothing about the way it worked or the central roles played by Cheney and Rumsfeld. The program is of particular interest today because it helps to explain the thinking and behavior of the second Bush Administration in the hours, days, and months after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Vice President Cheney urged President Bush to stay out of Washington for the rest of that day; Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld ordered his deputy Paul Wolfowitz to get out of town; Cheney himself began to move from Washington to a series of "undisclosed locations"; and other federal officials were later sent to work outside the capital, to ensure the continuity of government in case of further attacks. All these actions had their roots in the Reagan Administration's clandestine planning exercises.

The U.S. government considered the possibility of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union more seriously during the early Reagan years than at any other time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Reagan had spoken in his 1980 campaign about the need for civil-defense programs to help the United States survive a nuclear exchange, and once in office he not only moved to boost civil defense but also approved a new defense-policy document that included plans for waging a protracted nuclear war against the Soviet Union. The exercises in which Cheney and Rumsfeld participated were a hidden component of these more public efforts to prepare for nuclear war.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0318-14.htm

As formercia wrote above, people like DeFazio will be the last to know.