sketching the outlines of the "deep" aspects of the "national security state" infrastructure. For people unfamiliar with Scott, here is a 60 minute interview with him filmed at UC Berkeley a few years ago. It covers both his personal history and delves into some of his most relevant concepts. It is entitled "Wealth, Empire and the Future of America":
Here is an on-line excerpt of Scott's most recent book, "The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America":
<snip>
Cheney, Rumsfeld and COG Planning in the 1980sDick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have been associated since the 1980s with a parallel planning structure in the United States. The formal goal of this planned parallel structure was called “continuity of government” (COG), but the name is misleading. The Progressive Review referred more descriptively to plans for “a possible military/civilian coup.”18
<snip>
Some of the highest-level planning for COG was conducted by a parallel extragovernmental group. This parallel structure, operating outside normal government channels, included the head of G. D. Searle & Co., Donald Rumsfeld, and then congressman from Wyoming Dick Cheney.26 Overall responsibility for the program, hidden under the innocuously named National Program Office, was assigned to Vice President George H.W. Bush, “with Lt. Col. Oliver North . . . as the National Security Council action officer.”27
It is not fanciful to link this private parallel government to 9/11. As detailed in chapter 12, Cheney and FEMA were reunited in May 2001: President George W. Bush appointed Cheney to head a terrorism task force and created a new office within FEMA, the innocuously named Office of National Preparedness, to assist him. In effect, Bush was authorizing a resumption of the kind of planning that Cheney and FEMA had conducted under the heading of COG. And on September 11 the planning bore fruit: a classified “continuity of operations plan” was implemented, at least partially, for the first time.28
This chapter and especially the next explore the consequences of this arresting coincidence: that the COG planning team of the 1980s was essentially reconstituted by Bush the younger in May 2001 as a terrorism task force, and then (after planning activities of which we know next to nothing) a major attack on the United States (of which we also still know next to nothing) resulted in implementation of COG. The public also knows next to nothing about COG, except that its powers to disrupt constitutional government are considerable.
“Continuity of government” is a reassuring title. It would be more honest, however, to call it a “change of government” plan, since according to Alfonso Chardy of the Miami Herald, the plan called for “suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to FEMA, emergency appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and declaration of martial law during a national crisis.”29 The plan also gave the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which had been involved in drafting it, sweeping new powers, including internment.30
The team was planning, in effect, for the supplanting in a major crisis of the public state by an alternative one. According to author and journalist James Mann: “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.”31
But the planning eventually called for suspension of the Constitution, not just “after a nuclear war” but for any “national security emergency.” This was defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as “any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States.”32 Clearly 9/11 met this definition.
<snip>
18. “News from Post-Constitutional America” Progressive Review.
26. James Mann, “The Armageddon Plan,” Atlantic Monthly (March 2004),
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200403/mann Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 138–45. Mann in his book also names as team leaders in COG planning James Woolsey, later head of CIA, and Kenneth Duberstein, Reagan’s final chief of staff.
27. Bamford, Pretext for War, 72. According to CNN, the list eventually grew to seventeen names and also included Howard Baker, Richard Helms, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, James Schlesinger, Richard Thornberg, Edwin Meese, and Tip O’Neill (“Undernews: The Amazing, Scary History of FEMA,” Progressive Review, September 11, 2005, prorev.com/2005/09/amazing-scary-history-of-fema.htm). Schlesinger was also president of Mitre Corporation, a defense industry that some have suspected of a role in 9/11 because of its collaboration with Ptech on the command and control systems of the Department of Defense, NORAD, the Air Force, and the FAA. Those who, like myself, have known Schlesinger personally find the notion of his possible involvement highly unlikely.
28. Gellman and Schmidt, “Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret,” Washington Post, March 1, 2002.
29. “Some Secret Activities,” Miami Herald, July 5, 1987. In October 1984 columnist Jack Anderson is said to have reported that FEMA’s plans would “suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, effectively eliminate private property, abolish free enterprise, and generally clamp Americans in a totalitarian vise.”
30. Singapore Straits-Times, July 17, 2002; Rodger Herbst, “Poised for a COUP: Bush Regime Struggles to Retain Power in an Increasingly Alienated America,” Washington Free Press, no. 70 (July–August 2004): “‘The Mysterious Mountain,’ an article appearing in the March 1976 issue of The Progressive, was based on the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights hearings in 1975, and several off-the-record interviews. The article noted that Mount Weather
at that time contained a parallel ‘government-in-waiting’ ready to take control of the United States upon word from the President or his successor. The subcommittee learned that Congress has almost no knowledge and no oversight—budgetary or otherwise—on Mount Weather, and that the ‘facility held dossiers on at least 100,000 Americans’” Cf. Richard Pollack, “The Mysterious Mountain,” The Progressive, March 1976, 12–16.
31. Mann, “Armageddon Plan”; cf. Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 145; Bamford, Pretext for War, 74: “The existence of the secret government was so closely held that Congress was completely bypassed. Rather than through legislation, it was created by Top Secret presidential fiat. In fact, Congress would have no role in the new wartime administration. ‘One of the awkward questions we faced,’ said one of the participants, ‘was whether to reconstitute Congress after a nuclear attack. It was decided that no, it would be easier to operate without them.’”
32. The provisions of Executive Order 12656 of November 18, 1988, appear at 53 FR 47491, 3 CFR, 1988 Comp., p. 585, “Executive Order 12656—Assignment of Emergency Preparedness Responsibilities,” www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12656.html. The Washington Post (Gellman and Schmidt, “Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret,” March 1, 2002) later claimed, incorrectly, that Executive Order 12656 dealt only with “a nuclear attack.”
Much more at source.
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