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a not really good recentish article on mt. weather

Copyright Boston Globe Newspaper Mar 2, 2002
FIGHTING TERROR / ALLIES AND PROTEST

WASHINGTON - Osama bin Laden has done what Nikita Khrushchev, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro never could: drive the United States government underground.

President Bush and top government officials acknowledged yesterday that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks triggered activation of a Cold War-era plan under which a shadow government has been placed in secure bunkers to provide continuing leadership should Washington be incapacitated by an attack.

The group of about 100 senior civilian managers has been operating on a 90-day rotation that continues around the clock today, nearly six months after the attacks.

"I have an obligation as the president, my administration has an obligation to the American people, to put measures in place that should somebody be successful in attacking Washington, D.C., there's an ongoing government," Bush told reporters while traveling in Des Moines.

While critics have condemned and comedians have joked about Vice President Dick Cheney's shuttling to undisclosed locations since September, Bush said the vice president has been doing so to ensure that the country would not be rendered leaderless by a catastrophic attack.

"This is serious business, and we take it seriously," the president said.

The activation of the plan, a version of which was drafted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was reported yesterday by The Washington Post. At the request of the administration, the newspaper agreed not to reveal the precise location of the two principal bunkers, which are on the East Coast.

The newspaper quoted an unnamed participant who said the plan was put into effect "on the fly" hours after the Sept. 11 attacks. It also said the participants number from 70 to 150 and are drawn from every Cabinet department and some independent agencies. The personnel are high-level civil servants, but not Cabinet secretaries or their top aides.

They are not allowed to bring their families, and they risk prosecution if they talk about their assignments.

The group's primary task is to prevent the collapse of essential government services should there be an attack. The legislative and judicial branches of the federal government have separate plans that have not been activated.

Bin Laden is suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon that killed more than 3,000 people. The fourth airliner hijacked that day crashed in a Pennsylvania field. Administration and congressional leaders speculated that that plane was bound for the White House or the Capitol.

In subsequent days, administration and Pentagon officials acknowledged that they fear detonation of a portable nuclear device or a crude "dirty bomb" that could blanket the capital with radioactivity.

It has been a decade since the country first learned details about a mountainside bunker complex built for Congress at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. With massive blast doors, rations for 1,100 people, and an internal power plant, the facility was envisioned as a place where the House and Senate could retreat during a nuclear attack.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency operates a communications facility in Berryville, Va., which was initially intended for use by the president. In the 1980s, the government developed plans for a series of mobile facilities to prevent the president from being effectively targeted.

The Defense Department maintains a military command post within Cheyenne Mountain at Colorado Springs.

"This has been in place for years, for decades, since the earliest days of the Cold War," Victoria Clarke, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said at yesterday's Pentagon briefing.

Nonetheless, even during the height of the Cold War, amid the threat of nuclear attack from the Soviet Union, the government never activated the plan.

Doing so was raised during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, which pushed Washington and Moscow closer than ever to a nuclear exchange, but was never given serious consideration by President Kennedy, according to aformer Cabinet officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

"As the crisis became more intense, there was thought given to moving some people to facilities that were available then, but Kennedy never considered anything like that," the official said.

Implementing the plan has highlighted some alarming shortcomings, the Postreported. Officials said the computers in stock were outdated and unableto connect to government databases, and there were not enough phone linesor secure audio and video links. Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chiefof staff, has ordered upgrades, the officials said.

Globe correspondent Bryan Bender contributed to this report.