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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Critics complain that most Americans, including members of Congress, learned about the shadow government from the Post story, not from the Bush administration (and even the Post agreed to a White House request not to publish the locations of the shadow government bunkers, though their location has been widely reported elsewhere). Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., told reporters after the Post story came out that he was disturbed that he had been told of the secret government by the media instead of by the Bush administration.
"They're calling it a shadow government, but half the government was being viewed as the enemy," says Chris Simpson, an American University communications professor who has written several books on national security during the Reagan and Bush administrations. The fact that Bush's shadow government excluded not only members of the Democratic opposition, but the whole legislative branch, is not something intended by the original "continuity of government" scheme, Simpson notes.
"The authorities in those two locations are not career government employees; they are the assistant secretaries and undersecretaries of Cabinet departments. They're Bush's political appointees," Simpson adds. "And what are they doing? Not just sitting there waiting to be needed. They are planning the next phase of the Bush administration's anti-terror campaign."
And at one extreme, that includes planning for martial law, a scary term for the substitution of military forces for domestic police, and the invoking of special emergency laws, such as curfews, preventive detention and the like.
The idea that the government is looking at scenarios that include the declaration of martial law in the U.S., or some part of it, may seem outlandish. After all, the Posse Comitatus Act, passed at the end of Reconstruction by Congress in 1878, would seem to bar domestic police activity by the military. But martial law planning has always been an integral part of the government's "continuity of government" planning process, whether at FEMA or at the Office of Homeland Security. And martial law has been declared over limited U.S. jurisdictions more than 100 times in U.S. history, the last occasion being in 1941 in Hawaii, just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Earlier versions of the government's martial law plans during the Nixon and Reagan/Bush years have included provisions for mass arrests and the establishment of internment camps for domestic dissidents (Nixon's Justice Department had a list, called the ADEX file, of thousands of known dissidents who were to be picked up immediately in an emergency). And today, even the seemingly innocent phenomenon of having National Guard soldiers patrol airports strikes some observers -- and even some Guardsmen -- as a worrisome federal encroachment on the rights of state and local authorities, and a first step toward some kind of national militia that combines police and military functions.
There are staunch civil libertarians who downplay the likelihood that shadow government planning could lead to martial law. "I'm not sure you can jump from word that the government has implemented contingency plans to start operating a shadow government to talking about martial law being invoked," says one civil liberties law expert who specializes in domestic military issues -- but who wouldn't go on record downplaying the seriousness of Bush administration martial law planning. And Chip Berlet, who monitors right-wing extremists as director of the Boston-based Political Research Associates, notes that the Pentagon has had martial law plans for years, and he isn't convinced the current planning marks a departure from what's come before. "Besides, the reality of government repression under Bush is bleak enough," adds Berlet.
Senate Majority Leader Daschle, after finally being briefed about the administration's plans six months late, claims to be satisfied. But his office's response to questions makes it clear that the shadow government, secreted away in the mountains, remains a purely executive-branch affair. Asked if Daschle and Congress were now being included in the contingency plan, a Daschle spokeswoman said, "I can't answer that. You'd have to ask the White House. This is a White House operation."
But isn't the government composed of three equal branches? Isn't Congress part of this contingency government in waiting? Since when has a member of Congress referred all questions to the executive branch? "This is a White House operation," repeated the Daschle spokeswoman.
But some experts are alarmed by reports of stepped-up martial law planning by the executive branch, and they include voices on the right. "Anyone who is going to rely on Posse Comitatus as a protection against military abuse is leaning on a thin reed," says conservative attorney Olson. He notes that despite Posse Comitatus, laws are already on the books authorizing martial law.
