# Let's talk about America's Shadow Government **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 14, 2005, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420 "2005-03-14T05:14:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![chefIL11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@chefIL11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chefIL11)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/1 "2005-03-14T05:14:04Z")
I’m curious… I know america has a shadow government ready to take over in the event of an emergency. I read an article on [cnn.com](http://cnn.com) awhile back. Where do they live? is this a full time job? are these people appointed? if so by whom? Are they contantly hidden? What are their qualifications? I’m really interested in this so feel free to pass along any thoughts as well. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/2 "2005-03-14T05:31:29Z")
If you are looking for a conspiratorial element here, or even the alleged overthrow of the Constitution by the power elites, best this thread be moved to GD and be prepared. However, if you are looking for a simple factual answer, the shadow government you speak about probably refers to a change in business since 9/11. In other words, you will not find all members of the Presidential cabinet in the same location at the same time. For example, during the State of the Union address, not all cabinet members were present, nor we all members of the Supreme Court. I am not sure this was the case for the Joint Chiefs nor all members of Congress. You might find some factual information concerning a [shadow government](http://www.google.com/search?q=american+shadow+government&sourceid=mozilla&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8) in a Google search, but most of the searches are tuned towards conspircies (real and imagined) more than a practical protection program. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/3 "2005-03-14T12:38:48Z")
Actually, **Duckster,** the Bush Administration admitted a while back that they have contingency plans for if a war or a major terrorist attack wipes out most of the government (like, say, if a nuclear bomb turns Washington DC into an irradiated wasteland). I don’t remember the story very well, but I think that the plan invovled using the military and beaurocrats (not ones from DC, obviously) to form a caretaker government. Theoretically, this “shadow government” would step down after a new congress was formed. Whether they actually would step down in practice is anyone’s guess. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/4 "2005-03-14T14:40:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Whether they actually would step down in practice is anyone’s guess. Probably it would. We have a huge psychological block to the idea otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/5 "2005-03-14T14:51:54Z")
[Here’s the Washington Post story](http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A20584-2002Feb28¬Found=true) from 2002 on the executive branch’s heightened Continuity of Government status following the September 11 attacks. As it is now easier to get an appointment with Vice President Cheney than it is with my barber, I don’t know if the heightened state is still being maintained. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/6 "2005-03-14T15:17:58Z")
Maybe your barber is part of the shadow government? ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/7 "2005-03-14T15:23:21Z")
While no one disputes the necessity to maintain govt. operations following some sort of decapitation attack, the funny thing is that all of the contingency plans that have been in place since the Reagan era are on shaky legal ground–not authorized by Congress and usually in direct opposition to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. [http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0318-14.htm](http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0318-14.htm) > [@](#): > > The Constitution makes the Vice President the successor if the President dies or is incapacitated, but it establishes no order of succession beyond that. Federal law, most recently the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, establishes further details. If the Vice President dies or cannot serve, then the speaker of the House of Representatives becomes President. After him in the line of succession come the president pro tempore of the Senate (typically the longest-serving member of the majority party) and then the members of the Cabinet, in the order in which their posts were created—starting with the Secretary of State and moving to the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, and so on. **The Reagan Administration, however, worried that this procedure might not meet the split-second needs of an all-out war with the Soviet Union.** What if a nuclear attack killed both the President and the Vice President, and maybe the speaker of the House, too? Who would run the country if it was too hard to track down the next living person in line under the Succession Act? What civilian leader could immediately give U.S. military commanders the orders to respond to an attack, and how would that leader communicate with the military? In a continuing nuclear exchange, who would have the authority to reach an agreement with the Soviet leadership to bring the war to an end? > > The outline of the plan was simple. **Once the United States was (or believed itself about to be) under nuclear attack, three teams would be sent from Washington to three different locations around the United States. Each team would be prepared to assume leadership of the country, and would include a Cabinet member who was prepared to become President.** If the Soviet Union were somehow to locate one of the teams and hit it with a nuclear weapon, the second team or, if necessary, the third could take over. This was not some abstract textbook plan; it was practiced in concrete and elaborate detail. Each team was named for a color—“red” or “blue,” for example—and each had an experienced executive who could operate as a new White House chief of staff. The obvious candidates were people who had served at high levels in the executive branch, preferably with the national-security apparatus. Cheney and Rumsfeld had each served as White House chief of staff in the Ford Administration. Other team leaders over the years included James Woolsey, later the director of the CIA, and Kenneth Duberstein, who served for a time as Reagan’s actual White House chief of staff. > > As for the Cabinet members on each team, some had little experience in national security; at various times, for example, participants in the secret exercises included John Block, Reagan’s first Secretary of Agriculture, and Malcolm Baldrige, the Secretary of Commerce. What counted was not experience in foreign policy but, rather, that the Cabinet member was available. It seems fair to conclude that some of these “Presidents” would have been mere figureheads for a more experienced chief of staff, such as Cheney or Rumsfeld. Still, the Cabinet members were the ones who would issue orders, or in whose name the orders would be issued. > > **One of the questions studied in these exercises was what concrete steps a team might take to establish its credibility. What might be done to demonstrate to the American public, to U.S. allies, and to the Soviet leadership that “President” John Block or “President” Malcolm Baldrige was now running the country, and that he should be treated as the legitimate leader of the United States? One option was to have the new “President” order an American submarine up from the depths to the surface of the ocean—since the power to surface a submarine would be a clear sign that he was now in full control of U.S. military forces.** [Just thought this was a fascinating problem to solve!] This standard—control of the military—is one of the tests the U.S. government uses in deciding whether to deal with a foreign leader after a coup d’état. > > \*\*“One of the awkward questions we faced,” one participant in the planning of the program explains, “was whether to reconstitute Congress after a nuclear attack. It was decided that no, it would be easier to operate without them.” For one thing, it was felt that reconvening Congress, and replacing members who had been killed, would take too long. Moreover, if Congress did reconvene, it might elect a new speaker of the House, whose claim to the presidency might have greater legitimacy than that of a Secretary of Agriculture or Commerce who had been set up as President under Reagan’s secret program. \*\*The election of a new House speaker would not only take time but also create the potential for confusion. The Reagan Administration’s primary goal was to set up a chain of command that could respond to the urgent minute-by-minute demands of a nuclear war, when there might be no time to swear in a new President under the regular process of succession, and when a new President would not have the time to appoint a new staff. \*\*The Administration, however, chose to establish this process without going to Congress for the legislation that would have given it constitutional legitimacy. > > Ronald Reagan established the continuity-of-government program with a secret executive order.\*\* According to Robert McFarlane, who served for a time as Reagan’s National Security Adviser, the President himself made the final decision about who would head each of the three teams. Within Reagan’s National Security Council the “action officer” for the secret program was Oliver North, later the central figure in the Iran-contra scandal. Vice President George H.W. Bush was given the authority to supervise some of these efforts, which were run by a new government agency with a bland name: the National Program Office. It had its own building in the Washington area, run by a two-star general, and a secret budget adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Much of this money was spent on advanced communications equipment that would enable the teams to have secure conversations with U.S. military commanders. In fact, the few details that have previously come to light about the secret program, primarily from a 1991 CNN investigative report, stemmed from allegations of waste and abuses in awarding contracts to private companies, and claims that this equipment malfunctioned. ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/8 "2005-03-14T16:28:03Z")
> [@twickster](#): > > Maybe your barber is part of the shadow government? Why, that sneaky little… “visiting relatives in Latvia” my tochis! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/9 "2005-03-14T16:41:33Z")
They’ve had this in place for years. There’s a facility inside a mountain about an hour from DC where they have everything they need to run the government in case of a catastrophe. I’m not giving anything away here; it’s hiding in plain sight and loads of people know exactly where it is, including our enemies. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/10 "2005-03-14T17:04:59Z")
> [@An Arky](#): > > They’ve had this in place for years. There’s a facility inside a mountain about an hour from DC where they have everything they need to run the government in case of a catastrophe. I’m not giving anything away here; it’s hiding in plain sight and loads of people know exactly where it is, including our enemies. That’s only because the site (The Government Relocation Center under a big rock at The Greenbar Resort in West Virginia) has been deactivated and is now a tourist attraction. There are no plans to relocate anyone there, as most of the important equipment and supplies have been removed. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/11 "2005-03-14T17:33:34Z")
And, of course, the Congress’s former “secret location” is well known – it’s at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. The bunker has been turned into a culinary school. ---
**Author:** ![alterego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6bbea6/32.png) [@alterego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alterego)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/12 "2005-03-14T18:06:23Z")
If there were going to be a “secret location” for an impromptu government, wouldn’t that place be [NORAD](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Aerospace_Defense_Command)? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/13 "2005-03-14T19:29:55Z")
> [@alterego](#): > > If there were going to be a “secret location” for an impromptu government, wouldn’t that place be [NORAD](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Aerospace_Defense_Command)? Er, in any serious strategic nuclear exchange, Cheyenne Mountain is likely to end up as Cheyenne Lake. It’s a big hunk o’ granite, but anything’ll go with enough energy targetted on it. Back in the late Sixties or early Seventies it was recognized that no fixed location would be safe in a nuclear exchange, and the plan went from moving the president to a specific shelter to getting him, the VP, the House Speaker, and others in the succession of command in motion. At the first sign of trouble, the President is lofted in NECAP a (I think) specially outfitted Boeing 737, which is always within about a thirty minute reach. All basic communication functions should be able to be maintained, including (most critically in such a situation) National Command Authority for strategic response, or what we lovingly like to call nuclear armageddon. For long term, it depends. There are some extensive artifical cave systems (as seen in the movie “Deep Impact”) under Kansas City that were frequently suggested as survival shelters. Kansas City and St. Louis are both geographically central locations that aren’t primary strategic targets. (There are MMIII batteries somewhat near both cities but they should be out of the primary blast zones.) All things being equal, if it isn’t wiped off the map, Denver it probably a good choice for a permenant secondary capital. Although the term “shadow government” has sinister connotations, I’m glad that some consideration has been put into maintaining a continuation of command structure. Little would be more devistating than having battling tribes of politicians each claiming to be the One True President. I wish they’d make it official and Amend it into the Constitution, but that would be a whole 'nother political battle. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/14 "2005-03-14T20:25:07Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > That’s only because the site (The Government Relocation Center under a big rock at The Greenbar Resort in West Virginia) has been deactivated and is now a tourist attraction. There are no plans to relocate anyone there, as most of the important equipment and supplies have been removed. (Psst… it wasn’t just the Greenbriar. COOP sites are frickin’ EVERYWHERE around here. [Some others, say some.](http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/command-control.htm)) ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/15 "2005-03-14T20:47:29Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > And, of course, the Congress’s former “secret location” is well known – it’s at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. The bunker has been turned into a culinary school. You mean, this is where the [CIA](http://www.ciachef.edu/) has relocated? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/16 "2005-03-14T21:08:57Z")
Oh, that would have been a sweet irony. Unfortunately, the Culinary Institute of America is in Hyde Park, N.Y. The school at the Greenbrier is called the Greenbrier Cooking School. Steven Raichlen’s _B.B.Q. U_, a Saturday morning cooking show, is filmed at the Greenbrier. ---
**Author:** ![chefIL11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@chefIL11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chefIL11)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/17 "2005-03-14T22:58:49Z")
What is an MMIII battery??? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/18 "2005-03-14T23:06:08Z")
> [@chefIL11](#): > > What is an MMIII battery??? Minute Man 3 Haj ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/19 "2005-03-14T23:35:03Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > That’s only because the site (The Government Relocation Center under a big rock at The Greenbar Resort in West Virginia) has been deactivated and is now a tourist attraction. There are no plans to relocate anyone there, as most of the important equipment and supplies have been removed. > [@Ravenman](#): > > (Psst… it wasn’t just the Greenbriar. COOP sites are frickin’ EVERYWHERE around here. [Some others, say some.](http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/command-control.htm)) Yup. I was talking about #9 on **Ravenman** ’s link. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2005, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420/20 "2005-03-15T00:16:58Z")
I sure hope that #10 still isn’t in use. I can’t imagine that the Shadow Government would get much respect if its orders were being issued from a place called “Mount Pony.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-americas-shadow-government/294420.md?page=2)