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FEMA - THE U.S. "SHADOW GOVERNMENT"
More on our old friends at FEMA, those menacing Executive Orders, and the
coming "National Emergency." Aren't you glad that the power to declare
"National Emergencies" or to declare that individuals or groups are
"terrorists" rests solely in President Clinton's wise and selfless hands? Few
Americans--indeed, few Congressional reps--are aware of the existence of
Mount Weather, a mysterious underground military base carved deep inside a
mountain near the sleepy rural town of Bluemont, Virginia, just 46 miles from
Washington DC. Mount Weather--also known as the Western Virginia Office of
Controlled Conflict Operations--is buried not just in hard granite, but in
secrecy as well. In March, 1976, The Progressive Magazine published an
astonishing article entitled "The Mysterious Mountain." The author, Richard
Pollock, based his investigative report on Senate subcommittee hearings and
upon "several off-the-record interviews with officials formerly associated
with Mount Weather." His report, and a 1991 article in Time Magazine entitled
"Doomsday Hideaway", supply a few compelling hints about what is going on
underground. Ted Gup, writing for Time, describes the base as follows: Mount
Weather is a virtually self-contained facility. Aboveground, scattered across
manicured lawns, are about a dozen buildings bristling with antennas and
microwave relay systems. An on-site sewage-treatment plant, with a 90,000
gal.-a-day capacity, and two tanks holding 250,000 gal. of water could last
some 200 people more than a month; underground ponds hold additional water
supplies. Not far from the installation's entry gate are a control tower and
a helicopter pad. The mountain's real secrets are not visible at ground
level. The mountain's "real secrets" are protected by warning signs, 10
foot-high chain link fences, razor wire, and armed guards. Curious motorists
and hikers on the Appalachian trail are relieved of their sketching pads and
cameras and sent on their way. Security is tight. The government has owned
the site since 1903; it has seen service as an artillery range, a hobo farm
during the Depression, and a National Weather Bureau Facility. In 1936, the
U.S. Bureau of Mines took control and started digging. Mount Weather is
virtually an underground city, according to former personnel interviewed by
Pollock. Buried deep inside the earth, Mount Weather was equipped with such
amenities as:
private apartments and dormitories
streets and sidewalks
cafeterias and hospitals
a water purification system, power plant and general office buildings
a small lake fed by fresh water from underground springs
its own mass transit system
a TV communication system
Mount Weather is the self-sustaining underground command center for the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The facility is the operational
center--the hub--of approximately 100 other Federal Relocation Centers, most
of which are concentrated in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland
and North Carolina. Together this network of underground facilities
constitutes the backbone of America's "Continuity of Government" program. In
the event of nuclear war, declaration of martial law, or other national
emergency, the President, his cabinet and the rest of the Executive Branch
would be "relocated" to Mount Weather.
What Does Congress Know about Mount Weather?
According to the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights hearings in
1975, Congress has almost no knowledge and no oversight --budgetary or
otherwise--on Mount Weather. Retired Air Force General Leslie W. Bray, in his
testimony to the subcommittee, said "I am not at liberty to describe
precisely what is the role and the mission and the capability that we have at
Mount Weather, or at any other precise location." Apparently, this
underground capital of the United States is a secret only to Congress and the
US taxpayers who paid for it. The Russians know about it, as reported in
Time: "Few in the U.S. government will speak of it, though it is assumed that
all along the Soviets have known both its precise location and its mission
(unlike the Congress, since Bray wouldn't tell); defense experts take it as a
given that the site is on the Kremlin's targeting maps." The Russians
attempted to buy real estate right next door, as a "country estate" for their
embassy folks, but that deal was dead-ended by the State Department.
Mount Weather's "Government-in-Waiting"
Pollock's report, based on his interviews with former officials at Mount
Weather, contains astounding information on the base's personnel. The
underground city contains a parallel government-in-waiting: "High-level
Governmental sources, speaking in the promise of strictest anonymity, told me
[Pollock] that each of the Federal departments represented at Mount Weather
is headed by a single person on whom is conferred the rank of a Cabinet-level
official. Protocol even demands that subordinates address them as "Mr.
Secretary." Each of the Mount Weather "Cabinet members" is apparently
appointed by the White House and serves an indefinite term... many through
several Administrations....The facility attempts to duplicate the vital
functions of the Executive branch of the Administration." Nine Federal
departments are replicated within Mount Weather (Agriculture; Commerce;
Health, Education & Welfare; Housing & Urban Development; Interior; Labor;
State; Transportation; and Treasurey) as well as at least five Federal
agencies (Federal Communications Commission, Selective Service, Federal Power
Commission, Civil Service Commission, and the Veterans Administration). The
Federal Reserve and the U.S. Post Office, both private corporations, also
have offices in Mount Weather. Pollock writes that the "cabinet members" are
"apparently" appointed by the White House and serve an indefinite term, but
that information cannot be confirmed, raising the further question of who
holds the reins on this "back-up government." Furthermore, appointed Mount
Weather officials hold their positions through several elected
administrations, transcending the time their appointers spend in office.
Unlike other presidential nominees, these apppointments are made without the
public advice or consent of the Senate. Is there an alternative President and
Vice President as well? If so, who appoints them? Pollock says only this: "As
might be expected, there is also an Office of the Presidency at Mount
Weather. The Federal Preparedness Agency (precursor to FEMA) apparently
appoints a special staff to the Presidential section, which regularly
receives top secret national security estimates and raw data from each of the
Federal departments and agencies.
What Do They Do At Mount Weather?
Collect Data on American Citizens
The Senate Subcommittee in 1975 learned that the "facility held dossiers on
at least 100,000 Americans. [Senator] John Tunney later alleged that the
Mount Weather computers can obtain millions of pieces of additional
information on the personal lives of American citizens simply by tapping the
data stored at any of the other ninety-six Federal Relocation Centers." The
subcommittee concluded that Mount Weather's databases "operate with few, if
any, safeguards or guidelines."
Store Necessary Information
The Progressive article detailed that "General Bray gave Tunney's
subcommittee a list of the categories of files maintained at Mount Weather:
military installations, government facilities, communications,
transportation,
energy and power, agriculture, manufacturing, wholesale and retail services,
manpower, financial, medical and educational institutions, sanitary
facilities,
population, housing shelter, and stockpiles." This massive database fits
cleanly into Mount Weather's ultimate purpose as the command center in the
event of a national emergency.
Play War Games
This is the main daily activity of the approximately 240 people who work at
Mount Weather. The games are intended to train the Mount Weather bureaucracy
to managing a wide range of problems associated with both war and domestic
political crises. Decisions are made in the "Situation Room," the base's
nerve center, located in the core of Mount Weather. The Situation Room is the
archetypal war room, with "charts, maps and whatever visuals may be needed"
and "batteries of communications equipment connecting Mount Weather with the
White House and "Raven Rock"--the underground Pentagon sixty miles north of
Washington--as well as with almost every US military unit stationed around
the globe," according to The Progressive article. "All internal
communications are conducted by closed-circuit color television ... senior
officers and "Cabinet members" have two consoles recessed in the walls of
their office." Descriptions of the war games read a bit like a Ian Fleming
novel. Every year there is a system-wide alert that "includes all military
and civilian-run underground installations." The real, above ground President
and his Cabinet members are "relocated" to Mount Weather to observe the
simulation. Post-mortems are conducted and the margins for error are
calculated after the games. All the data is studied and documented.
Civil Crisis Management
Mount Weather personnel study more than war scenarios. Domestic "crises" are
also tracked and watched, and there have been times when Mount Weather almost
swung into action, as Pollock reported: "Officials who were at Mount Weather
during the 1960s say the complex was actually prepared to assume certain
governmental powers at the time of the 1961 Cuban missile crisis and the
assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. The installation used the tools
of its "Civil Crisis Management" program on a standby basis during the 1967
and 1968 urban riots and during a number of national antiwar demonstrations,
the sources said." In its 1974 Annual Report, the Federal Preparedness Agency
stated that "Studies conducted at Mount Weather involve the control and
management of domestic political unrest where there are material shortages
(such as food riots) or in strike situations where the FPA determines that
there are industrial disruptions and other domestic resource crises." The
Mount Weather facility uses a vast array of resources to continually monitor
the American people. According to Daniel J. Cronin, former assistant director
for the FPA, Reconnaissance satellites, local and state police intelligence
reports, and Federal law enforcement agencies are just a few of the resources
available to the FPA [now FEMA] for information gathering. "We try to monitor
situations and get to them before they become emergencies," Cronin said. "No
expense is spared in the monitoring program."
Maintain and Update the "Survivors List"
Using all the data generated by the war games and domestic crisis scenarios,
the facility continually maintains and updates a list of names and addresses
of people deemed to be "vital" to the survival of the nation, or who can
"assist essential and non-interruptible services." In the 1976 article, the
"survivors list" contained 6,500 names, but even that was deemed to be low.
Who Pays for All This, and How Much? At the same time tens of millions of
dollars were being spent on maintaining and upgrading the complex to protect
several hundred designated officials in the event of nuclear attack, the US
government drastically reduced its emphasis on war preparedness for US
citizens. A 1989 FEMA brochure entitled "Are You Prepared?" suggests that
citizens construct makeshift fallout shelters using used furniture, books,
and other common household items. Officially, Mount Weather (and its budget)
does not exist. FEMA refuses to answer inquiries about the facility; as FEMA
spokesman Bob Blair told Time magazine, "I'll be glad to tell you all about
it, but I'd have to kill you afterward." We don't know how much Mount Weather
has cost over the years, but of course, American taxpayers bear this burden
as well. A Christian Science Monitor article entitled "Study Reveals US Has
Spent $4 Trillion on Nukes Since '45" reports that "The government devoted at
least $12 billion to civil defense projects to protect the population from
nuclear attack. But billions of dollars more were secretly spent on vast
underground complexes from which civilian and military officials would run
the government during a nuclear war."
What is Mount Weather's Ultimate Purpose?
We have seen that Mount Weather contains an unelected, parallel
"government-in-waiting" ready to take control of the United States upon word
from the President or his successor. The facility contains a massive database
of information on U.S. citizens which is operated with no safeguards or
accountability. Ostensibly, this expensive hub of America's network of
sub-terran bases was designed to preserve our form of government during a
nuclear holocaust. But Mount Weather is not simply a Cold War holdover.
Information on command and control strategies during national emergencies
have largely been withheld from the American public. Executive Order 11051,
signed by President Kennedy on October 2, 1962, states that "national
preparedness must be achieved... as may be required to deal with increases in
international tension with limited war, or with general war including attack
upon the United States." However, Executive Order 11490, drafted by Gen.
George A Lincoln (former director for the Office of Emergency Preparedness,
the FPA's predecessor) and signed by President Nixon in October 1969, tells a
different story. EO 11490, which superceded Kennedy's EO 11051, begins,
"Whereas our national security is dependent upon our ability to assure
continuity of government, at every level, in any national emergency type
situation that might conceivably confront the nation..." As researcher
William Cooper points out, Nixon's order makes no reference to "war,"
"imminent attack," or "general war." These quantifiers are replaced by an
extremely vague "national emergency type situation" that "might conceivably"
interfere with the workings of the national power structure. Furthermore,
there is no publicly known Executive Order outlining the restoration of the
Constitution after a national emergency has ended. Unless the parallel
government at Mount Weather does not decide out of the goodness of its heart
to return power to Constitutional authority, the United States could
experience an honest-to-God coup d'etat posing as a national emergency. Like
the enigmatic Area 51 in Nevada, the Federal government wants to keep the
Mount Weather facility buried in secrecy. Public awareness of this place and
its purpose would raise serious questions about who holds the reins of power
in this country. The Constitution states that those reins lie in the hands of
the people, but the very existence of Mount Weather indicates an entirely
different reality. As long as Mount Weather exists, these questions will
remain.
