By Whitney
Webb
Though often discussed in relation to nuclear war or a similarly
chaotic scenario, “Continuity of Government” plans can be
triggered even by popular, nonviolent opposition to an unpopular
war abroad. It exists solely to keep the current system in place,
regardless of the cost.
WASHINGTON DC — Last week, Newsweek published a
report entitled “Inside
The Military’s Top Secret Plans If Coronavirus Cripples the
Government,” which offers vague descriptions of different
military plans that could be put into effect if the civilian
government were to be largely incapacitated, with a focus on the
potential of the
current novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic to result in such
a scenario.
The article’s author, William Arkin, largely frames these
plans as new, though — buried deep within the article — he
eventually mentions that such contingency plans can be traced back
to the Eisenhower administration (though
they were in place before) and have since been developed and
updated by most subsequent administrations, largely through the
issuance of executive orders. Arkin also points out that some of
these “Continuity of Government”, or COG, plans include the
“devolution” of leadership and Constitutional authority, which
he notes “could circumvent the normal Constitutional provisions
for government succession, and military commanders could be placed
in control around America.”
Yet, there are key aspects of COG and its development that Arkin
leaves out. For instance, in his timeline on how such plans have
developed in the post-World War II era, he conveniently fails to
mention any of the Reagan administration’s major changes to COG,
including the Reagan-era Executive Order on which all current COG
programs are based. Indeed, many of the “extra-Constitutional”
aspects of COG that Arkin mentions began during the Reagan
administration, when these plans were redrafted to largely exclude
members of Congress, including the Speaker of the House, from
succession plans and even moved to essentially eliminate Congress
in the event of COG being implemented, with near total power
instead being given to the executive branch and the military. It
was also during this time that the “devolution” aspect of COG
was hammered out, as it created three president-cabinet “teams”
to be stationed in different parts of the country outside of the
nation’s capital. Arkin’s decision to not mention how COG was a
major focus of the Reagan administration is striking
given that that administration poured hundreds of millions of
dollars annually into COG planning and development and also
conducted COG drills on a regular basis.
Furthermore, the
Miami Herald revealed in 1987, that the COG programs of
that era were deeply connected to what the Herald termed
“a virtual parallel government outside the traditional cabinet
departments and agencies” that began operating “almost from the
day Reagan took office” and included many of Reagan’s closest
advisers, including then-CIA Director William Casey. The
Herald further claimed that this “parallel government”
had been responsible for the Iran-Contra scandal (i.e. “involved
in arming the Nicaraguan rebels”) as well as “the drafting of
martial law plans for national emergencies,” i.e. COG, as well as
“the monitoring of U.S. citizens considered potential security
risks.”
Other key players in those Reagan-era COG developments, such as
former Vice President Dick Cheney, former CIA Director James
Woolsey and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, are also
left unmentioned in Arkin’s article. Not mentioning Cheney and
Rumsfeld are particularly glaring omissions given that they were
involved in the implementation of aspects of those COG plans that
went live in the wake of the September 11 attacks, when both
men were serving in key posts in the George W. Bush
administration.
While Arkin’s omission of the role of the Reagan
administration and leading neoconservatives in the development and
use of COG is significant, arguably more significant is his failure
to mention one of COG’s major components, one that has gone
essentially unmentioned by well-known media outlets for well over a
decade – Main Core.
The government’s database of “potential troublemakers”
When Reagan issued
Executive Order 12656, he created COG plans that could be
implemented during “any national security emergency,” which the
E.O. loosely defined 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.” E.O. 12656 also put the
National Security Council (NSC) in charge of developing and
administering COG policies. The NSC official placed in charge of
this “secret” COG program was Oliver North, whose name would
later become infamous for the key role he played in the Iran-Contra
Scandal. During the Iran-Contra hearings in the late 1980s,
then-Representative Jack Brooks (D-TX) attempted
to ask the following question to North: “Colonel North, in
your work at the NSC, were you not assigned at one time to work on
plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major
disaster?” Brooks, however was immediately cut off by Senator
Daniel Inouye (D-HI), who stated ” I believe that question
touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area, so may I
request that you not touch upon that, sir.” Brooks protested, but
North was ultimately not required to give an answer.
As the de facto leader of COG development and planning
during the Reagan administration, North oversaw the creation of a
controversial database that later became known simply as “Main
Core.” The Main Core database, first built using the stolen
PROMIS software (more information on PROMIS
here and
here), was essentially a list of American dissidents and
“potential troublemakers.” A senior government official with a
high-ranking security clearance and service in five presidential
administrations
described the database to journalist Chris Ketcham in 2008 as
follows:
A database of Americans, who, often for the slightest
and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a
time of panic might be incarcerated. The database can identify and
locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost
instantaneously.
In 1993, Wired magazine
stated that:
Using PROMIS, sources point out, North could have drawn
up lists of anyone ever arrested for a political protest, for
example, or anyone who had ever refused to pay their taxes.
Compared to PROMIS, Richard Nixon’s enemies list or Sen. Joe
McCarthy’s blacklist look downright crude.
Main Core is the aspect of COG that is most often ignored in
reporting on these types of plans, with Arkin’s article being
just a more recent example. While most of the rare mentions of COG
in the mainstream touch on how those plans would result in the
implementation of martial law and the suspension of the
Constitution, they even more rarely — if ever — mention Main
Core. Indeed, the last “mainstream” reports on Main Core were
written over a decade ago — all in 2008 —
by Chris Ketcham in Radar, by Scott
Horton in Harpers and by Tim
Shorrock in Salon.
Given that COG is now creeping back into mainstream reporting,
revisiting Main Core is essential as the database still exists and
has grown considerably since Oliver North first oversaw its
creation in the early 1980s. In Ketcham’s 2008 article on the
subject, he quotes then-senior government officials who said that,
at the time, the number of “unfriendly” Americans on that
database was approximately 8 million. Ketcham further notes that,
in the event COG is implemented, these individuals could be subject
to anything ranging from “heightened surveillance and tracking to
direct questioning and possibly even detention.”
Tim Shorrock, in his coverage of Main Core, noted that the
database was seen in use at the White House following the September
11 attacks and there is strong evidence pointing to it having been
used by the George W. Bush administration to guide its domestic
surveillance activities in the post-9/11 era. A government official
who had told a reporter about having seen the database operational
at the White House following September 11th “turned white as a
sheet” when the reporter mentioned the name “Main Core”
specifically. Shorrock’s reporting also details how Main Core
includes vast amounts of information on those “unfriendly”
Americans, including the fruits of the vast domestic surveillance
programs of the NSA and other U.S. federal agencies that continue
today and are now set to be expanded due to the current coronavirus
crisis.
In
a report written last year on the involvement of U.S. and
Israeli intelligence and their private sector allies in pushing for
new, troubling pre-crime programs, I noted that Main Core is not
only available to U.S. intelligence but also Israel’s
intelligence apparatus and that Israeli intelligence was involved
in the creation and expansion of Main Core. That report also
detailed how Main Core was used by members of Reagan’s NSC to
blackmail members of Congress, a practice that is likely to have
continued under subsequent administrations. It also noted how Main
Core today likely involves the same software now used by every U.S.
intelligence agency and numerous other federal agencies that is
marketed by Palantir, a company created and owned by Trump ally
Peter Thiel. Palantir’s software boasts “predictive policing”
capabilities and tracks a category of person using the label
“subversive,” very much in keeping with the spirit of Main
Core.
Main Core and Bill Barr’s Power Grab
Though Main Core was reportedly in use after September 11 to
target “unfriendly” individuals for increased domestic
surveillance, concern that COG plans in the age of coronavirus
could take a more drastic turn and involve the detention of
Americans included in that database now seems more plausible than
ever. On Saturday,
Politico reported that the Department of Justice has
demanded new “emergency
powers” during the current pandemic and these powers include
being able to indefinitely detain Americans without trial.
Politico also noted that the DOJ’s controversial new
requests “span several stages of the legal process, from initial
arrest to how cases are processed and investigated.” Per the
DOJ’s requests, indefinite detention would emerge through a new
ability whereby the Attorney General or a judge could pause court
proceedings whenever courts are “fully or partially closed by
virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other
emergency situation.”
What
Politico did not include in its report is that current
Attorney General William Barr has spent the past several months
fine-tuning and implementing
a “pre-crime” program. Officially known as the “National
Disruption and Early Engagement Program” (DEEP), it aims to
“identify, assess and engage” potentially violent individuals
“before they strike.” Barr first announced this program last
October in
an official memorandum and therein stated that the program was
to be implemented sometime over the course of 2020 and would
involve “an efficient, effective and programmatic strategy to
disrupt individuals who are mobilizing towards violence, by all
lawful means.”
A training conference for that program took place this past
December and involved members of the Department of Justice, Federal
Bureau of Investigation and “private sector partners.” One
recent DOJ statement regarding an arrest made last year in
Nevada, claimed that that specific case was part of the DOJ’s
“National Disruption and Early Engagement Program,” suggesting
that this program is already in use — at least in some parts of
the country.
In his memorandum, Barr further notes that the program’s
“early engagement tactics” were “born of the posture we
adopted with respect to terrorist threats” following the
September 11 attacks, essentially stating that this pre-crime
program will utilize methods from the “War on Terror”
domestically and on a massive scale.
Given the context of the current coronavirus crisis, the DOJ’s
recent request for sweeping new powers and the role of Main Core in
COG plans, one part of Barr’s pre-crime memorandum stands out. In
the part of the document where Barr outlines what actions will be
taken once an individual is deemed potentially violent or
threatening, he writes that those individuals will be subject to
detention, court-ordered mental health treatment and electronic
monitoring, among other measures.
The possibility of pre-crime detention was also present in the
DOJ’s recent request for new “emergency powers” in light of
the coronavirus crisis, as it specifically asks that those new
powers apply to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise
affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial
procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil
process and proceedings.” Norman L. Reimer, executive director of
the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers,
told Politico that the inclusion of the term
“pre-arrest” likely means that “you could be arrested and
never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency
or the civil disobedience is over. I find it absolutely
terrifying.”
Thus, if DOJ is granted these new powers it has requested, the
William Barr-led Department of Justice will not only be authorized
to indefinitely detain Americans without trial, it will be able to
detain them without any proof of those detainees having committed a
crime or even having plans or the intent to commit a crime.
Instead, the DOJ only needs to argue that the individual was
“mobilizing towards violence,” an extremely vague phrase that
could potentially be used against anyone who expresses discontent
with the government or government policy.
Furthermore, with the FBI having recently flagged “conspiracy
theorists” (and by extension those who distrust or question
government narratives of both past and present) as a “domestic
terror threat,” the DOJ could even make the case that failure
to blindly trust government narratives presents a threat to the
public order. Given that the Main Core database in its current form
contains bulk surveillance gathered from social media, phone
conversations/messaging apps and even financial information (i.e.
purchasing history, etc.) on Americans deemed unfriendly “often
for the slightest and most trivial reason,” this unprecedented
power grab by the DOJ has an authoritarian and Orwellian potential
to target legitimate dissent like never before.
With the specter of COG now snaking its way into mainstream
discourse during the coronavirus crisis, it is essential that
Americans stay vigilant, as these Orwellian and dystopian
“solutions” to allegedly protect us from the current pandemic
have been in place long before COVID-19 made its appearance on the
world stage or landed on U.S. shores.
It is also essential to remember that COG, Main Core and the
DOJ’s pre-crime program were all created and are currently
controlled by extremely corrupt and fundamentally untrustworthy
individuals who have not only been
involved in,
innumerable scandals,
over the years, but have also
installed and supported some of the most
authoritarian,
savage and horrific
dictators the world has ever seen. To trust them with such
unprecedented and dangerous powers in a period of national
confusion and panic is tantamount to beckoning the horrors of those
dictatorships — past and present — to come home to roost.
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Article source:
The Last American Vagabond
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for The Last American Vagabond.
She has previously written for Mintpress News, Ben Swann’s Truth
In Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul
Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made
radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives
with her family in southern Chile.
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The Truth About the United States’ “Continuity of Government”
Plans & The Coronavirus Perfect Storm
