![]() The first is called the Rescue & Evacuation of the Occupants of the Executive Mansion (or RESEM) plan, responsible for protecting President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and their families-whether that means moving them at the direction of the Secret Service or, in a catastrophe, digging them out of the rubble of the White House. Three are transportation related, just to move and support the White House and the federal government as it evacuates and operates from alternate sites. Seven secret plans – some highly compartmented – exist to prepare for these extraordinary missions. Secretly, he signed Warning Orders (the WARNORD as it's called) alerting NORTHCOM and a host of east coast units to "prepare to deploy" in support of potential extraordinary missions. Esper signed orders directing NORTHCOM to execute nationwide pandemic plans. Air Force General O'Shaughnessy is NORTHCOM's Colorado Springs-based commander. Northern Command (or NORTHCOM), the homeland defense military authority created after 9/11. CONPLAN 3600, military operations in the National Capital Region and continuation of government, under which the most-secret plans to support continuity are nested.Īll of these plans are the responsibility of U.S.CONPLAN 3500, "defense support of civil authorities," where the military assists in an emergency short of armed attack on the nation.CONPLAN 3400, or the military's plan for "homeland defense," if America itself is a battlefield.Mission essential in this regard applies to the maze of more than a dozen different secret assignments, most of them falling under three larger contingency plans: There are exceptions, including travel that is "mission-essential," the Pentagon says. Last Wednesday it restricted most overseas travel for 60 days, and then on Friday issued supplemental domestic guidance that essentially keeps all uniformed personnel on or near military bases. In recognition of the equal vulnerability of military forces, the Pentagon has instituted unprecedented restrictions on off-base travel. "There might not be an outside," the officer says, asking that she not be named because she is speaking about sensitive matters. One military officer involved in continuity planning calls it a "cavalry" mentality: that military assistance is requested or ordered after local civil authority has been exhausted. In the past, almost every imagined contingency associated with emergency preparedness has assumed civil and military assistance coming from the outside. That is why for the first time, other than planning for the aftermath of a nuclear war, extraordinary procedures are being contemplated. The rest of the federal government equally is unprepared to operate if a pandemic were to hit the very people called upon to lead in an emergency. It has been a two-decade long futile effort, Ornstein says, with Congress uninterested or unable to either pass new laws or create working procedures that would allow emergency and remote operations. What happens, government expert Norman Ornstein asked last week, if so many members of Congress come down with the coronavirus that the legislature cannot meet or cannot muster a quorum? After 9/11, Ornstein and others, alarmed by how little Washington had prepared for such possibilities, created a bipartisan Continuity of Government Commission to examine precisely these and other possibilities. ![]() 'We're in territory we've never been in before' That is, until a new civilian leader could be installed. He is the "combatant commander" for the United States and would in theory be in charge if Washington were eviscerated. The officer jokes, in the kind of morbid humor characteristic of this slow-moving disaster, that America had better learn who Gen. ![]() "We're in new territory," says one senior officer, the entire post-9/11 paradigm of emergency planning thrown out the window. They are so secret that under these extraordinary plans, "devolution" could circumvent the normal Constitutional provisions for government succession, and military commanders could be placed in control around America. Standby orders were issued more than three weeks ago to ready these plans, not just to protect Washington but also to prepare for the possibility of some form of martial law.Īccording to new documents and interviews with military experts, the various plans – codenamed Octagon, Freejack and Zodiac – are the underground laws to ensure government continuity. Above-Top Secret contingency plans already exist for what the military is supposed to do if all the Constitutional successors are incapacitated.
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