While The Rest Of Us Die 1x2

1. - The true story of 9/11

2. was a total, absolute collapse of authority.

3. - I turn. "Mr. Vice President, sir,

4. we got a bogey eight miles out, low and fast,

5. inbound to the White House."

6. He goes, "Don, do we have an asset

7. that can take a shot at him?

8. Do I have anything over Washington, D. C.,

9. we can engage him with?"

10. The Secret Service and I are going,

11. "Seven... six... five..."

12. He goes, "Don, I'll authorize an over-the-horizon shot.

13. If you got a radar-guided missile over Baltimore

14. and you can lock onto him, shoot him."

15. As I sit in the secure facility deep under the White House,

16. there are people outside pushing civilians to the south

17. or clearing civilians to the north,

18. and they're going to take a body blow

19. right here in front of them.

20. - Everybody out.

21. - For over 70 years, our leaders have told us one thing

22. under the bright lights.

23. - The protection of the lives and property of Americans

24. is the responsibility of all public officials.

25. - I care, we're trying.

26. - And it is my first duty as president

27. to protect the American people.

28. - We have it so well under control.

29. - But America's shadow government has spent trillions of dollars

30. on secret plans that serve one premise —

31. when the really hits the fan, we're on our own.

32. - I have nothing, nothing.

33. - For decades, the government has invested trillions of dollars

34. in a secret plan to save itself.

35. While the rest of us die.

36. Fears of nuclear Annihilation fueled the creation of a system

37. to ensure the continuity of government

38. even during a nuclear war.

39. It's known as C. O. G.

40. - The Continuity of Government system, from bunkers

41. and airborne command posts

42. to tractor-trailers hidden around the country,

43. have been developed over decades.

44. - This massive secret project

45. funneled unbelievable amounts of money away

46. from the public good and towards the survival of the wealthy,

47. the elite, and the powerful of the United States.

48. - Through the Cold War no one had ever tested

49. whether it would actually work in an emergency.

50. We'd written down all of the plans on paper.

51. We tested them all in exercises.

52. But when an actual crisis happened,

53. would any of it actually work?

54. - Made. - Yes, made. Get ready.

55. - Cake. - Yes, cake. Get ready.

56. - Cane. - Yes...

57. - President George W. Bush is visiting an elementary school

58. in Florida, a routine public appearance

59. to promote literacy,

60. where he reads a book called "The Pet Goat"

61. to a room of first graders.

62. The White House Chief of Staff whispers in the President's ear,

63. "America is under attack."

64. Bush takes a moment to gather his thoughts

65. and continues with the reading.

66. For months during the summer of 2001,

67. warnings of a terror attack

68. had been pouring into the White House.

69. - We began to receive lots of intelligence indications

70. that there was going to be a major terrorist strike

71. by Al-Qaeda, by bin Laden's organization,

72. against the United States.

73. CIA said the attack would be overseas,

74. but they couldn't rule out that the attack

75. would be in the United States.

76. The Bush Administration

77. did very little in response to that intelligence,

78. despite the CIA director telling him repeatedly,

79. despite my warnings.

80. The Bush Administration didn't go to a war footing,

81. didn't try to find Al-Qaeda people in the United States,

82. didn't try to preempt the attack

83. by going after bin Laden in Afghanistan.

84. They didn't really believe the warnings, I think.

85. - Underestimating the threat of an Al-Qaeda attack,

86. America is caught off guard on 9/11,

87. setting off a disastrous chain of events.

88. - In the seconds after the attack on the World Trade Center,

89. the Bush Administration went into

90. an absolute tailspin of confusion

91. and anarchy.

92. There were moments in this country

93. where no one had any idea who was in control,

94. no one had any idea who had executive power,

95. who was calling the shots.

96. - The American people were completely in the dark.

97. Much of our national security apparatus

98. and our political system was in the dark.

99. That information void expanded across

100. most of the federal government

101. and definitely across the population.

102. - As the National Coordinator for Security,

103. Richard Clarke is also in charge

104. of the Continuity of Government program.

105. - For the first time in the history

106. of the Continuity of Government system, we activated it.

107. - It's to ensure the security of the principals —

108. the separation and the security of the president,

109. the vice president, and the speaker of the house.

110. That no matter what happened,

111. one of them would be available to step into the Oval Office.

112. - With no destination in mind,

113. President Bush is rushed onto Air Force One

114. and launched into the sky.

115. The number-one priority of the pilot —

116. to get the plane as high as possible

117. and as far away from anyone else as he could.

118. - At that point, Washington was a combat zone.

119. We were literally still waiting for the combat aircraft

120. from the Air Force to get up and to protect us

121. in the White House.

122. The Secret Service director and I and the Vice President

123. all urged the President not to come back.

124. - Throughout the Cold War, the plan had been to evacuate

125. top government officials out to mountain bunkers

126. in Raven Rock, Pennsylvania, and Mount Weather, Virginia.

127. The hope was that everyone could be evacuated

128. in the first 15 minutes after an attack.

129. Over the course of that morning, though,

130. none of that happened.

131. - Most of the top people in the President's line of succession

132. are unable to get to the bunkers or never contacted.

133. Others are uncooperative. Vice President Dick Cheney

134. refuses to evacuate the White House.

135. - At about 9:30 in the morning on 9/11,

136. Vice President Cheney was bundled up by Secret Service

137. and moved to a basement next to the White House Situation Room.

138. I think, within an hour or so,

139. they moved him through a long tunnel and blast doors

140. to a Presidential Emergency Operation Center

141. beneath the East Wing of the White House.

142. - Speaker Dennis Hastert is rushed from the Capitol Building

143. to Andrews Air Force Base, wheels squealing

144. as his motorcade rushes off the Capitol grounds.

145. - The Speaker of the House was rushed onto that helicopter

146. and whisked out of the city.

147. So we had a constitutional survivor,

148. someone in the constitutional chain of command

149. who was outside of the city.

150. - Across the Potomac River,

151. a third plane crashes into the Pentagon.

152. - There is a lot of confusion here at the Pentagon.

153. It appears that something hit the Pentagon

154. on the outside of the fifth corridor.

155. - All units, I said, all units...

156. - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,

157. the key link to the nation's military,

158. stands up from his desk and goes out to the crash site.

159. - When he heard the plane hit his building,

160. hit the Pentagon, his natural instinct was to go to the scene.

161. It was his building. His people were hurt.

162. So he left the command post,

163. in a natural instinct of a leader,

164. wanted to be part of the rescue.

165. Now, that was dramatic. It was emotional.

166. He should have stayed in the command post.

167. He ordered his deputy secretary to fly out

168. in a helicopter, fly out of the target zone.

169. And, so, for a while neither the Secretary of Defense

170. nor the Deputy Secretary of Defense was available.

171. - This is an extensive military command and control system,

172. and to watch it break down at an instant

173. because one person was so overcome by human emotion...

174. He just took a multibillion-dollar program

175. and broke it.

176. - Every federal agency is ordered

177. to activate an alternative headquarters

178. outside of Washington,

179. but things don't go according to plan.

180. - It was impossible to get out of Washington.

181. As soon as the attack started occurring,

182. everyone was trying to leave Washington.

183. All the roads were blocked. All the bridges were blocked.

184. The cell phones weren't working because they were overloaded.

185. And we had no helicopters to get the other departments' teams

186. out of town.

187. - Clarke remains in the situation room

188. in the basement of the West Wing of the White House.

189. It's the nerve center of presidential crisis management.

190. With Air Force One flying at 45,000 feet

191. for extra security, communication becomes difficult.

192. - And they don't even really know where to go.

193. They don't know really what to do.

194. They don't know whether more attacks are coming.

195. The Pentagon is a smoldering mess,

196. and that's what the President is facing

197. as he's flying in Air Force One.

198. - Under attack from an unknown enemy,

199. America's defenses default to their Cold War footing.

200. The Pentagon escalates the country's nuclear readiness

201. by going to defense condition 3.

202. - Once Continuity of Government is declared, the nuclear forces

203. and the strategic forces go to DEFCON 3.

204. And, so, it's a really big deal,

205. and by declaring an alert of this sort, a lot of things

206. happen that the Russians detect.

207. Airplanes going into the skies,

208. submarines going on sorties,

209. missiles being put on higher levels of alert.

210. And the Kremlin calls to speak to the President to inquire

211. as to what's going on.

212. And because the communications are spotty,

213. the decision is made in the White House

214. that Condoleezza Rice —

215. she's a Russian and Soviet specialist —

216. will speak to Putin instead.

217. - Because of the breakdown in communication,

218. a critical conversation between world leaders during

219. a moment of crisis doesn't take place.

220. - George W. Bush, in a strange turn of events,

221. sort of became an observer to the tragedy

222. and the spectacle, leaving Vice President Dick Cheney

223. to basically take over the authority of the presidency

224. and start to handle this burgeoning newborn war

225. that America was finding itself in.

226. So it was a total, absolute collapse of authority.

227. - In a way, Dick Cheney had trained his entire adult life

228. for the morning of 9/11.

229. He had been Defense Secretary

230. and a White House Chief of Staff.

231. Now Cheney,

232. in the bunker underneath the White House,

233. takes charge of the US government's response

234. to the attacks.

235. With no formal role in the chain of command,

236. the Vice President began to issue orders

237. and spur the military into action.

238. - You have to appreciate the magnitude of the decision

239. that he was entrusted with, and that is a decision

240. I wouldn't wish on anyone.

241. - With the chain of command in disarray

242. life-and-death decisions

243. at the core of Continuity of Government

244. are about to be tested for the first time.

245. - Two planes have just slammed into the World Trade Center.

246. A third has hit the Pentagon.

247. A fourth hijacked plane

248. heading straight toward the heart of the capital

249. is still in the air over Western Pennsylvania.

250. - It occurred to me that more attacks might be coming.

251. We evacuated the White House complex.

252. - Everybody out. Everybody out.

253. - We sent the Vice President into the bomb shelter

254. in the East Wing.

255. - The decisions in the bunker that morning

256. cut to the heart of the questions

257. and the moral calculus of the Continuity of Government,

258. the idea that some lives are worth more than others,

259. that there are people in the government

260. who, because of their position, because of their authority,

261. are worth protecting over other Americans.

262. - We knew that there were at least two more aircraft aloft.

263. We believed that the White House was a target

264. for an incoming aircraft.

265. - One in particular, United Airlines Flight 93,

266. appears to be headed back towards Washington.

267. - Deep underground in the heavily fortified

268. Presidential Emergency Operations Center, it's chaos.

269. - I reached down and I picked up a receiver.

270. The gentleman on the other end goes, "Major,

271. we have another hijacked aircraft

272. 16 miles south of Pittsburgh,

273. inbound Washington, D. C."

274. - Lieutenant Colonel Robert Darling

275. was a Marine Corps helicopter pilot

276. assigned to the White House military office.

277. On September 11th,

278. he was supporting the Vice President

279. and the National Security Advisor.

280. - I was like, "Whoa, you're gonna have to hold on."

281. I turn to my right, and who's standing right next to me

282. but Vice President Cheney.

283. - Cheney tries but fails to reach Donald Rumsfeld.

284. The Secretary of Defense

285. remains at the chaotic scene outside the Pentagon,

286. keeping him out of the chain of command

287. at another critical moment.

288. - The Pentagon asks for an unimaginable authority.

289. Can we shoot down a commercial airliner

290. full of Americans over American soil?

291. - Without hesitation, Vice President Cheney said,

292. "Shoot that aircraft down."

293. - Two F-16s are scrambled with orders

294. to intercept Flight 93,

295. but the fighter jets are unarmed.

296. At the time, having armed fighters

297. standing by to defend the capital from a domestic threat

298. wasn't part of the national defense strategy.

299. So their only option is to try

300. and bring down the airliner with 44 people on board

301. by ramming the plane out of the sky.

302. One of the pilots plans to crash the plane into the cockpit.

303. The other plans to target the tail.

304. But this scene never happened.

305. Flight 93 had crashed before the jets even took off.

306. - "Aircraft down, aircraft down."

307. "68 miles south of Pittsburgh. No survivors."

308. All eyes on the Vice President.

309. He was staring at those three speaker boxes.

310. He turned around. He walked right over to me.

311. He goes, "Major, we just shot that plane down.

312. I really need to talk to the President."

313. - In the chaos, it's only after Cheney gives the order

314. to shoot down Flight 93

315. that he informs the President of his decision.

316. And for much of the morning, the officials inside the bunker

317. didn't know whether they were responsible for bringing down

318. a passenger jet.

319. Only later would it become known

320. that it was the passengers storming the cockpit

321. who caused the plane to crash.

322. A half-hour later, another, this time unidentified, plane

323. is picked up on radar.

324. - I turn. "Mr. Vice President, sir,

325. we got a bogey eight miles out, low and fast,

326. inbound to the White House."

327. This time, Donald Rumsfeld,

328. the Secretary of Defense, was back in the building.

329. He goes, "Don, we got a bogey seven miles out.

330. Do we have an asset that can take a shot at him?

331. Anything over Washington, D. C., we can engage him with?"

332. - Meanwhile, in the unreinforced situation room above,

333. Clarke and his team make a fateful decision of their own.

334. - At one point, I realized that we might not survive.

335. And so I asked most of the people there to leave.

336. They refused.

337. I asked them then to write their name

338. and Social Security number, date of birth on a piece of paper,

339. and we e-mailed that list out of the White House.

340. In case the building was hit,

341. the people who had to rescue us

342. or find the remains would know how many people to look for.

343. - Down in the bunker, time is running out.

344. - The Secret Service and I are going,

345. "Seven... six... five..."

346. - Cheney has the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld,

347. on the line who tells the Vice President

348. he's got other fighter jets screaming toward the capital.

349. - He goes, "Don, I'll authorize an over-the-horizon shot.

350. No visual confirmation required.

351. If you got a radar-guided missile over Baltimore

352. and you can lock onto him, shoot him.

353. Shoot him. Shoot him."

354. As I sit in the secure facility deep under the White House,

355. there are people outside pushing civilians to the south

356. or clearing civilians to the north,

357. and they're going to take a body blow

358. right here in front of them.

359. When all of a sudden, all the satellite radios blared to life,

360. "That's not a bogey."

361. That's a medevac helicopter heading to the Pentagon

362. to save lives talking on the wrong frequency.

363. - Meanwhile, in New York City, Mayor Rudy Giuliani

364. has his own plans to ensure survival.

365. In 1999, he built a $13 million bomb-proof shelter

366. nicknamed Rudy's Bunker, but there's one problem.

367. His Emergency Operations Center

368. was built in the World Trade Center itself,

369. a location that terrorists had already bombed once before

370. back in 1993.

371. So in the opening minutes of the attack,

372. New York found itself without its Emergency Operation Center,

373. leaving Mayor Giuliani

374. and other officials to wander the streets

375. attempting to find a place to set up a command post.

376. - To create a bunker that cost millions

377. or tens of millions of dollars that's centrally located

378. in what we now know is an incredibly vulnerable place,

379. but failing to provide radios that worked to firefighters,

380. I think, is a perfect illustration

381. of how broken our system was.

382. If we had prioritized money and resources in the right way,

383. more firefighters would have lived.

384. - Paul Rieckhoff was on the front lines that morning,

385. deployed to the rescue efforts at Ground Zero.

386. - I was in the National Guard in New York.

387. I started the morning sleeping in late

388. with a dental appointment, and I ended the evening

389. in camouflage standing on a pile in the wreckage of Ground Zero

390. digging up bodies.

391. The magnitude of a gaping chest wound

392. in New York City was unfathomable.

393. And even now, when I reflect on it,

394. I think my mind probably censors a bit of the enormity of it.

395. - It turns out America was totally unprepared

396. for the threat it faced on the morning of 9/11.

397. None of the plans that we had developed

398. during the Cold War would work.

399. The FAA and the military found themselves with radars

400. only facing out.

401. The fighter planes that were scrambled into the sky

402. thought that they were trying to repel Soviet bombers

403. and flew first out to the Atlantic

404. before realizing that the threat was already behind them.

405. Across the country,

406. the military trained for the Cold War found itself

407. outclassed by 19 hijackers with box cutters

408. aboard commercial airliners.

409. - The truly demoralizing truth

410. is that the massive Continuity of Government project,

411. which redistributed incredible amounts of wealth

412. away from social projects like education

413. and health care and infrastructure

414. and the betterment of the lives of American citizens,

415. is it created this hulking rusting infrastructure

416. that never actually worked at any moment.

417. It was completely incompetent and unnecessary.

418. - But 9/11 wasn't the only fail.

419. Just days later, the US government found itself

420. under attack again, this time from an enemy within.

421. - The big fear through the fall of 2001

422. was when was the next shoe going to drop?

423. When was the second wave of attacks?

424. - This nation stands with the good people of New York City

425. and New Jersey and Connecticut,

426. as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens.

427. - In the weeks after the worst terrorist attack on US soil,

428. a shadowy figure drops an anonymous letter

429. addressed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

430. - Senator Tom Daschle received a pile of mail,

431. constituent mail.

432. One of the interns

433. starts opening up the mail.

434. And the one she selected

435. was postmarked from a fourth grade school in New Jersey.

436. So she picked that one up, wanted to open it up,

437. and found it was taped shut.

438. So she took a pair of scissors

439. and carefully sliced up the side,

440. and gray-white powder fell out.

441. She also noticed it drifted up into the air.

442. - After 9/11, FBI agent Scott Decker

443. was transferred to the counterterrorism branch

444. and now was assigned to investigate

445. the rapidly unfolding anthrax attacks.

446. - If it's a positive, they'll turn bright red.

447. If it's a related bacteria, another Bacillus,

448. sometimes they'll turn pink.

449. We get false positives.

450. But when the Capitol Police test this

451. and test it again and again, they keep getting bright red.

452. So they're pretty sure it's not a false positive this time.

453. - The government's top biological defense lab confirms

454. the white substance is anthrax.

455. Anthrax is a highly infectious and deadly disease

456. caused by inhaling or touching a bacteria.

457. Letters were mailed to another senator and major news outlets.

458. - In just a week's time,

459. we have had four confirmed cases of anthrax.

460. - The letters sent to NBC and the "New York Post"

461. were the same — "Death to America.

462. Death to Israel. Allah is great."

463. - As soon as a wave of letters began to arrive

464. across the country with weaponized anthrax

465. and people began to sicken and die,

466. everyone believed this was the next wave,

467. this was Al-Qaeda's second act.

468. It came at a time when the nation's psyche

469. was already fragile, and now,

470. across the country, people were dying of a new attack.

471. - Meanwhile, in D. C., the fallout from the anthrax attack

472. continues to grow.

473. - The Capitol Police cars were contaminated with anthrax,

474. their bomb dogs were contaminated with anthrax.

475. The stuff that had been mailed to Senator Daschle

476. was so concentrated, so dried, and such a fine powder,

477. it spread all over Capitol Hill very quickly.

478. - The attacks raise a frightening possibility

479. ignored during the Cold War.

480. - The spate of anthrax scares across the country,

481. particularly to Congress,

482. you see a situation where anything that wasn't

483. that large in magnitude,

484. which wasn't two superpowers flexing their muscles,

485. went completely unnoticed and unhindered,

486. which really exposed the impotency of the system

487. in the first place.

488. The problem is, for all of the money, time, and effort

489. spent in creating this system, is that it left America

490. vulnerable to small attacks, to unpredictable

491. events on a human level.

492. - The anthrax attacks also reveal a critical weakness

493. in Continuity of Government.

494. - The anthrax attacks made Congress realize

495. how poorly their own plans for continuity operations

496. actually were.

497. They didn't have a fallback location,

498. and they didn't have a good system to replace members

499. who might be sick or killed.

500. Congress realized that they had let their Cold War plans atrophy

501. and they hadn't replaced them with anything.

502. There was no backup plan for Congress.

503. - In a doomsday scenario, sweeping powers

504. would fall to the Executive Branch,

505. while a central piece of American democracy

506. would be left to die.

507. But during the Cold War, millions of dollars

508. were spent on a secret plan to make sure that didn't happen.

509. - They were in a small upland valley.

510. We sit at 2,000 feet surrounded by the Allegheny Mountains.

511. So when you walk out of the hotel, you encounter

512. a big broad lawn surrounded by cottages,

513. and then right after that, you come to the golf clubhouse.

514. - In 1978, Bob Conte is hired as the official historian

515. at The Greenbrier, an elite resort

516. that dates back to 1778.

517. - When I first moved here, people would tell me about this rumor

518. that there was a bomb shelter at The Greenbrier.

519. And why is there a 7,000-foot airport

520. for a town of 3,800 people?

521. So I sort of heard these rumors, and to be honest,

522. I didn't know what to — what to make of them.

523. - Bankers, industrialists,

524. and government advisers all hobnob at the resort.

525. Its guests include dignitaries and presidents.

526. Then, in 1992, "Washington Post" reporter

527. Ted Gup comes calling.

528. - So he walks in, he introduces himself.

529. He puts a tape recorder on my desk, and son of a gun,

530. he says, "I'm here to talk about

531. what's under the West Virginia Wing."

532. "Oh, it's an old rumor, it goes back

533. to when they built the West Virginia Wing.

534. It was during the Cold War. Just a silly rumor.

535. There's nothing under the West Virginia Wing."

536. And there's a sort of awkward silence where he's looking at me

537. because, clearly, he —

538. he doesn't believe a word I'm saying.

539. And it was pretty clear to me

540. that this was going to lead to an article

541. and disclosure of the bunker.

542. - On May 31, 1992,

543. Gup blows the lid off The Greenbrier bunker.

544. - Actually, what happened, one of the most memorable moments

545. of, well, my career, maybe my life,

546. is that Friday morning, the boss calls a meeting,

547. and I go into his office, and Ted Kleisner,

548. the president of The Greenbrier, stands up

549. and says, "Today we are going to acknowledge

550. a 35-year secret relationship with the federal government

551. maintaining a bomb shelter here at The Greenbrier."

552. I could have fallen over at that moment.

553. - The facility is swiftly shut down as the truth

554. about Greenbrier is exposed.

555. Hidden beneath the vast extension

556. known as the West Virginia Wing

557. is a massive bomb shelter stocked with supplies

558. for members of Congress in case of disaster.

559. - The Greenbrier Congressional bunker

560. was one of the most closely held secrets of the Cold War.

561. Built under cover of a resort expansion in the 1950s and '60s,

562. the bunker was staffed through the Cold War

563. by a team of secret government workers

564. working for a front company known as Forsythe Associates.

565. - I must say, they hid their tracks pretty well.

566. Everybody who worked here worked for The Greenbrier,

567. except for these guys.

568. They were the audiovisual consultants,

569. but they were sort of mysterious kind of guys, you know.

570. I mean, when you talked to them, they were sort of normal people.

571. But it was sort of funny that you had this one operation

572. where they weren't — they weren't Greenbrier employees.

573. - Three years after its controversial disclosure,

574. Conte finally gets to see the secret bunker for himself.

575. - I'm peeing in my pants, oh, my God,

576. I'm actually going to see this bunker, you know.

577. We walk in. We walk into a cafeteria.

578. And I'm going, "Wait a minute, stop.

579. This is — This is the secret bunker?

580. It looks like a high school cafeteria here, you know."

581. I just assumed that the bunker

582. was hundreds of feet underground.

583. Turns out it was right in front of our nose,

584. and I'd never really realized.

585. This door we went through, which I — well, I guess

586. I never knew what was on the other side of that door —

587. leads into the bunker proper.

588. What was overwhelming to me was how large the bunker was.

589. We're talking a thousand people here.

590. We're talking about bunk beds,

591. we're talking about a dining room,

592. we're talking about a power plant.

593. We just kept going on and on and on.

594. I guess what I didn't realize

595. was that they were to continue to be

596. the Legislative Branch of the federal government.

597. It wasn't just a matter of a place for them to sleep and eat

598. so that they could stay alive.

599. They were moving down the whole institution of Congress.

600. And this is part of this larger

601. Continuity of Government program.

602. - One of the most uncomfortable surprises inside the bunker

603. was a large weapons cache that had been meant

604. to be used by security guards to keep out ordinary Americans

605. who might try to show up at the Congressional bunker.

606. The weapons cache was a physical manifestation

607. of the difficult moral calculus

608. that lies at the heart of these continuity plans,

609. that the government officials are worth protecting

610. over the lives of ordinary Americans.

611. - In the event of a nuclear war, members of Congress

612. would seal themselves inside the bunker with their staff,

613. while their spouses and children would be locked outside.

614. - To me, the tragedy of continuity of government

615. is one that's a story that's not really well-known.

616. - The big secret — who gets saved often has nothing to do

617. with making sure the government survives.

618. - They had to send a special US Customs Service jet

619. to Bonaire to fly her back to Washington,

620. even though the airspace of America was closed.

621. - The truth of America's secret doomsday plans

622. is often stranger than fiction,

623. but occasionally, the creators of Hollywood movies

624. and TV dramas stumble on a bit of reality.

625. - When Aaron Sorkin was writing and researching the show

626. that ultimately became "The West Wing,"

627. he met with George Stephanopoulos,

628. then a top Clinton Administration official,

629. who showed him, during a conversation over drinks,

630. something that looked like a bus pass

631. in Stephanopoulos' wallet.

632. - What's the card?

633. - Tells you where to go in the event of a nuclear attack.

634. - Sorkin turned that card into an episode

635. involving Deputy White House Chief of Staff

636. Josh Lyman getting an emergency evacuation card

637. and worrying that his colleagues didn't.

638. - Sure.

639. A-A-And my staff goes with me, or do they have separate...

640. Oh, God. Sorry, you know what? I just got it.

641. Sorry. Okay. Sure.

642. Just gonna — I'll stick this right here,

643. right next to my — my video club membership,

644. and there's no reason, I guess, why my staff

645. ever has to know anything about it.

646. So there it is.

647. - "The West Wing" episode pulls back the curtain

648. on a secret Armageddon VIP list

649. unknown even to many Washington insiders.

650. - Then, on the set, White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers

651. pulled Sorkin aside and said,

652. "You know, those cards don't exist."

653. Dee Dee Myers had made it all the way to the White House,

654. all the way to becoming White House Press Secretary,

655. worked with George Stephanopoulos for years,

656. and she never understood that she wasn't going to be included

657. if there was a nuclear war.

658. That George Stephanopoulos would be evacuated

659. and she would be left behind.

660. - The evacuation cards are a combo

661. of a driver's license and a Yahoo! map

662. that helped get personnel out of the capital

663. and to the relocation facilities as quickly as possible.

664. - Some officials are only given cards with driving instructions,

665. to find their own way to the bunkers,

666. if and when they can, in an emergency.

667. The most elite versions,

668. though, come with evacuation instructions

669. for how helicopters will locate these key officials

670. and whisk them away, wherever they are, 24 hours a day.

671. There was nothing more exclusive in government service

672. than a golden ticket on one of the evacuation helicopters.

673. - But it's not just VIPs who will be saved first.

674. - The government's doomsday plans, though,

675. have always encompassed more than people.

676. One of the things that the planners

677. began to realize as they figured out

678. what was worth saving in America was that it was important

679. to preserve America's history, as well.

680. And so you saw, in the Cold War, plans to evacuate

681. the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution,

682. the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address,

683. even works of art in the National Gallery,

684. ranked, ordered so that curators would know

685. which pieces to grab first in an emergency.

686. - The government's doomsday planners

687. took on the responsibility

688. of deciding what parts of history

689. needed to survive the apocalypse

690. in order to preserve the idea of America.

691. - They start making these very technocratic decisions

692. about what should be saved, including the American people.

693. I mean, you start looking at the plans

694. for saving George Washington's uniform,

695. and you start realizing how much time

696. and manpower and resources have gone into saving these things.

697. Meanwhile, American families could be dying

698. by the millions around the country.

699. - 9/11 put some of the realities of Continuity of Government

700. into stark relief.

701. - To me, the tragedy of Continuity of Government

702. is one that's a story that's not really well-known,

703. which is how much effort, energy, and American tax dollars

704. went into protecting the adult children of Dick Cheney.

705. Cheney had two daughters,

706. one of whom was an official in the State Department,

707. and the other was a private citizen.

708. And she was scuba diving in Bonaire.

709. The amount of effort that was required

710. to move Cheney's other daughter back to the United States,

711. where they had to send a special US Customs Service jet

712. to Bonaire to fly her back to Washington,

713. even though the airspace of America was closed,

714. that those parts of Continuity of Government

715. that really do represent the imperial presidency,

716. that really do represent

717. nothing that has to do with the command of the government

718. or the constitutional leadership of America,

719. that is what I really think needs more attention.

720. - But instead, more attention will be put on creating

721. an even safer space for the president

722. to ride out threats from enemies abroad

723. and perceived enemies right here at home.

724. - Peaceful protest! Peaceful protest!

725. - May 29, 2020.

726. As protests erupt in Washington, D. C.,

727. after the death of George Floyd,

728. demonstrators close in on the White House gates.

729. The Secret Service decides to rush President Trump

730. down into the White House bunker.

731. - The great irony of Donald Trump

732. being rushed into the bunker under the White House

733. is that he wasn't being protected

734. against some sort of foreign threat

735. or imminent nuclear apocalypse.

736. It was the anger of the American people themselves.

737. - Later, Trump denies he was hiding in a bunker.

738. - I went down during the day,

739. and I was there for a tiny, little, short period of time,

740. and it was much more for an inspection.

741. - It was a story that was quickly contradicted,

742. even by the President's own Attorney General.

743. - Things were so bad that the Secret Service

744. recommended the President go down to the bunker.

745. We can't have that in our country.

746. - As Trump takes to Twitter, tensions escalate

747. at the gates of the White House.

748. It's not only the President who is taken to the bunker.

749. The First Lady and their son, Barron, are also rushed there.

750. The bunker itself is part of a new secret development

751. that begins after 9/11.

752. - On 9/11, the bunker didn't function

753. very well at all.

754. Among other problems,

755. it turned out that you couldn't listen to both the TV

756. and watch a video conference at the same time.

757. So, through the morning, Vice President Cheney

758. had to turn down the cable news

759. in order to listen to government officials

760. and turn down the government officials in order to listen

761. to cable news.

762. - That Presidential Emergency Operation Center itself

763. was a rather stark facility.

764. There was a conference room

765. and there were a number of support rooms

766. and there were places of residence

767. for just one or two people.

768. - Engine 101 getting cracked open there at a Pentagon,

769. is that correct?

770. - The terror attacks prompt National Security officials

771. to call for a more advanced bunker.

772. During the Obama Administration,

773. a conspicuous construction project

774. begins on the North Lawn of the White House.

775. - They decided to rebuild the Presidential

776. Emergency Operations Center, so they built a big bunker

777. underneath the White House Situation Room.

778. - The project is shrouded in secrecy.

779. The public is told the construction

780. is to replace existing White House infrastructure

781. and put up a fence.

782. The new bunker includes a main conference room

783. and several support rooms

784. with food and a self-contained air supply.

785. It's sealed off to prevent radiation from seeping in,

786. and there are underground tunnels

787. heading out of the White House entirely.

788. - And that is able to accommodate the president

789. and the vice president and the cabinet

790. in a more comfortable way.

791. - When Trump arrived at the White House in 2017,

792. he and a few select officials were given a tour

793. of the facility, part of an ongoing expansion.

794. It was clear that the White House bunker

795. needed upgrading, but after 9/11, investment

796. in the national security state soars to new levels.

797. In the D. C. area alone, 33 new building

798. complexes for top-secret intelligence work

799. are either under construction or have already been built.

800. - The truth of the matter is the Pentagon will continue

801. to get the money that it gets and civil needs

802. will continue to be begging for money

803. because the Pentagon gets the priority on all spending,

804. and we won't change our system, but part of why we won't change

805. our system is this kind of secrecy

806. and hiddenness associated with believing that the military

807. is more important than it really is.

808. And that — that

809. is a product of the world of Continuity of Government.

810. - You have to consider that this project

811. is a complete redistribution of tax dollars

812. in order to create this redundant government

813. that is completely beyond the reach

814. of representative government, beyond the reach of elections,

815. beyond the reach of the Constitution.

816. A shadow government that is ready to take over

817. at a moment's notice,

818. and it becomes this situation where representative government

819. is just sort of done away with.

820. - One of the most troubling aspects of these plans

821. is the realization that almost all of them imagine

822. suspending the American democracy as we know it.

823. That the secret government plans for an emergency

824. involve suspending civil liberties,

825. declaring martial law, and even, we believe,

826. suspending the very idea of a three-branch

827. check-and-balance government,

828. doing away, effectively, with the Legislative Branch

829. and the Judicial Branch until an emergency is over.

830. - You had an entire American city essentially wiped off the map

831. while an American government stood by and watched.

832. - We see America's prejudices manifest.

833. - Go, go!

834. - We have been busy fighting outside

835. and we failed to guard our own back door.

836. - We've met the enemy and the enemy is us.

837. - It's a traditional fascist spiral.

838. As soon as they protest that you've attacked them,

839. you use that as evidence that they're dangerous.

840. - Your government is here to protect you.

841. Why should you worry?