Fw: The shadow of dictatorship: Bush established secret governmentafterSeptember 11

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg at tin.it>]

 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/mar2002/shad-m04.shtml

 The shadow of dictatorship: Bush established secret government after
 September 11
 By the Editorial Board
 4 March 2002


 The Bush administration has established a "shadow government," consisting
of
 75 to 150 officials of the executive branch who have been dispatched to
 secure, fortified locations to provide "continuity of government,"
 supposedly as a precaution against a possible nuclear terrorist attack on
 the US capital, the Washington Post reported Friday. An executive order for
 temporary evacuation was issued shortly after the September 11 terrorist
 attacks on New York and Washington, and the arrangement was made permanent
a
 month later.

 The administration decided to implement longstanding contingency plans
 prepared during the Cold War but never before activated. More than 100
 officials were evacuated by helicopter within hours of the suicide
 hijackings which destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon.

 They were taken to two locations, believed to be in mountainous terrain in
 the eastern United States, which became the seat of a temporary regime. In
 late October the arrangement was made permanent. Since then, officials
drawn
 from top levels of the civil service, just below the appointed cabinet and
 sub-cabinet level, have been rotated at 90-day intervals. Legal documents
 have been drafted to give these officials the full powers of the executive
 branch in the event of a catastrophe.

 Administration spokesmen have confirmed the Post report, and Bush himself
 discussed the subject at a Republican Party campaign appearance in Iowa.
"We
 take the continuity-of-government issue seriously because our nation was
 under attack," Bush declared. "Until this country has routed out terrorists
 wherever they try to hide, we're not safe." In other words, the secret
 government, like the "war on terrorism" itself, is open-ended.

 According to a further report in the Post March 3, the Bush administration
 has deployed the Delta Force within the United States -the same elite
 commando unit which spearheaded the war in Afghanistan-placing it on
standby
 alert to engage in anti-terrorist actions around Washington in the event of
 possible nuclear attack.


 An unconstitutional regime

 The most sinister characteristic of this secret government is that it
 consists entirely of executive branch officials, in complete violation of
 the separation of powers which is the heart of the US constitutional
system.
 No one in the other two branches of government, the legislative and
judicial, was included in the plans or even aware of them. In the event such
 an emergency government were to emerge, it would be an openly dictatorial
 regime, consisting solely of executive branch officials exercising military
and police powers, without any legislative oversight or judicial check on
 their actions.

 Despite the rhetoric about "continuity of government," the Bush plan is not
 based on presidential succession as defined in the US Constitution. Vice
 President Dick Cheney, who would succeed in the event of Bush's death or
 incapacity, is in direct charge of the whole operation. But the third and
 fourth in the order of succession, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate
 President Pro Tem Robert Byrd, were not involved or even aware of the
 government they would nominally head.

 The Bush administration is apparently in violation of a 1988 executive
order
 on emergency preparedness issued by President Reagan, which instructed the
 National Security Council to "arrange for Executive branch liaison with,
and
 assistance to, the Congress and the federal judiciary on national
 security-emergency preparedness matters."

 In television interviews on Sunday, the leading congressional Democrat,
 Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, confirmed that neither he nor any other
congressional leader had been consulted about the plan. Asked whether this
 constituted a secret government, not just potentially in the future, but in
 actuality today, he replied, "I don't know. I don't know what their role
is,
 what their current authority is, because we haven't been informed. You'd
 think one person in Congress would know, and whether a congressional and
 judicial component is included."

 This is an extraordinary state of affairs: the leader of the US Senate, the
 most powerful legislator in Washington, admits that he does not know
whether
 the US government still observes the conventions of democratic rule, or
 whether it is being run behind the scenes by unelected officials who are
not
 responsible for their actions either to elected representatives or to the
public as a whole.

From a political standpoint, the establishment of a secret government is the
 culmination of a protracted, behind-the-scenes struggle for power in
 official Washington which has consumed nearly an entire decade. This
 initially took the form of a legal/media/congressional campaign to
 destabilize the Clinton administration, including the shutdown of the
 federal government in 1995-96, and a series of independent counsel
investigations which culminated in impeachment.

 This was followed by the antidemocratic intervention of the Supreme Court
 into the 2000 presidential election, suppressing the vote-counting in
 Florida and awarding the presidency to Bush. Now an unelected president has
 established a secret, military-backed government of unelected officials,
 behind the backs of the elected members of the Congress, Democratic and
 Republican alike. The Bush administration has seized on the "war on
terrorism" to implement a sweeping change in American foreign policy and
 political life: the implementation of a radical right-wing program of
 militarism abroad and attacks on democratic rights at home.

 The greatest threat to the American people comes, not from foreign
 terrorists or Islamic fundamentalists, but from the behind-the-scenes
 machinations of the American government itself. The terrorist attacks-in
 which the role of US intelligence agencies and the US military still
remains
 to be investigated-have become the pretext for the setting up of a parallel
 government, concealed from the legislature. The "war on terrorism" has
 become the foundation on which the Bush administration has begun to erect a
 military-police dictatorship, run by a secret cabal of unnamed officials,
 working out of the White House and various "undisclosed secure locations."