Project 908 - US News article 1989

8/6/2019 Project 908 - US News article 1989

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A B O R T IO N : W H A T O U R R E A D E R S T H IN K


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A M E R I C A ' S

Is one of America's deepest officialsecrets. a combination of classified es-cape plans. cleverly concealed bun-kers and Space Age communicationssystems that. in the event of a surprisenuclear attack. would enable the govern-ment to regroup to provide critical ser-vices to a stricken citizenry and organizean effective military reprisal against itsattacker. It might well be called theDoomsday Project, but government bu-reaucrats, indulging their penchant forthe prosaic, simply call it COG, shortfor "continuity of government."COG is the government's ultimate in-surance policy should Armageddon ever

'1 If disaster strikesDin the event of a surprise nuclear.~ attack, plans call for the President orhis successor to be evacuated on the WhiteHouse Crown Helo, which could serve as anairborne command post.

arrive. providing t he pr')!",~irnrunsmoothly. That may be the problem. C sNews has learned that officials farmliawith COG worry that parts ofitare deeplflawed. Their concerns focus on the qualty of the program's technology. the wathe program is administered arid somapparent contract irregularities. Inquirieby the Pentagon. the Justice Departmenand the House Armed Services Committee are under way. and a federal granjury is hearing testimony on the programThe investigations are exploring the folowing complaints: That state-of-the-art communicationssystems. which have cost billions of dolars, do not function properly. That "sole source" contracts. often required because of the secrecy of the program. were awarded irnproperly.vresult-ing in millions of dollars in programcosts that may not be justified. That security at some bunkers ansupply depots, which contain massivamounts of food. drugs and chemicalshas been plagued by numerous breachesThe origins of. and the need for.plan to keep the U.S. gevernment functioning after a nuclear attack are hardlsurprising. After the Soviets successfulltested an atomic bomb in August, 194defense planners in Washington bega


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rre-raring mea-nrc ....tn ,.:ount-:r the threat\)( nuclear .inack. In Iq :" 1. PresidentHarry Truman created the Civ il DefenseAdministration. which drew up the firstset of evacuation plans for the nation'scapital. One year bt~r. the Army Corps"f Enuincer-, bezan can iriz an enormoushunk;r out of J. -r;WUnt:.llll~n the Virziniac' ,lUrltn'sl ,k 11


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. dent or his -uccessor Juring or after anuclear


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The President and top military lead-ers could take to the air, if need be,boarding one of four specially equippedBoeing 747s called National EmergencyAirborne Command Posts (NEACP's)kept at Andrews Air Force Base nearWashington. The NEACP's can stavairborne for 12 hours and travel up-to6,000 miles without refueling. They car-ry tons of communications equipmentlinked to a satellite network, as well ascommercial telephone systems.If the Strategic Air Command is un-able to carry out its mission from itsunderground headquarters at Offutt AirForce Base outside Omaha, it, too, cantake to the air. SAC maintains severalfour-engine jet aircraft code-named"Looking Glass," each of which cancarry a 28-person airborne commandstaff-including intelligence, weather,logistics and battle specialis ts. Thesecraft can remain aloft for more than 8hours. One of the jets is kept airborneat all times.

by Douglas Pasternak

U.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT. Aug. 7. 1989

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UNE OF SUCCESSIONIn the event that the President were in-capacitated in a nuclear attack. federallaw specifies that these officials wouldsucceed him in the following order:Vice President Dan QuayleSpeaker of the House Thomas FoleyPresident Pro Tempore of the SenateRobert ByrdSecre tary of State James Baker IIITreasury Secretary Nicholas BradySecretary of Defense Richard CheneyAtty. Gen. Dick ThornburghInter ior Secretary Manuel Lujan, J r.Agriculture Secretary Clayton YeutterCommerce Secretary Robert MosbacherSecretary of Labor Elizabeth DoleSecre tary of Health and Human ServicesLouis SullivanSecretary of Housing and UrbanDevelopment Jack KempTransportation Secretary Samuel SkinnerEnergy Secretary James WatkinsEducation Secretary Lauro CavazosSecretary of Veterans AffairsEdward Derwinski

Mo un t W e ath er. The enormousunderground bunker could house I.000officials who would run the countrytests on the systems. "Congress wastreated to a successful demonstration."says one knowledgeable military source."except the results were rigged." At onebriefing, in December. 19S5. congress-men were told that the communic~tionssystems were "operational.' eVen thoughthey were not capable of functioni~gproperly at the time. ~

Problems with COG. which might havecome to light eventually. surfaced whensomeone blew a whistle. In 1983. thenDefense Secretary Caspar Weinbergerand the Joint Chiefs of Staff assigned theArmy the job of devising and mai~tainin


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accordinz to Arm \ and (on >2:rc,slllnalsources. Thomas Golden wanted [0knowwhether regular Army personnel couldsupply the ~en'ices Beta~ was being paidto provide. Golden would not talk with a[/.5. Sews reporter-But military and con-gressional sources-sav he became curious;frcr learning that ; number of Armyofficials who -had worked with Betac ;tFort Huachuca and elsewhere were retir-ing from the Arrnv and being hired back.ul'~der the auspices el f Bct;c:. As paidconsultants to the Arrnv, some were earn- . iing .up _to 54QCl .~ ~a:y:_Sddom had the. t - I . .Pentagon's revolving door spun'-more I Iquickly. Golden also discovered that Eu- ! , I , I [gene Renzi. a colonel who was deputychief of staff for operations at the Infor- I Imation Systems Command, had been a Ikey player in the award of the Betac I Icontract. Golden learned that Renzi's son I iwas now working for Betac. , I

Pointing fingers at COG was a risky I ii Ibusiness. Gicola Thorndike, a seniorArmy contracting officer at Fort Hua- Ichuca, says she was forced out of the IArmy after demanding repeatedly to re-view the Betac contract. But Golden hadauthority to review parts of the contract.And in July of 1987, when investigatorsfrom the Army inspector general's staffcame to Fort Huachuca asking questionsabout Betac, Golden talked. Under anoffer of confidentiality, Golden told ofhis concerns about the Betac contract.Within weeks. Golden's comments hadleaked back to Fort Huachuca.U n an sw e re d q ue stio ns

It was a bad sign. The Army's inspectorgeneral has enjoyed a strong reputationfor integrity, but the Golden affair shot ahuge hole through it. The Army IG begananother investigation to determine whohad leaked Golden's comments. But wordof the new investigation quickly leaked,and before the investigators even left forFort Huachuca, officials at the Informa-tion Systems Command had begun de-stroying documents. When the Army in-vestigators arrived at Fort Huachuca,they were told the documents had beendestroyed in compliance with "routineclassified-documents disposal" proce-dures. According to a copy of their report,the Army investigators concluded thatRenzi had retaliated against Golden. Butthey found no other improprieties andrecommended that the investigation beclosed. Renzi received a reprimand. Theaffair was over. Or so it seemed.

But others besides Golden had begunraising questions about the COG pro-gram. Fred Westerman had worked formore than 20 years as an Army counter-intelligence officer before retiring toopen his own consulting firm, SystemsEvaluation, Inc. Documents show that

F r o m 'd u c k - a n dc o v e r ' t o ' r u nlik e hell'P erhaps the seeds of optimism weresown way back after the great flood.when Noah and his passengerstrooped off the ark onto Mount Ararat,two by two, eager to get on with beingfruitful and-multiplying. It-was then thatGod promised never again to "destroyevery living creature." And eyer since,human beings havemaintained a stub-born hope that it ispossible to survivethe worst.Nothing haschanged in the Nu-clear Age. The firstgreat fad, after theSoviets detonatedtheir first A-bomb, was blast shelters-windowless, thick-walled buildings thatmight protect inhabitants if they didn'thappen to be located precisely at groundzero. But such buildings were far tooexpensive to build, so federal officialslaunched a multimedia educational cam-paign. KNOW THE BOMB'S TRUE DANGERS.blared the films and pamphlets. To avoidthem, simply "duck and cover." Millionsof schoolchildren spent untold hoursducking under desks and covering theirheads to the tune of air-raid sirens.The trouble was that even the expertsdidn't know the bomb's true dangers. Andas it became clear that the most acrobaticducker wouldn't survive a thermonuclearblast, officials changed their advice from"duck and cover" to "run like hell" andtried to design evacuation plans. In themid-1950s, scientists realized that even ifyou ran, you couldn't hide. The realdanger of the bomb was a silent, invisibleand highly mobile byproduct called fall-out. By 1962, and the Cuban missile crisis,fallout shelters were the order of the day.Families stocked backyard bunkers withfood, water and weapons.

The early 1980s brought the last great

his company was awarded a contract toprovide security for COG facilitiesaround the country. According to Wes-terman's attorney, Francis Mroz, Wes-terman discovered that his part of theCOG program was riddled with securityproblems, such as inadequate alarms,faulty locks and flimsy doors. Mroz alsosays his client became concerned about"waste and abuse," such as payments for

burst of civil-defense enthusiasm.though his advisers never figured outwhere he got his information, RoReagan was convinced that the SUnion had invested in "a greatdefense program" and called for a maing American effort. Building sheltersall Americans would cost a budget-stering $70 billion or more, so feofficials concentrated instead on "crelocation planning." Once again,planners designed evacuation measuThe private sector, too. pitched in. Aset up shelters for key executives. AnLaVerkin, Utah, a developer built

work not properly done. After Wester-man proposed tighter controls, he says,the Army declined to renew his con-tract. He has sued the Army and FEMAfor what he says are unreimbursed costs.In court papers, he has alleged that un-identified government agents have con-ducted a campaign of Secret surveillance.break-ins at his office and wiretaps. Hislawyer was a witness to one episode in30 U.S.NEWS & WORLD .:;E"ORT, Aug. 7 , 1989


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P ea ce o f m in d. Americans could buy abit of security in their own back yardsunderground condos complete with out-door scenes painted on the "windows."For those without access to such facili-ties, Reagan's deputy under secretary ofdefense, T. K. Jones, had some advice."Dig a hole, cover it with a couple ofdoors and then throw 3 feet of dirt on top.It's the dirt that does it. If there areenough shovels to go around, every-body's going to make it."

by Merrill McLoughlin

which an alleged government agent keptwatch on Westerman's movements.When the agent's license plate wastraced, it was found to belong to a cou-ple in Delaware, who knew nothingabout the vehicle. A Justice Departmentattorney has since launched an investiga-tion of Westerman to determine whetherhe committed any fraud in the COGprogram. In an extraordinary move, the

government has also sought to classifyWesterman's civil suit.Congressional investigators eventuallybecame aware of some of the concernsabout COG, having heard complaints in-formally through contacts in the Penta-gon. Representative Les Aspin (D-Wis.),the chairman of the House Armed Ser-vices Committee, was especially per-turbed by the Army's initial investiga-

tion into the:COG program. In a report.Aspins investigator, concluded that the:Arrnv's inspe:cror-gene:ral svsrern wascompromised. And in a stin~ing letter toArmv Secretary John Marsh d-:ltedOct.24, i88. Aspin said he was '~con-cernjed] about the objectivity and com-petence of the investigation": Aspinwrote that the "confidentiality [of theinvestigation] was breached almost im-mediately by the head of the inspector-general inspection team." Aspins inves-tigators concluded that the Arrnv hadfailed to exercise adequate oversightover the COG program. They also foundthat the sole-source contract to Betacshould not have been allowed. Betac of-ficials say they know of no investigationof any of their contracts. They declinedto discuss the COG program because ofits classified nature.C ov er-u ps a nd fa t co ntra cts

For the Congress, the first long lookinto the COG program wasnot a hearten-ing one. In response to Aspin's letter, theArmy has reopened its investigation oftheArmy's inspector general aria the COGprogram. Those familiar with this latestinquiry, and with the ongoing congressio-nal inquiry, say intelligence officials aredisturbed by what they describe as at-tempted cover-ups of wrongdoing, possi-ble fraud and woefully inadequate over-sight of multimillion-dollar contracts.Investigators have been told of doublebilling by some COG contractors to sepa-rate agencies of the government for thesame work. It was also learned that othercontracts, valued at millions of dollars,were increased, some by as much as 50percent, without input by any contract-oversight office or without any demon-stration ofneed. Pentagon sources say theCOG program has awarded contractsworth tens ofmillions ofdollars to formermilitary officials who worked on COGwhile they were in the Pentagon. "Theprogram," says a key official, referring toa troubled multibillion-dollar antitankweapons system that was scrapped byCongress, "is another DIYAD." Says an-other: "It is a real mess."Things could get messier still. Subpoe-nas have been issued, and a grand jurycontinues to hear evidence. Congress isset to hold hearings this fall on the lackof oversight of classified, or "black,"Pentagon programs like COG. For oneof the nation's most secret national-secu-rity programs, the glare of publicity isbound to be embarrassing. That one ofthe nation's most important national-se-curity programs was jeopardized by thevery people in charge of it would be themost wounding development of all.

by Steven EmersonU.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT. Aug. 7,1989 31