NEWSWEEK.COM 13
“W e’re in territory
we’ve never been
in before.”CONTINUITY President Trump delivers
the State of the Union address to a
joint session of Congress on February- The Pentagon has long had plans to
protect America’s leaders in a crisis.
national security leaders so that they
can leave the Washington area. The
Atlas Plan is a third, moving non-mil-
itary leaders—Congressional leader-
ship, the Supreme Court and other
important figures—to their emer-
gency relocation sites. Under Atlas, a
still-secret bunker would be activated
and cordoned, with government oper-
ations shifting to Maryland.
The three most compartmented
contingencies—Octagon, Freejack
and Zodiac—call upon various mili-
tary units in Washington, D.C., North
Carolina and eastern Maryland to
defend government operations if
there is a total breakdown. The sev-
enth plan—code named Granite
Shadow—lays out the playbook for
extraordinary domestic missions that
involve weapons of mass destruction.
(I disclosed the existence of this planin 2005, and its associated “national
mission force”—a force that is on
alert at all times, even in peacetime, to
respond to a terrorist attack or threat
with the nuclear weapon.)
Most of these plans have been
quietly activated during presidential
inaugurals and State of the Union
addresses, the centrality of the weap-
ons of mass destruction scenario seen
in the annual Capital Shield exercise
in Washington. Last year’s exercise
posited a WMD attack on Metro Sta-
tion. Military sources say that only
the massive destruction caused by
a nuclear device—or the enormous
loss of life that could be caused by
a biological agent—present cata-
strophic pressure great enough to
justify movement into extra-Consti-
tutional actions and extraordinary
circumstances plans.
“WMD is such an important sce-
nario,” a former NORTHCOM com-
mander told me, “not because it is the
greatest risk, but because it stresses
the system most severely.”
According to another senior
retired officer, who told me about
Granite Shadow and is now working
as a defense contractor, the national
mission force goes out on its mis-
sions with “special authorities” pre-
delegated by the president and the
attorney general. These special
authorities are needed because under
regulations and the law, federal mili-
tary forces can supplant civil author-
ity or engage in law enforcement only
under the strictest conditions.
When might the military’s “emer-
gency authority” be needed? Tradi-
tionally, it’s thought of after a nuclear