ABC News' Elizabeth Gorman reports:
It's the nightmare scenario.
The Continuity of Government Commission released its report today, “The Presidency,” that includes an 8-page scenario in which the President, his Cabinet, and most of the House and Senate, are all killed by an al Qaeda operative at a State of the Union address, using the same methods as 9/11.
“The current system would be inadequate in the face of a catastrophic attack that would kill or incapacitate multiple individuals in the line of succession,” states the report.
President Bush's former Homeland Security advisor, Frances Townsend, said that scenario is not unfathomable, and “that our enemies understood” from public discussion the debilitating effects an attack would have had during Obama's January inauguration:
“Even out of government a year later I watch the inauguration with pride, but holding my breath waiting for everybody to get off that dais,” Townsend said. “Given that we didn't have Cabinet secretaries sworn in for the new administration, given everybody in the governmental power structure was there [at the inauguration], you can imagine.”
The commission recommends swearing in the Cabinet nominees the day before the Presidential inauguration, to prevent a gap in leadership after an attack, and creating four to five new federal offices located outside Washington — just in case.
“The idea is to have a backstop behind the key people in the line of succession if the worse were to happen and we would have to turn to people outside of Washington,” said John Fortier, a research fellow at AEI on the commission.
In 2007, President Bush signed the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive that gave him special powers in case of a “catastrophic emergency” to ensure national continuity. Details are classified.
“The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government,” the policy states.
And the National Continuity Coordinator, a position formally held by Townsend, oversees the plan “to promote interoperability of Federal Government continuity programs and procedures with State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate.”
“President Obama inherited a far superior . . .by almost any standard of anything else we understand about our allies around the world — a far superior system where his long term and not just his, but a legacy in terms of the continuity of the Presidency that is much stronger than anything that anybody would have contemplated,” Townsend said.
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