Planning for martial law?

Civil libertarians say the Bush administration may give the military scary new police powers in its secret planning for a bunker-based, post-disaster shadow government.

By Dave Lindorff

March 15, 2002 | When the Washington Post revealed the existence of an American "shadow government," operating secretly in Tora Bora-style mountain bunkers over the six months since Sept. 11, it shocked even some congressional leaders, who learned about it March 1 from the Post, not the Bush administration.

Now civil libertarians on the left and right are raising new questions about the shadow government -- about its secrecy, its leadership, and the way it involves the military in domestic roles. In particular, plans to have the military assume domestic police functions in case of national emergency alarm some scholars and advocates, who believe the shadow government could be an early step on the way to martial law.

Obviously there are worst-case scenarios -- massive terrorist attacks, nuclear war -- in which it's the government's duty and responsibility to assure its own continuity, and maintaining order in such circumstances could well demand the domestic use of troops. But critics fear that the present administration might be willing to impose martial law under ambiguous circumstances, citing the fact that the Bush administration has pushed through harsh restrictions on civil liberties like the USA PATRIOT Act, and is already using military personnel to assume police functions.

"It has become clear that the response of this administration since 9/11 has been to try and set up a complete government that is not subject to visibility and accountability, " says Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. "You have a shadow government operating in complete secrecy, and then you have these efforts, like military tribunals and the Patriot Act, to undermine basic constitutional protections."

The left-leaning Ratner has counterparts on the right who worry that this administration has been too quick to sacrifice civil liberties in the name of public safety in the last six months. William J. Olson, a conservative lawyer and onetime Bush supporter who counts among his clients the U.S. Gun Owners Association, says its moves since Sept. 11 make clear that the Bush administration has "decided that it doesn't need to follow constitutional processes."

The leap from shadow government to martial law may seem alarmist. Certainly the fact that the Bush administration has made plans to deliver the mail, administer government assistance programs, collect taxes and protect public safety in the event of a major terror attack or nuclear war is not in itself alarming, and the shadow government that's been operating since Sept. 11 is a long way from martial law. According to the Post, up to 150 civilian and military employees are living and working in heavily fortified mountain bunkers. Carved out under Pennsylvania's Raven Rock Mountain and Weather Mountain in Virginia during the Cold War in the 1950s, these underground cities are home to government officials who rotate through on three-month stints -- their identities and even their titles kept secret.

In the event of a massive terror attack, the Post reported, "the underground government would try to contain disruptions of the nation's food and water supplies, transportation links, energy and telecommunications networks, public health and civil order. Later it would begin to reconstitute the government."

The White House didn't invent its shadow government Sept. 11. In fact, in implementing its classified "continuity of operations plan," the Bush administration was following -- at least in part -- a script that was first drawn up back in the Cold War days of the 1950s, and maintained during every administration, up through the Clinton years. But at the Pentagon, at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and at the new Office of Homeland Security, officials have been busy updating those plans, particularly the way they relate to using the military as a kind of domestic national police. Sources at all those agencies confirm that domestic military deployment is an integral part of their "continuity of government" planning. And those military-as-police plans, which have been on the shelf at the Pentagon (where they are referred to as the Defense Deployment Plan, or Operation Garden Plot) since at least the 1970s, are classified.

"The Office of Homeland Security is working on the issue" of domestic use of the military in police-type functions, confirms a spokesperson at the Pentagon responsible for "homeland security" issues, but he refused to give any other details.

"That information is not available. It's classified," says a spokesperson at the Office for Homeland Security, when asked about the military planning going on there.

Next page: Why leave Congress out of shadow government planning?