The British Establishment Revealed

In his 1998 book Who Killed Diana? Simon Regan presents a clear definition of what the British establishment is. He also describes a "Super-Establishment" -- a ruling elite that, despite being entirely unelected, retains significant power over how Britain is governed.

Simon Regan was an investigative journalist who, after having worked with various newspapers in Britain and overseas, in 1989 founded the anti-establishment magazine Scallywag. He was the editor of this magazine during its short existence in the early 1990s.

In Who Killed Diana? Regan writes: "Only when I launched Scallywag and really began looking into how Britain is run did I ever even envisage how manipulated we all are. And how innocent we are to that manipulation." [1] To learn about the establishment, and how government really takes place, is to learn about this manipulation of the general public.

THE PYRAMID OF POWER
To define what the "establishment" is, Regan outlines a "pyramid theory" of how British society is made up. At the base of the pyramid, forming its wide foundation, "is the proletariat--ordinary people like you and me." According to Regan: "In a democracy, ideally, the basic structure dominates the rest of the pyramid. Without us, at least, it is logical to suppose that the entire edifice would topple."

Next up the pyramid, on the middle stratum, "are the people who appear to make the country tick. The universities and academics, the church, the City and the (in particular Tory) press." Then above this is the government itself, including "top-level police officers, the judiciary [and] senior echelons of the armed forces." It is in this level of the pyramid "that the old school tie, gentlemen's clubs, and probably the Freemasons are most prevalent."

To most people, this government level of the pyramid represents the "establishment." However, there is a topmost level above it, which really controls the country. "The base of the pyramid hardly knows they exist." [2]

THE SUPER-ESTABLISHMENT AND THE ROLE OF THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
Regan writes that it is Whitehall, where most government ministries are located, "which really runs the country with a close-knit Mafia-like clique, which forms a sort of uncontrolled Super-Establishment." This "Super-Establishment" is made up of "a handful of powerful, but low-key, City brokers and financiers; definitely the top brains at the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Ministry of Defence and the Trade Department. Key figures in the security forces--although not necessarily the top person--would be included, and so would at least one key member of the prime minister's secretariat." At least until recently, it would also have included the top courtiers who "run" the royal family.

While the police and judiciary might not be directly part of this clique, "through the Home Office they can certainly be manipulated." The Super-Establishment's power is based upon its ability to manipulate the level below it--the individuals that most people believe are governing our country. The elected government, in fact, "is almost irrelevant" to the overall power of the Super-Establishment.

The world in which the Super-Establishment exists is "a grey and murky world in which sensitive matters of state are planned and executed in gentlemen's clubs (Reform and Oxford and Cambridge preferred). It is where manipulation plots are hatched. Whether it be manipulation of a certain minister towards a certain viewpoint, or the wholesale orchestration of a Foreign Office ploy to bring down a foreign government." Regan calls this secretive form of government "twilight politics," because "it never enjoys the slightest glare of sunlight. And if it is ever in danger of doing so, manipulation normally sorts it out."

Regan continues that it is "very much within the interests" of the Super-Establishment "to protect the status quo." In fact, it is "almost the divine mission of the secret services in the UK to protect the status quo, and hitherto it has been their full intention to thwart anyone who tried to disrupt it. It is a scary combination of unofficial officialdom and a blind trust that they have got it right and everyone else has got it wrong and is in need of their 'protection.'" [3]

THE POWER OF THE SUPER-ESTABLISHMENT
Regan concludes: "[T]he actual existence of the Super-Establishment is not a flight of fancy. It really does exist. It is entirely manipulative and, even under the guise of democracy and being 'answerable' to the government," it exercises "a great deal of power behind the scenes." Even the British monarchy "is a sham power. All of the royals, but particularly [Prince] Charles, are constantly manipulated by a small clique of very powerful mandarins and courtiers who in turn work hand-in-glove with top civil servants in such ministries as the Foreign Office." [4]

It is no wonder that the world is in such a mess.


NOTES
[1] Simon Regan, Who Killed Diana? An Investigation Into the Various Conspiracy Theories Concerning the Death of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed. London: Scallywag Publications, 1998, p. 110.
[2] Ibid. pp. 26-27.
[3] Ibid. pp. 27-28.
[4] Ibid. p. 31.

New Details About The 9/11 Mystery Plane

The morning of 9/11, CNN reported a mystery jet plane flying above Washington, DC. At 9:54 a.m., correspondent John King, who was standing near the White House, reported that about ten minutes earlier (hence, around 9:44 a.m.), there was "a white jet circling overhead." He added: "Now, you generally don't see planes in the area over the White House. That is restricted air space. No reason to believe that this jet was there for any nefarious purposes, but the Secret Service was very concerned, pointing up at the jet in the sky. It is out of sight now, best we can tell." [1] Shortly after, another CNN correspondent, Kate Snow, also reported having seen a plane, "circling over the Capitol" building at around the same time. She said: "Now whether that may have been an Air Force plane, it's unclear. But that seemed to be the reason, according to security guards that I talked with, towards the evacuation of the Capitol." [2]

Yet the identity of this "white jet" aircraft has been a mystery. Indeed, there has been virtually no discussion of its existence, even though it was flying above Washington at a time when America was under attack, and when the only aircraft in the area should have been fighter jets, there to protect against possible further attacks. The 9/11 Commission, which claimed that its aim had been to present "the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11" appears not to have investigated the identity of this plane, and made no mention of it in its final report.

THE MYSTERY PLANE IDENTIFIED
In his recent Internet article "The 9/11 Mystery Plane," Mark H. Gaffney presented compelling evidence--including a clear photo and video footage--indicating that this "white jet" had in fact been an E-4B National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC) plane. These are highly modified Boeing 747s that act as flying military command posts. [3]

Important new evidence corroborates Gaffney's conclusion, and raises further questions about the role played by the E-4B planes on 9/11. This evidence appears in the 2003 book Black Ice: The Invisible Threat of Cyber-Terrorism, written by Dan Verton, a former intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and former senior writer for Computerworld magazine, who has written extensively on national security, the intelligence community, and national defense topics. Verton reported that, the morning of September 11, an E-4B was launched from "an airfield outside of the nation's capital." (He did not, however, state which specific base.) This plane was carrying "civilian and military officials," and was going "to conduct a previously scheduled Defense Department exercise." This exercise would involve "the use and testing of the aircraft's various advanced technology and communications equipment."

According to Verton, the E-4B launched from near Washington "had only just taken off" at the time of the Pentagon attack, which was at 9:37 a.m. This would mean it could, quite plausibly, have been circling above the White House and Capitol building at around 9:44 a.m., when CNN's John King and Kate Snow spotted a plane up above. Verton adds that, once airborne, the E-4B "was immediately ordered to cease the military exercise it was conducting and prepare to become the actual national airborne operations center." [4]

GLOBAL GUARDIAN
The exercise the E-4B was participating in would have been Global Guardian, which was being conducted at the time by the U.S. Strategic Command (Stratcom), to test its ability to fight a nuclear war. The Omaha World-Herald has reported that three National Airborne Operations Center planes were airborne the morning of 9/11 for this exercise. Following the attacks, all three remained in the air. [5] According to the World-Herald, Global Guardian was canceled after the second WTC tower was hit, at 9:03 a.m. [6] This is what we would logically expect, since it was quite obvious by that time that America was under attack, and an ongoing massive war exercise could, presumably, have led to great confusion within the military about what was real and what was just simulation. Yet, according to Verton's account, it was only around the time of the Pentagon attack that the E-4B launched near Washington was ordered to stop the exercise. This would therefore have been over half an hour after the second attack had occurred. If Verton is correct, we need to know why there was such a delay in pulling this aircraft out of the exercise.

DOOMSDAY PLANES

It is important to note that the E-4B is no ordinary aircraft. It is a militarized version of a Boeing 747-200, equipped with advanced communications equipment, and capable of carrying a crew of up to 112 people. Nicknamed "Doomsday" planes during the Cold War, E-4Bs serve the president, the secretary of defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In times of national emergency, they can act as highly-survivable command, control, and communications centers to direct forces, execute war orders, and coordinate actions by civil authorities. The U.S. military possesses four of them in total. One is always kept on alert, with a full battle staff. Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska is the "Main Operating Base" for the E-4B, though there are also numerous "Forward Operating Bases" (FOB) throughout the U.S. [7]

As well as the three E-4Bs in the air the morning of September 11 due to the Global Guardian exercise, what appears to have been the fourth of these planes--presumably the one kept on alert--was apparently activated and launched simply in response to the attacks. Reportedly, minutes after the attack on the Pentagon, it took off from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, bound for an undisclosed location. The plane returned to the base at some unspecified time later on in the day. [8] Like the E-4B launched near Washington, little attention has been paid to this aircraft and what its purpose was on 9/11. Again, no mention was made of it in the 9/11 Commission Report.

This highlights the fact that, approaching the sixth anniversary of the attacks, we still only really know a very small fraction of what was going on during the day of 9/11. As Mark Gaffney rightly concludes, there is an "urgent need for a new 9/11 investigation: It must be nonpartisan, independent, adequately funded, and empowered with the authority to subpoena witnesses." [9]


NOTES
[1] "The White House Has Been Evacuated." Breaking News, CNN, September 11, 2001. The clip can be viewed online at: http://www.archive.org/details/cnn200109110929-1011.
[2] "America Under Attack: Terrorists Attacks in Both Washington, DC and New York." Breaking News, CNN, September 11, 2001. The clip can be viewed online at: http://www.archive.org/details/cnn200109111011-1053.
[3] Mark H. Gaffney, "The 9/11 Mystery Plane." Rense.com, April 5, 2007.
[4] Dan Verton, Black Ice: The Invisible Threat of Cyber-Terrorism. New York: Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 2003, pp. 143-144.
[5] Joe Dejka, "Inside StratCom on Sept. 11 Offutt Exercise Took Real-life Twist." Omaha World-Herald, February 27, 2002.
[6] Joe Dejka, "When Bush Arrived, Offutt Sensed History in the Making." Omaha World-Herald, September 8, 2002.
[7] Stephen I. Schwartz (Editor), Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U. S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998, p. 210; "E-4B National Airborne Operations Center." Federation of American Scientists, April 23, 2000; "E-4B." U.S. Air Force, August 2007.
[8] Timothy R. Gaffney, "Wright-Pat Air Force Base Goes to Highest Alert." Dayton Daily News, September 12, 2001.
[9] Mark H. Gaffney, "The 9/11 Mystery Plane."

Before 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld Was Preoccupied With Pearl Harbor and Other Military Surprises

As the following two new entries in the Complete 9/11 Timeline show, early in 2001, the new Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was regularly talking about the danger of surprise attacks, and was expressing particular interest in the attack on Pearl Harbor. According to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, Rumsfeld "routinely handed out or recommended" Roberta Wohlstetter's 1962 book, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision.

This is perhaps unsurprising, since Rumsfeld was one of the founders of the neoconservative think tank the Project for the New American Century. In a September 2000 report called Rebuilding America's Defenses, this group had stated that, to preserve its "military preeminence in the coming decades," America would need to undergo a "military transformation." However, the report continued, this process of transformation would be "a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor." Twelve months later, what President Bush called the "Pearl Harbor of the 21st century" took place.

* * *

January 11, 2001: Rumsfeld Warns of Surprise Attack Like Pearl Harbor
At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense-designate Donald Rumsfeld warns of the danger of a surprise attack like Pearl Harbor happening again. He testifies, "We all know that history is filled with instances where people were surprised. There were plenty of signals, plenty of warnings, plenty of cautions. But they weren't taken aboard. They didn't register. They weren't sufficient to cause a person to act on those." He continues, "We know that the thing that tends to register on people is fear, and we know that that tends to happen after there's a Pearl Harbor, tends to happen after there's a crisis. And that's too late for us. We've got to be smarter than that. We've got to be wiser than that. We have to be more forward-looking." As ABC News later comments, "eight months to the day after his warning of a surprise attack, Rumsfeld's fears became reality with the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks." [CNN, 1/11/2001; Scarborough, 2004, pp. 165-166; ABC News 7 (Chicago), 3/25/2004] Rumsfeld will again refer to the danger of military surprises four months later, during meetings with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees (see May 23-24, 2001).
Source

May 23-24, 2001: Rumsfeld Warns of Inevitability of Strategic Surprise; Refers to Pearl Harbor
During a meeting with the House Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says that the inevitability of surprise is a guiding principle of the Bush administration's national security strategy. To emphasize his point about the need to prepare for the unexpected, he gives panel members copies of the foreword to Roberta Wohlstetter's 1962 book, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. This foreword, written by Thomas Schelling, argues that in order to prepare for the next crisis, the US military needs to avoid thinking that the most familiar threat is also the most likely one. Rumsfeld says that, in line with this reasoning, a key element of the administration's strategy will be preparing for the unexpected. [US Department of Defense, 5/23/2001; Associated Press, 5/24/2001] The following day, he has a similar closed-door meeting with the Senate Armed Services Committee. He hands out to senators a four-page paper dealing with the inevitability of strategic surprise, and summarizing various defense surprises and incorrect predictions made during the 20th century. The paper states that the Department of Defense should "give some thought to the flexibility of a capability-based strategy, as opposed to simply a threat-based strategy." What this means, according to the Washington Post, is that the "US military needs to move away from a Cold War structure designed to counter one large, clear threat--from the Soviet Union--and to develop capabilities to respond to everything from ballistic missiles to terrorist attacks." [NPR, 5/25/2001; Washington Post, 5/25/2001] Rumsfeld had previously warned of the danger of a surprise attack, like Pearl Harbor, during his confirmation hearing in January (see January 11, 2001). Journalist Bob Woodward will later report that one of the main themes Rumsfeld referred to in the eight months prior to 9/11 was surprise, and he had "routinely handed out or recommended" Wohlstetter's book on Pearl Harbor. [Woodward, 2002, pp. 22-23] Yet when, in July, he receives a CIA briefing about the imminent danger of an al-Qaeda attack on an American target, Rumsfeld reportedly responds with "vehement dismissal," and criticizes the CIA for its "gullibility" (see July 11-17, 2001). [Cockburn, 2007, pp. 9]
Source

Who is Behind the "Suicide" Car Bombings in Iraq?

This remarkable yet little known CNN report from January 2007 raises questions about who is really responsible for the car bombings that have been taking place in Iraq. It suggests that some of the supposed "suicide" bombers may in fact be unwilling victims, who have their hands tied to their steering wheels and their cars detonated by remote control. The critical question is who is really carrying out these attacks? Is it "al Qaeda in Iraq"? Or could the real perpetrators be the British or American military?

Here's the transcript:

CNN NEWSROOM
Unwilling Bomber
Aired January 18, 2007 - 10:00 ET

ARWA DAMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Forty-two-year-old Kamal (ph) al-Khaqani was happily married with four children, trying like most here to avoid the violence. To just get through each day alive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE, (through translator): We have nothing to do with politics or anything else.

DAMON: Then one day, like a thousand others, Kamal left to run errands and pick up breakfast for the family. "He got dressed at 7:00 and told me he would come back at 9:00," his mother says. "It was 10:00, 11:00," his wife says. "At 11:00, I started to feel nervous. They kept comforting me. At 2:00, I was pacing back and forth." At that point, Halud (ph) knew deep down that her husband of 12 years would not be coming back.

ADEL AL-KHAQANI, VICTIM'S BROTHER, (through translator): The next day someone came by and said a car similar to your brothers is in Alhadra (ph) neighborhood that it has been blown up.

DAMON: Kamal's final moment, pieced together by officers at the scene.

AL-KHAQANI: He told me, it looks like your poor brother was kidnapped.

DAMON: Kamal was released and set off in his own car. Police say he was probably told to drive toward their checkpoint. But they say he must have realized that his vehicle was rigged with explosives and that he was about to become an unwilling bomber.

It's a trend Iraqi and U.S. officials have been warning since July. They believe a number of suicide bombers are actually kidnapped civilians who's cars have been turned into bombs set off by remote control.

Some of the clues, hands tied to steering wheels. And families. Kamal's, who assist the driver was a victim, too, not an insurgent. And in Kamal's case, eyewitness evidence. He tried desperately to warn the people around him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They said he was screaming the whole time, I am booby-trapped. I am booby-trapped.

AL-KHAQANI: He didn't finish his words before the car blew up. We showed him his pictures and he said, yes, that's him.

DAMON: The explosion wounded one policeman. Kamal's shouted warnings may well have saved lives.

"Kamal is gone," his mother cries. "When my sons sit around, Kamal is not there. His absence has tortured me." "It's difficult," his wife says. "How are we going to live? Only God's mercy can keep us going. It's tough. We are four."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every time his little son starts to cry, I break down in tears.

DAMON: Eleven-year-old Zarat (ph) can't even speak. The youngest, one year old Sashad (ph), still runs around saying, daddy, too young to realize that daddy is never coming home.

Arwa Damon, CNN, Baghdad.

Source

New Details About Dick Cheney's Response on 9/11

An article in the Washington Post reveals new details of Vice President Dick Cheney's immediate response to the 9/11 attacks:

In a bunker beneath the East Wing of the White House, Cheney locked his eyes on CNN, chin resting on interlaced fingers. He was about to watch, in real time, as thousands were killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Previous accounts have described Cheney's adrenaline-charged evacuation to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center that morning, a Secret Service agent on each arm. They have not detailed his reaction, 22 minutes later, when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.

"There was a groan in the room that I won't forget, ever," one witness said. "It seemed like one groan from everyone" -- among them Rice; her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley; economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey; counselor Matalin; Cheney's chief of staff, Libby; and the vice president's wife.

Cheney made no sound. "I remember turning my head and looking at the vice president, and his expression never changed," said the witness, reading from a notebook of observations written that day. Cheney closed his eyes against the image for one long, slow blink.

Three people who were present, not all of them admirers, said they saw no sign then or later of the profound psychological transformation that has often been imputed to Cheney. What they saw, they said, was extraordinary self-containment and a rapid shift of focus to the machinery of power. While others assessed casualties and the work of "first responders," Cheney began planning for a conflict that would call upon lawyers as often as soldiers and spies.

Furthermore, already that morning, Cheney was consulting his lawyer to arrange extraordinary presidential powers in response to the attacks:

In expanding presidential power, Cheney's foremost agent was David S. Addington, his formidable general counsel and legal adviser of many years. On the morning of Sept. 11, Addington was evacuated from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House and began to make his way toward his Virginia home on foot. As he neared the Arlington Memorial Bridge, someone in the White House reached him with a message: Turn around. The vice president needs you.

Down in the bunker, according to a colleague with firsthand knowledge, Cheney and Addington began contemplating the founding question of the legal revolution to come: What extraordinary powers will the president need for his response?

Before the day ended, Cheney's lawyer joined forces with Timothy E. Flanigan, the deputy White House counsel, linked by secure video from the Situation Room. Flanigan patched in John C. Yoo at the Justice Department's fourth-floor command center. White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales joined later.

Thus formed the core legal team that Cheney oversaw, directly and indirectly, after the terrorist attacks.

Does anyone else find Cheney's response to the attacks, described here, rather sinister and suspicious?

Larry Silverstein Was Already Thinking About Insurance Already On The Day of 9/11

It is well known that World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein has tried to claim the 9/11 attacks against New York constituted two separate events, thus entitling him to a double insurance payout. But a new entry in the Complete 9/11 Timeline reveals something less well known: Silverstein was already thinking about how to get this double payout on the evening of 9/11 itself:

September 12, 2001: WTC Leaseholder Already Wants to Claim Double Insurance for Attacks and Rebuild
Developer Larry Silverstein, who recently took over the lease of the World Trade Center (see July 24, 2001), later tells journalist Steven Brill that he’d been so sickened by the destruction on 9/11, and by the deaths of four of his employees in the WTC, that he did not focus on insurance or financial matters until “perhaps two weeks later.” But according to two people who call him this morning to offer their sympathy, Silverstein soon changes the subject: “He had talked to his lawyers… and he had a clear legal strategy mapped out. They were going to prove, Silverstein told one of the callers, that the way his insurance policies were written the two planes crashing into the two towers had been two different ‘occurrences,’ not part of the same event. That would give him more than $7 billion to rebuild, instead of the $3.55 billion that his insurance policy said was the maximum for one ‘occurrence.’ And rebuild was just what he was going to do, he vowed.” By mid-morning, he calls his architect David Childs, and instructs him to start sketching out a plan for a new building. He tells Childs to plan to build the exact same area of office space as has been destroyed. In fact, Silverstein’s lawyers claim the developer had been on the phone to them on the evening of 9/11, wondering “whether his insurance policies could be read in a way that would construe the attacks as two separate, insurable incidents rather than one.” [Brill, 2003, pp. 18-19 and 39-40; Real Deal, 1/2004] Yet Jerome Hauer, the former director of New York’s Office of Emergency Management, had gone to Silverstein’s office on 9/11, and later claims that Silverstein’s primary concern that day had been his employees, and whether they had gotten out of the WTC. “Larry was absolutely devastated,” he says. [Weiss, 2003, pp. 374] Following a lengthy legal dispute, Silverstein will eventually receive $4.55 billion in insurance payouts for the destruction of the WTC (see May 23, 2007). [New York Post, 5/24/2007]
Source: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a091201doubleinsurance&scale=0

Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the Secret Government

Check out the following two recently added entries from the Complete 9/11 Timeline. These indicate how, prior to 9/11, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were part of a "secret government." As author James Mann says: "Cheney and Rumsfeld were, in a sense, a part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States."

1981-1992: Cheney and Rumsfeld Practice Secret Continuity of Government Plan, Later Activated on 9/11
Throughout the 1980s, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are key players in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan administration. Presently, Cheney is working as a Republican congressman, while Rumsfeld is head of the pharmaceutical company G. D. Searle. At least once per year, they both leave their day jobs for periods of three or four days. They head to Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, DC, and along with 40 to 60 federal officials and one member of the Reagan Cabinet are taken to a remote location within the US, such as an underground bunker. While they are gone, none of their work colleagues, or even their wives, knows where they are. They are participating in detailed planning exercises for keeping government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. This highly secret "continuity of government" (COG) program is known as Project 908. The idea is that if the US were under a nuclear attack, three teams would be sent from Washington to separate locations around the US to prepare to take leadership of the country. If somehow one team was located and hit with a nuclear weapon, the second or third team could take its place. Each of the three teams includes representatives from the State Department, Defense Department, CIA, and various domestic-policy agencies. The program is run by a new government agency called the National Program Office. Based in the Washington area, it has a budget of hundreds of million dollars a year, which grows to $1 billion per year by the end of Reagan's first term in office. Within the National Security Council, the "action officer" involved in the COG program is Oliver North, who is a key figure in the mid-1980s Iran-Contra scandal. Reagan's Vice President George H. W. Bush also supervises some of the program's efforts. As well as Cheney and Rumsfeld, other known figures involved in the COG exercises include Kenneth Duberstein, who serves for a time as President Reagan's chief of staff, and future CIA Director James Woolsey. The program, though, is extraconstitutional, as it establishes a process for designating a new US president that is nowhere authorized in the US Constitution or federal law. After George H. W. Bush is elected president in 1988 and the effective end of the Soviet Union in 1989, the exercises continue. They will go on after Bill Clinton is elected president, but will then be based around the threat posed by terrorists, rather than the Soviet Union (see (1992-2000)). According to journalist James Mann, the participation of Rumsfeld and Cheney in these exercises demonstrates a broader truth about them: "Over three decades, from the Ford administration onward, even when they were out of the executive branch of government, they were never too far away; they stayed in touch with its defense, military, and intelligence officials and were regularly called upon by those officials. Cheney and Rumsfeld were, in a sense, a part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States." [Mann, 2004, pp. 138-145; Atlantic Monthly, 3/2004; Cockburn, 2007, pp. 85] The plan they rehearse for in the COG exercises will be activated, supposedly for the first time, in the hours during and after the 9/11 attacks (see (Between 9:45-9:55 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Washington Post, 3/1/2002] Mann subsequently comments, "The program is of particular interest today because it helps to explain the thinking and behavior of the second Bush Administration in the hours, days, and months after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001." [Atlantic Monthly, 3/2004]
Source: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a81cogexercises&scale=0

(1992-2000): Secret Continuity of Government Exercises Prepare for Terrorist Threat
During the 1980s, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were regular participants in top-secret exercises, designed to test a program called continuity of government (COG) that would keep the federal government functioning during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union (see 1981-1992). Despite the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the COG exercises continue into the 1990s, being budgeted still at over $200 million per year. Now, terrorists replace the Soviet Union as the imagined threat. The terrorism envisaged is almost always state-sponsored, with the imagined terrorists acting on behalf of a government. According to journalist James Mann, the COG exercises are abandoned fairly early in the Clinton era, as the scenario is considered farfetched and outdated. However another journalist, Andrew Cockburn, suggests they continue for longer. He adds that, while the "shadow government" created in the exercises had previously been drawn from across the political spectrum, now the players are almost exclusively Republican hawks. A former Pentagon official with direct knowledge of the program will later say, "It was one way for these people to stay in touch. They'd meet, do the exercise, but also sit around and castigate the Clinton administration in the most extreme way. You could say this was a secret government-in-waiting. The Clinton administration was extraordinarily inattentive, [they had] no idea what was going on." [Atlantic Monthly, 3/2004; Cockburn, 2007, pp. 88] The continuity of government plan will be activated, supposedly for the first time, in the hours during and after the 9/11 attacks (see (Between 9:45-9:55 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Washington Post, 3/1/2002]
Source: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a92cogcontinues&scale=0