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Speaker 1: This classic episode is one for the ages. True story.

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Speaker 1: After we spent a number of years talking about all

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Speaker 1: the top secret government installations across the country, we decided

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Speaker 1: to get with an expert named Garrett Graff, who wrote

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Speaker 1: an amazing book about this and and you don't know.

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Speaker 1: I I gotta say this one sticks with me because

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Speaker 1: this guy definitely did his homework. Yeah. He also has

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Speaker 1: a doozy of a book title, which is the collection

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Speaker 1: of set homework called Raven Rock, the story of the U. S.

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Speaker 1: Government's secret plan to save itself while the rest of

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Speaker 1: us die. So let that kind of prime you for

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Speaker 1: what's to come. Enjoy from UFOs to psychic powers and

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Speaker 1: government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can

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Speaker 1: turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want

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Speaker 1: you to know. Welcome back to the show. My name

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Speaker 1: is Matt. Our compatriot Knell is still with us in

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Speaker 1: spirit and will be returning shortly. Uh they call me Ben,

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Speaker 1: you are you? And that makes this stuff they don't

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Speaker 1: want you to know. Matt. As we record this episode,

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Speaker 1: it is two and a half minutes to midnight. Um,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I think it's something like three

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Speaker 1: something like that, maybe Eastern Standard time, Matt, But it's

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Speaker 1: two and a half minutes to midnight. If we're not

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Speaker 1: talking about the time on your local wristwatch or your

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Speaker 1: smartphone or Greenwich mean or any of that. We're talking

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Speaker 1: about the time kept by the infamous Doomsday clock, and

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Speaker 1: two and a half minutes to midnight is a very

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Speaker 1: bad time. Indeed. Oh yeah, it may sound like some

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Speaker 1: kind of diabolical comic book Mad Scientists Invention the Doomsday Clock,

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Speaker 1: but it's very much a real thing, and it's uh,

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Speaker 1: it's designed to warn the public about how close we

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Speaker 1: are to destroying our planet, either with technology, with weapons

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Speaker 1: that we've created, or perhaps you know, by some biological means,

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Speaker 1: by some means that the Earth designed. Yeah, this, uh,

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Speaker 1: this metaphor is is meticulously maintained, and it's meant to

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Speaker 1: function as a reminder of the perils we must address

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Speaker 1: as a species if we are to survive on this planet.

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Speaker 1: Originally it started in nineteen seven, which would make two

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Speaker 1: thousand seventeen the fiftieth anniversary of the Doomsday Clock, and

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Speaker 1: for the last two years from twenty six and twenty fifteen,

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Speaker 1: the minute hand of the Doomsday clock state set at

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Speaker 1: three minutes before the hour, three minutes before midnight, the

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Speaker 1: closest it had been to midnight since the early night

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Speaker 1: teen eighties. This year it inch just a bit closer

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Speaker 1: to armageddon. And just some of the warnings that the

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Speaker 1: group gives that puts out this doomsday clock. They said,

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Speaker 1: the probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the

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Speaker 1: actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be

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Speaker 1: taken very soon. Wise, public officials should act immediately, guiding

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Speaker 1: humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise

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Speaker 1: citizens must step forward and lead the way. Scary stuff, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but hold on is not at the end of the episode.

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Speaker 1: This is just the beginning. Today's episode is not just

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Speaker 1: about the looming possibility of national or global catastrophe. It's

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Speaker 1: more about what happens afterwards. What happens if a biological, chemical,

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Speaker 1: or nuclear threat devastates your country. What happens if the

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Speaker 1: capital of your country is raised to the ground. Uh

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Speaker 1: in Here in the US, if Washington, d C. Is attacked,

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Speaker 1: if it is reduced to ruin, where does the US

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Speaker 1: go next? And what does the United States become? So

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Speaker 1: that's where all of the important people are right, and this,

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Speaker 1: as it turns out, has been the subject of enormous

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Speaker 1: financial and strategic effort for decades. It's work conducted largely

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Speaker 1: in secret, and that secret is necessary to a degree

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Speaker 1: to ensure that the government continues despite human lass as

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Speaker 1: it might sustain. The specifics of this are are shrouded

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Speaker 1: in mystery. But one intrepid journalist too to call back

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Speaker 1: to the quotation used earlier, one why citizen uh has

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Speaker 1: stepped forward has pulled back, in part the curtain of

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Speaker 1: national security to reveal the elaborate, amazing, and at times

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Speaker 1: disturbing plans of the U. S. Government post disaster. And

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Speaker 1: today we are very fortunate to have this journalist with

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Speaker 1: us on our show. So everyone please welcome Mr Garrett Graff,

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Speaker 1: the author of Raven Rock, the story of the U. S.

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Speaker 1: Government's secret plan to save itself while the rest of

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Speaker 1: us die. I mean that is a title, Mr Graf.

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on the show with us. Oh,

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Speaker 1: it's my pleasure. I'm excited to be talking with you

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Speaker 1: guys today. Excellent, excellent. So first things first, I think

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Speaker 1: a lot of the audience members are asking what what

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Speaker 1: is Raven Rock? And could you tell us a little

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Speaker 1: bit about how you discovered it. So this book traces

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Speaker 1: the history of what is known as the Continuity of

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Speaker 1: Government Plans, the COG plans. These are the secret plans

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Speaker 1: that were developed in the wake of World War Two

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Speaker 1: and continue up to the present day that deal with

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Speaker 1: how the US government would survive a nuclear attack and

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Speaker 1: rebuild afterwards. Sort of everything from who would be in

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Speaker 1: charge in the minutes and hours after an attack, how

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Speaker 1: succession and military control would pass down through the ranks

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Speaker 1: of the government, onto where US government officials would be evacuated,

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Speaker 1: and what the role of various government agencies would be

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Speaker 1: in rebuilding the country after a devastating attack, whether it's nuclear, biological, chemical, terrorist,

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Speaker 1: or even a large scale natural disaster. Now, the title

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Speaker 1: of the book comes from Raven Rock, which is the

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Speaker 1: Pentagon Bunker, the backup Pentagon. This hollowed out mountain in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania,

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Speaker 1: just over the Maryland line from Camp David, the President's

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Speaker 1: weekend get away, and Raven Rock was built one of

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Speaker 1: more than a hundred bunkers and relocation facilities around the

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Speaker 1: capital during the Cold War that would have housed the

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Speaker 1: emergency wing of the US government and Raven Rock, one

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Speaker 1: of the three biggest of these facilities, along with Mount

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Speaker 1: Weather in Virginia, which is the Presidential Bunker where the

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Speaker 1: U S Cabinet would go and where congressional leaders and

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Speaker 1: the Supreme Court would go. And then No RAD the

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Speaker 1: Cheyenne Mountain Bunker in Colorado Springs that's home to the

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Speaker 1: North American Air Defense System UH and probably best known

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Speaker 1: to some of the listeners here from the Matthew Roderick

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Speaker 1: movie War Games. So these three bunkers, the sort of

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Speaker 1: crown jewels of the US government's doomsday enterprise are are

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Speaker 1: literally hollowed out mountains. I mean they have free standing

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Speaker 1: buildings inside of the massive reservoirs for drinking water. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, you can row a boat on the on

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Speaker 1: these reservoirs, and the police departments, fire departments, medical facilities,

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Speaker 1: you know, everything that you would need in order to

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Speaker 1: have uh. You know, found if people live for weeks

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Speaker 1: or even months at a time underground. The No RAD

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Speaker 1: Bunker even has a subway fast food franchise inside, so

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Speaker 1: even after Armageddon, you wouldn't be without your five dollar

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Speaker 1: foot long Thank goodness, we have our collective priorities in

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Speaker 1: order here. Um, this one thing that's really fascinating here

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Speaker 1: is uh that you mentioned that this this is an

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Speaker 1: example of more than a hundred bases. What what we're

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Speaker 1: what was the impetus to create these bases? And and

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Speaker 1: what were some of these strategies for ensued ensuring c

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Speaker 1: o G in the past. So there were two things

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Speaker 1: that really drove the invention of this. I mean, what

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Speaker 1: I like to write about, what I've written about for

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Speaker 1: much of my career, is how technology transforms institutions, and

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Speaker 1: and what this book really ends up being. And I

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Speaker 1: didn't understand this when I started writing this book, was

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Speaker 1: this is how nuclear weapons have transformed the presidency, how

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Speaker 1: one specific technology has transformed one specific institution. Because what

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Speaker 1: you had was, up until the nineteen forties, it didn't

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Speaker 1: particularly matter minute to minute where the President of the

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Speaker 1: United States or the Vice President of the United States was.

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Speaker 1: You know, as late as nineteen thirty five, FDR. When

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Speaker 1: he was driving back from the dedication of the Hoover Dam,

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Speaker 1: his motor cade got lost in the canyons outside Las Vegas,

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Speaker 1: and the President of the United States disappeared for the afternoon.

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Speaker 1: No one knew where he was, where he might pop

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Speaker 1: up next, or when he might return. And as late

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Speaker 1: as January nineteen, when Harry Truman took office, the vice

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Speaker 1: president had no Secret Service protection. I mean, as long

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Speaker 1: as you could get in touch with a vice president

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Speaker 1: in a couple of hours or you know, by the

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Speaker 1: next day, that was all that really mattered. But the

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Speaker 1: arrival of nuclear weapons began to compress government decision making

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Speaker 1: time and required the whereabouts of the president and the

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Speaker 1: communications capability capability around the president to be much more

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Speaker 1: robust than it ever had been before. Moreover, what you

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Speaker 1: began to have with nuclear weapons was the possibility that

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Speaker 1: entire cities could disappear in an instant, and so you

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Speaker 1: began to have to have contingency plans for what would

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Speaker 1: happen if something happened to the capitol. I mean, who

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Speaker 1: would be in charge if everyone in Washington was dead,

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Speaker 1: or if you had the warning to evacuate people, where

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Speaker 1: could they go? I mean it wasn't enough that you

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Speaker 1: could sort of run out of the White House and

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Speaker 1: run down the street and you'd be safe. I mean

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Speaker 1: you needed to be miles away. You needed to be

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Speaker 1: buried literally inside of a mountain. Or in later iterations

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Speaker 1: of these plant plans, they became too dangerous to be

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Speaker 1: underground at all, and we began to look at contingency

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Speaker 1: plans that would put the president or military decision makers

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Speaker 1: up into airborne command posts. I mean, this is the

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Speaker 1: system that still largely exists today, is this network of

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Speaker 1: presidential doomsday planes, the E four B night watch planes,

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Speaker 1: these converted seven forty seven's that stand alert and have

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Speaker 1: stood alert for more than thirty years now, ready to

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Speaker 1: evacuate the president wherever he is and and fly with

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Speaker 1: him for three days above the United States where he

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Speaker 1: could lead nuclear war from the sky. I mean, you

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Speaker 1: were joking at the beginning of the show that you know,

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Speaker 1: we're sitting here two and a half minutes to midnight. Well,

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Speaker 1: we're also sitting here at this exact minute as we're talking.

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Speaker 1: One of these planes is on the runway at off

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Speaker 1: at Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska. It's engines are turning,

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Speaker 1: and it's fully staffed, ready to evacuate in the event

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Speaker 1: of a threat on the president. Wow. And they only

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Speaker 1: need a very short runway to be called out right,

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Speaker 1: like fifty minutes something like that. Yeah, So that I

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Speaker 1: mean that plane right now as we're sitting here talking,

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Speaker 1: it could be launched and in the air in as

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Speaker 1: little as twelve to fifteen minutes, ready to rendezvous with

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Speaker 1: the President wherever he may be. Have have they ever

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Speaker 1: been used for any reason since this has been a program. Well,

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Speaker 1: so it's an interesting question because we have seen it

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Speaker 1: come close to being activated in a number of crises,

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Speaker 1: like the Cuban missile crisis, but it's really only been

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Speaker 1: used on September eleventh. And on September eleventh, you had

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Speaker 1: these plans activated across the country, and so you had

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Speaker 1: evacuation helicopters clatter into the west lawn of the capital

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Speaker 1: and evacuate congressional leaders to Mount Weather. Helicopters evacuated government

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Speaker 1: leaders from the Pentagon while it was still burning and

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Speaker 1: took them up to Raven Rock Um. These facilities had

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Speaker 1: been sitting idle for much of the nine nineties, and

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Speaker 1: then it was sort of all restarted in a hurry

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Speaker 1: in the wake of eleven, just quickly to stay on

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Speaker 1: the technology and how it's evolved. Uh, do you watch

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Speaker 1: House of Cards at all? Yes? Yep, Okay, so you've

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Speaker 1: been watching this season. There's one scene I don't want

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Speaker 1: to spoil too much, but let's say the the president

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Speaker 1: whoever that might be, uh, in the middle of the night,

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Speaker 1: goes down and gets what appears to be a black

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Speaker 1: briefcase that you know has some power associated with it. Um,

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Speaker 1: can you talk about what an unassumed black briefcase and

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Speaker 1: a sealed index card has to do with the nuclear

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Speaker 1: war in the United States? Yeah, so this is uh,

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Speaker 1: the nuclear football. I mean, these are this is the

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Speaker 1: black briefcase that has followed the President of the United

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Speaker 1: States around for more than fifty years now, carried by

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Speaker 1: a military aid. And we and we forget about this often,

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Speaker 1: but all of these majestic toys that we think of

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Speaker 1: as the modern imperial presidency, air Force one, marine one,

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Speaker 1: the armored motorcaids are effectively just tools, fancy toys to

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Speaker 1: ensure that the President of the United States, wherever he is,

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Speaker 1: is able to launch nuclear weapons. And as much as

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Speaker 1: we have in our popular culture and uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: popular mythology, the idea that there's a big red button

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Speaker 1: or red telephone somewhere that the president would use to

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Speaker 1: launch the nuclear war, the reality is much more pedestrian.

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Speaker 1: This military aid would walk up with this black briefcase. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It's filled not with some sort of super duper fancy computer.

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Speaker 1: It's filled with binders of papers as effectively a as

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Speaker 1: one military aid called it, a Denny's menu of nuclear war.

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Speaker 1: You could sort of point at different options for different

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Speaker 1: levels of strike, different targets, different countries. And that's the

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Speaker 1: type of nuclear war that you would order. And then

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Speaker 1: the President would get out his h what's known as

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Speaker 1: the biscuit, which is this sealed identification card that he

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Speaker 1: carries with him, this secret card with secret code words, uh,

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Speaker 1: sealed by the n s A, and crack it open

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Speaker 1: and it would have a list of code words that

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Speaker 1: he would read to the military national command authorities, the

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Speaker 1: nuclear launch authority be and it would identify him as

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Speaker 1: the President of the United States. And if that disappeared,

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Speaker 1: I mean, if the if the President was dead or incapacitated,

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Speaker 1: that power would pass right on down through the national

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Speaker 1: command authorities and the presidential line of succession to vice

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Speaker 1: president and on downward to ensure that there would always

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Speaker 1: be someone in charge of launching nuclear war. And and

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Speaker 1: in fact, during the Cold War, we kept in place

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Speaker 1: another airborne command post. I've already mentioned the presidential Airborne

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Speaker 1: Command Post. We've we kept in place another nuclear command

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Speaker 1: post known as Looking Glass. These planes that flew also

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Speaker 1: out of Omaha, Nebraska, three planes a day, twenty four

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Speaker 1: hours a day from the early nineteen sixties until the

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Speaker 1: early nineteen nineties. One of these planes was always up

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Speaker 1: in the air ready to command our nuclear forces with

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Speaker 1: a general or other senior military commander on board. WHOA,

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Speaker 1: and we know what. I really appreciate that you said, Uh,

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Speaker 1: we were You cited the crucial and dynamic role and

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Speaker 1: disruptive role the technology plays with institutions because we do

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Speaker 1: often see uh, technological progress outpace legislative processing of that progress. Um.

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Speaker 1: And it leads us to one of the most disturbing

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Speaker 1: pieces of the puzzle here, not necessarily the the secrecy involved,

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Speaker 1: although that is disturbing, and while it is disappointing, it's

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Speaker 1: it's understandable not to have a antagonistic foreign power, no

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Speaker 1: the game plan, But one of the more disturbing things

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Speaker 1: seems to be this, how do we know whether these

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Speaker 1: plans would actually work? And and if we do, to

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Speaker 1: what degree do we have a degree of certitude here?

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Speaker 1: So it's a great Ston, and I think that the

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Speaker 1: answer is, uh, these plans, as detailed as they were

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Speaker 1: through the Cold War probably would have never worked, or

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Speaker 1: at least would have not worked in the way that

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Speaker 1: they were intended. And part of the reason for that

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Speaker 1: is basic human psychology. I mean, you have in any emergency,

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Speaker 1: you know, they carefully well written plans interacting with the

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Speaker 1: way that humans react to unfolding events. And part of

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Speaker 1: the challenge with these plans throughout the Cold War were

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Speaker 1: there were thousands of U. S. Government personnel who would

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Speaker 1: have been part of these doomsday scenarios doomsday plans during

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Speaker 1: the Cold War, I mean people from every department and

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Speaker 1: government and the military, you know, the cabinet, Congress, and

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Speaker 1: so on and so forth. But there was no contingency

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Speaker 1: for any of those staff or personnel's families, their spouses,

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Speaker 1: their children, their relatives, and so at key moments of

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Speaker 1: tension during the Cold War, you often had people struggle

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Speaker 1: with saying, you know, well, I'm not going to evacuate

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Speaker 1: if my family can't evacuate. Earl Warren, when he was

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Speaker 1: Chief Justice of the United States of the Supreme Court,

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Speaker 1: he he was handed one of these special evacuation passes,

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Speaker 1: the special emergency passes when he took over the Supreme Court,

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Speaker 1: and he looked at it, and he looked at the

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Speaker 1: guy from the Emergency Preparedness Office and he said, well,

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Speaker 1: I don't see a pass here for Mrs Warren. And

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Speaker 1: the planner said, well, you know, sir, you're one of

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Speaker 1: the most important people in the US government. And he said, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, I guess you'll have room in this case

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Speaker 1: for yet another important person in government, because I'm not

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Speaker 1: going to do this. And he handed back his pass

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Speaker 1: and never would have evacuated at it. And even as

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Speaker 1: late as the Obama administration, I mean even just in

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Speaker 1: the last couple of years. Um. I talked to an

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Speaker 1: official who was part of these plans, just within the

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Speaker 1: last couple of years, and he there was a designated

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Speaker 1: helicopter that would have dropped out of the Washington sky

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Speaker 1: and picked him up wherever he was and evacuated him

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Speaker 1: to one of these bunkers. And he said, you know,

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Speaker 1: I have two young daughters, and if they think that

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Speaker 1: if that helicopter lands on my daughter's soccer field on

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Speaker 1: a Saturday morning, that I'm just going to wave goodbye

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Speaker 1: to my family and get on it and disappear like

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Speaker 1: they're crazy. And that's that's a completely understandable and very

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Speaker 1: human impulse. You know. That's something that I think in

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Speaker 1: the in the in the modern mainstream public understanding, uh,

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Speaker 1: it seems to be responsible for a couple of conflicting emotions.

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Speaker 1: Of course, we can fully understand and any uh, let's

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Speaker 1: say a high level government official like a senator, right

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Speaker 1: or the Speaker of the House saying on a human level,

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Speaker 1: I will not go to a bunker to ensure my

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Speaker 1: life without also rescuing my children or my spouse. But

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Speaker 1: it also seems to lead to a slippery situation for

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Speaker 1: the public when they would say, well, why can these

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Speaker 1: officials take their families to a safe place while you know,

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Speaker 1: John Q Public and Jan Q Public and their two

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Speaker 1: point five kids are are stuck out in the cold

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Speaker 1: or out in the irradiated waste, or whatever the alarm

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Speaker 1: of situation would be. How has the how has the

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Speaker 1: government or how have these strategic plans approached the idea

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Speaker 1: of including official family members? Are they are they including

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Speaker 1: those family members or is it still simply the utility

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Speaker 1: are in function of a person on an individual basis? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and it's a great I mean philosophical question. I

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Speaker 1: mean it's a you know, it's a question about humanity.

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Speaker 1: It's a question about our you know, small d democratic

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Speaker 1: process in our government. Here. Um, you know that the

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Speaker 1: goal of these programs was never to create an elite

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Speaker 1: body who would get to survive nuclear war. It was

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Speaker 1: to ensure that the basic and most important functions of

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Speaker 1: government were preserved through the worst catastrophes imaginable. And so

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Speaker 1: what this was an entirely foreseeable challenge that has dogged

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Speaker 1: these emergency plans literally going back to the first large

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Speaker 1: scale government evacuation drill in nineteen fifty four, the Operation Alert.

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Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen fifty four, Dwight Eisenhower ran

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Speaker 1: the first large scale evacuation drill of the United States government,

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Speaker 1: and all of his cabinet secretaries retreated to Mount Weather

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Speaker 1: that bunker that I'm previously mentioned in Berryville, Virginia, and

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Speaker 1: all of their secretaries evacuated as well. And I found

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Speaker 1: this news story about how the wives of the cabinet

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Speaker 1: sat at home and played cards through the afternoon in

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Speaker 1: what was described as a very chilly atmosphere as they

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Speaker 1: realized that their husbands would be evacuating without them in

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Speaker 1: the event of a nuclear war. But this challenge, you know,

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Speaker 1: for reasons that we just discussed, you know that it

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Speaker 1: wasn't part of these plans to include families. And so

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Speaker 1: one of the only exceptions to that was during the

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Speaker 1: Congress built its own evacuation bunker at the Green Drier,

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Speaker 1: this luxury West this luxury resort in West Virginia that

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Speaker 1: they buried a massive bunker underneath and it would have

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Speaker 1: held the members of Congress and the staff UH to

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Speaker 1: keep Congress running. And then later when they realized that

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Speaker 1: members of Congress weren't going to evacuate without their families,

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Speaker 1: they did set up rooms adjacent to the bunker that

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Speaker 1: could be used to house families and relatives if they

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Speaker 1: were evacuated also. But you know, the truth of the

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Speaker 1: matter was that there was no room inside the bunker

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Speaker 1: doors for the families. So you you could evacuate with

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Speaker 1: your husband or wife if he was if he or

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Speaker 1: she was a senator or representative, but you would still

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Speaker 1: be living outside of the bunker rather than inside and

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Speaker 1: outside of a bunker unprotected but directly adjacent to it

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Speaker 1: is arguably UH even more dangerous place to be, especially

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Speaker 1: if that location is disclosed. Yes, I don't know whether

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Speaker 1: you're better off being uh evacuated uh and then being

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Speaker 1: close to the bunker, or being evacuated and or taking

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Speaker 1: your own chances elsewhere away from a bunker. Yes, this

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Speaker 1: is an important question. And I am so glad that

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Speaker 1: you mentioned uh the Greenbrier bunker, because there's a tail

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Speaker 1: involved in in the public discovery of this bunker, which

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Speaker 1: we will explore after a word from our sponsor. And

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Speaker 1: we have returned. There was a a little bit of

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Speaker 1: a teaser here for the the famous bunk at the Greenbrier,

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Speaker 1: Virginia Resort, and a few years ago, relatively recently actually,

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Speaker 1: most of the American public and probably most of the

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Speaker 1: international public learned of this through an article in the

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Speaker 1: Washington Post. This and you know, our show was still

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Speaker 1: extant at this time, and this this blew our minds

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Speaker 1: because you know, a lot of people may be tangentially

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Speaker 1: aware or maybe aware on some level that there must

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Speaker 1: be some kind of c O G plan, right, but

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Speaker 1: very few people ever knew a nuts and bolts example

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Speaker 1: or a real world example. And what we're leading up

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Speaker 1: to with this question is when when it was discovered,

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Speaker 1: right when when Greenbrier was discovered, it instantly lost in

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Speaker 1: annoy or misamount of strategic value, and it ties into

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Speaker 1: some of the I would argue necessary secrecy here and

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Speaker 1: now in the present day, we know most governments obsessively

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Speaker 1: prepare for the possibility of a national catastrophe, as as

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Speaker 1: you said, Mr graff It it could even be just

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Speaker 1: a large scale natural disaster. But now the public is

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Speaker 1: asking how much do we know or not know about

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Speaker 1: these specifics of these plans, and how much should we know?

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Speaker 1: I mean, let's go out on a limb and admit

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Speaker 1: that this is by a large finance, by taxpayer dollars.

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Speaker 1: Good point. Yeah, it's it's a tough question because there

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Speaker 1: are sort of several different layers to it. The first

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Speaker 1: is I, even as someone writing about this, agree that

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Speaker 1: there is a level of secrecy that you necessarily need

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Speaker 1: to provide for a set of these plans to to work.

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Speaker 1: I mean that what I would refer to as the

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Speaker 1: tactical secrecy as necessary. You know what the exact communications

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Speaker 1: and defensive capabilities of specific vehicles or facilities are, exactly

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Speaker 1: where someone would be evacuated to which facility. The secondary

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00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:28,800
Speaker 1: questions though, Uh, this's the larger, more strategic ones. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, how these policies would work, how these programs

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Speaker 1: would work, how they're funded. I think that there's much

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Speaker 1: less of a need for secrecy around there. But some

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Speaker 1: of this is also you know, I don't think that

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Speaker 1: the government really does know how much it's spending on

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Speaker 1: these programs because they are spread across so many different uh,

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Speaker 1: different programs, different classified budgets, different agencies. Uh. You know,

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Speaker 1: the best I could generally come up with is that

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Speaker 1: we're spending about two billion dollars a year on the

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Speaker 1: operation of these plans. I'm not talking about the the

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Speaker 1: construction of the facilities, or the construction of the planes

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Speaker 1: or anything like that, just really the maintenance and operation

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Speaker 1: of these facilities. I mean, they're they're almost all still

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Speaker 1: in existence today. Um. You know, actually right now, Raven

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Speaker 1: Rock that the title of the book, the Bunker in

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Speaker 1: Pennsylvania is getting a big communications upgrade done by Century Link, uh,

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Speaker 1: sort of right now in the summer of Similarly, though,

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Speaker 1: there's this larger question that we just don't really know

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Speaker 1: how these plans would work in an actuality on a

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Speaker 1: day to day basis and an hour by hour basis.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we don't really know who would be in charge,

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Speaker 1: uh in certain instances and entirely foreseeable instances. Also, which

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Speaker 1: I've think is the troubling part is they're there are

431
00:30:03,800 --> 00:30:07,600
Speaker 1: problems that we won't know until these plans are activated

432
00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:10,800
Speaker 1: for the first time. Uh you know, who actually shows up,

433
00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:16,000
Speaker 1: who actually will be evacuated, um without their families. But

434
00:30:16,120 --> 00:30:19,160
Speaker 1: there's also another set of problems with these plans that

435
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:23,240
Speaker 1: we do know could exist, and we haven't debated those,

436
00:30:23,280 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 1: we haven't discussed those, and I don't think that there's

437
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:29,400
Speaker 1: any real need for secrecy Let me give you a

438
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: couple of examples here. Uh, you know, just a couple

439
00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:38,880
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, we had the tragic shooting at the

440
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:45,400
Speaker 1: congressional softball game. Well, that raised again this issue of

441
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:51,040
Speaker 1: congresses continuity in Congress his own succession planning, which it

442
00:30:51,160 --> 00:30:56,240
Speaker 1: has largely ignored ever since nine eleven, that their Congress

443
00:30:56,280 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 1: still has no good mechanism to quickly replace its members

444
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:04,840
Speaker 1: it if large large numbers of members of the House

445
00:31:04,880 --> 00:31:09,400
Speaker 1: of Representatives, for instance, are killed or incapacitated, which means

446
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 1: that Congress would be left on the sidelines for months.

447
00:31:15,920 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 1: On the low end, I mean potentially you know, six, nine,

448
00:31:19,680 --> 00:31:23,240
Speaker 1: twelve months without an operating Congress in the event of

449
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:29,280
Speaker 1: an emergency. We also don't know uh some big questions

450
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:34,680
Speaker 1: and some big answers about the presidential succession um. There

451
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:39,120
Speaker 1: are problems that we are well aware of with the

452
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:45,600
Speaker 1: twenty five Amendment, which guides presidential succession um, including the

453
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 1: very active constitutional debate about whether the Speaker of the

454
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:53,640
Speaker 1: House or the President pro tem of the Senate can

455
00:31:53,760 --> 00:31:57,080
Speaker 1: legally become president of the United States. There's in fact,

456
00:31:57,120 --> 00:32:01,480
Speaker 1: a very good argument put forth by James Madison, the

457
00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:06,040
Speaker 1: man who actually wrote the Constitution UH, that says that

458
00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 1: members of the legislative branch can't participate in the executive branch.

459
00:32:11,080 --> 00:32:15,280
Speaker 1: And so there is an entirely foreseeable scenario where in

460
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:19,480
Speaker 1: some sort of emergency, both Paul Ryan and Rex Tillerson

461
00:32:20,080 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 1: argue over who gets to be president of the United States. Moreover,

462
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:30,000
Speaker 1: we don't really know, uh what what are the secret

463
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 1: plans that we don't know about? Uh? And and that's

464
00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:37,040
Speaker 1: where I think some of the biggest problems are UM.

465
00:32:37,080 --> 00:32:40,080
Speaker 1: Throughout the Cold War, and I explained some of these

466
00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:45,160
Speaker 1: at great length In the book, there are examples of

467
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:49,800
Speaker 1: secret plans that one administration or another has created that

468
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 1: would have deputized business leaders as sort of dictatorial czars

469
00:32:56,080 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 1: in the event of an emergency, I mean, seizing all

470
00:32:59,200 --> 00:33:02,160
Speaker 1: of the how zing in the country, all of the

471
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 1: all of the manufacturing in the country, and administering it

472
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:11,200
Speaker 1: and setting wages and setting prices. Um. We don't know

473
00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 1: whether those similar plans exist today. I mean, does Mark

474
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:19,360
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg have a piece of paper or Jeff emelt Ge

475
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:24,800
Speaker 1: that from the President saying you know, I'm I'm going

476
00:33:24,840 --> 00:33:28,240
Speaker 1: to be the czar of manufacturing in the event of

477
00:33:28,880 --> 00:33:33,480
Speaker 1: a major national emergency. We don't know whether there are

478
00:33:33,640 --> 00:33:39,240
Speaker 1: plans for private citizens to sweep into government roles as

479
00:33:39,320 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 1: there were during the during the Cold War. UM people

480
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:50,640
Speaker 1: like Dick Cheney or Donald Runsfeld actually participated in these

481
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 1: plans in the nineteen eighties under a program that was

482
00:33:54,440 --> 00:33:58,160
Speaker 1: then known as the Presidential Successor Support System the p

483
00:33:58,560 --> 00:34:02,120
Speaker 1: S three and and though they were private citizens, they

484
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:07,160
Speaker 1: would have been designated in advance as effectively White House

485
00:34:07,240 --> 00:34:11,280
Speaker 1: chiefs of staff, so that if a president was killed

486
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:14,960
Speaker 1: and evacuated and the successors were evacuated to one of

487
00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 1: these bunkers, you would find Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld

488
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:22,600
Speaker 1: or another former high ranking government official like that, waiting

489
00:34:22,640 --> 00:34:24,799
Speaker 1: in the bunker to tell you how to run the

490
00:34:24,880 --> 00:34:29,000
Speaker 1: US military um. And we don't know again whether sort

491
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 1: of similar plans exist today. And I think those are

492
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:37,920
Speaker 1: areas where we should be able to have a robust

493
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:43,280
Speaker 1: public debate in peacetime about what those plans could actually entail.

494
00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:47,400
Speaker 1: So when we're getting into the private sector here and

495
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 1: how they function alongside governmental plans. One of the really

496
00:34:54,000 --> 00:34:56,719
Speaker 1: fascinating things that I found in the book was this

497
00:34:57,040 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 1: thing called Project nine ought eight. Could you could you

498
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:03,799
Speaker 1: tell us about what that is and what that could

499
00:35:03,800 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: have been? So nine not eight was part of a

500
00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:15,680
Speaker 1: you know, decades long effort to try to figure out

501
00:35:15,680 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: a way to protect the civilian population of the United States.

502
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:26,040
Speaker 1: It got harder and harder as missiles multiplied and bombs

503
00:35:26,120 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 1: got stronger and faster, But the goal was it was

504
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:35,719
Speaker 1: really to evacuate the urban cities and to figure out

505
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 1: how the US civilian population could survive. And so through

506
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:44,600
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, this uh secret nine not eight project

507
00:35:45,239 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 1: saw FBI agents traverse you know, most of the country

508
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:56,239
Speaker 1: and figure out where civilian populations could be evacuated into

509
00:35:56,320 --> 00:36:00,560
Speaker 1: rural regions, and to map things like hotels and elementary

510
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:06,160
Speaker 1: schools and bowling alleys and food warehouses even in suburban

511
00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:09,600
Speaker 1: and rural parts of America, to figure out where urban

512
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:15,720
Speaker 1: residents could be successfully evacuated and housed. I live in Vermont,

513
00:36:15,800 --> 00:36:19,160
Speaker 1: and these plans include sort of these wacky ideas to

514
00:36:19,280 --> 00:36:24,040
Speaker 1: evacuate most of the population of Connecticut up into Vermont

515
00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:27,160
Speaker 1: and you know, house them in places like the Chapel

516
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:31,000
Speaker 1: at Middlebury College or the field House at Middlebury College.

517
00:36:31,680 --> 00:36:34,879
Speaker 1: And you know, they knew precisely how many people would

518
00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:38,040
Speaker 1: be housed in each of these facilities, and that we

519
00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:42,480
Speaker 1: spent millions of dollars mapping these and figuring out how

520
00:36:42,640 --> 00:36:49,160
Speaker 1: to pull pull together the resources for fallout shelters. Um

521
00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 1: Nibisco at one point manufactured something like a hundred and

522
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:56,880
Speaker 1: sixty million tons of something that was known as the

523
00:36:56,960 --> 00:37:00,880
Speaker 1: survival biscuit, this cracker that you would have been fed

524
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:04,600
Speaker 1: in fallout shelters during the Cold War. You would have

525
00:37:04,640 --> 00:37:08,200
Speaker 1: gotten six crackers a day, a hundred and twenty five

526
00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:11,880
Speaker 1: calories apiece, and that would have been your diet inside

527
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:14,360
Speaker 1: a fallout shelter for the two weeks that everyone was

528
00:37:14,400 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 1: expected to live inside, and if anyone is interested, you

529
00:37:18,080 --> 00:37:22,120
Speaker 1: can find people opening and eating those in the contemporary time.

530
00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:27,600
Speaker 1: It's really funny. They are all of these YouTube videos

531
00:37:27,640 --> 00:37:31,680
Speaker 1: of people. You can buy these tins of crackers uh

532
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 1: still on eBay and you know, military surplus stores and

533
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:38,480
Speaker 1: things like that, Army Navy stores, and you can buy them,

534
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 1: and there are these videos of people opening them and uh,

535
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:48,239
Speaker 1: and they don't appear to taste that good. Now, truth

536
00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:50,520
Speaker 1: be told, I don't think they ever were supposed to

537
00:37:50,520 --> 00:37:53,839
Speaker 1: taste that good, but certainly fifty years of aging has

538
00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:58,120
Speaker 1: not helped them very much like a fine wine. You know.

539
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:01,759
Speaker 1: I appreciate hearing that because that is one of the

540
00:38:02,160 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 1: questions one of our listeners had. They said to ask

541
00:38:06,480 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 1: Garrett Graff where we can get those nibiscos survival biscuits.

542
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:15,640
Speaker 1: So you heard it here, folks. Uh. The author himself says,

543
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:19,080
Speaker 1: the confirms that you can find it military surplus stores

544
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:24,839
Speaker 1: and at eBay. Uh. This this question about, you know,

545
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:31,480
Speaker 1: the evacuation for civilians, for non governmental officials, non high

546
00:38:31,560 --> 00:38:37,800
Speaker 1: ranking military members. Um. This is something that really hits

547
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:43,120
Speaker 1: on a Um, I guess it hits on a pivotal

548
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:48,000
Speaker 1: point in the conversation, which is that currently, uh, the

549
00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:55,040
Speaker 1: US population has an estimated one point for million people, right,

550
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:58,719
Speaker 1: and uh, one of the one of the I guess

551
00:38:58,760 --> 00:39:01,480
Speaker 1: thematically one of the reads i'nnoticing in a lot of

552
00:39:01,560 --> 00:39:05,080
Speaker 1: questions our audience members have sent us is they're asking

553
00:39:05,239 --> 00:39:10,680
Speaker 1: what happens to the common person? You know, to UM,

554
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:13,880
Speaker 1: to Jane and John Doe, do they and Matt and

555
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:18,719
Speaker 1: Ben and Garrett. Uh, you know that it is a

556
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:22,239
Speaker 1: pertinent question. And earlier you had said, you know that

557
00:39:22,280 --> 00:39:28,640
Speaker 1: these these plans became increasingly difficult as technology evolved and

558
00:39:28,760 --> 00:39:33,200
Speaker 1: as the population increased. Do we know if there are

559
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:37,719
Speaker 1: large scale contingency plans? And if so, do we know

560
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:41,360
Speaker 1: which agencies would oversee those? Like FEMA, for instance. Yeah,

561
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:45,919
Speaker 1: So FEMA is the agency that runs all of these plans. Uh.

562
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:50,000
Speaker 1: And it has existed in many different forms since the

563
00:39:50,040 --> 00:39:56,240
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. Uh, but the modern evolution of it is FEMA.

564
00:39:56,520 --> 00:40:00,040
Speaker 1: And and in in a weird way that most we

565
00:40:00,120 --> 00:40:06,040
Speaker 1: don't understand, the fact that FEMA is the agency that

566
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:12,120
Speaker 1: oversees these plans is actually uh, what it is supposed

567
00:40:12,160 --> 00:40:15,440
Speaker 1: to do um. The fact that it also responds to

568
00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:23,440
Speaker 1: natural disasters hurricanes, tornadoes, floods is really an ancillary benefit

569
00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:26,359
Speaker 1: of the fact that it had developed all of this

570
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:31,640
Speaker 1: response capability to nuclear war and that you know, nuclear

571
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:35,440
Speaker 1: war thankfully doesn't come along all that frequently. So they

572
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:38,839
Speaker 1: started to deploy these resources and these tools and these

573
00:40:38,840 --> 00:40:44,080
Speaker 1: stockpiles to help alleviate the suffering in natural disasters. But

574
00:40:44,200 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 1: FEMA still runs these plans today. A large percentage of

575
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:51,920
Speaker 1: FEMA's budget is known as the as what the black budget,

576
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:58,040
Speaker 1: classified budget. You know, whole floors of FEMA's headquarters in

577
00:40:58,120 --> 00:41:02,879
Speaker 1: Washington are sealed off from other employees because they run

578
00:41:02,920 --> 00:41:07,440
Speaker 1: these continuity of government programs. And in many ways, the

579
00:41:07,640 --> 00:41:11,280
Speaker 1: plans today are a little bit different than they were

580
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:16,040
Speaker 1: during the Cold War because while the Cold War plans,

581
00:41:17,320 --> 00:41:21,640
Speaker 1: the expectation in many ways was some sort of large

582
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:27,919
Speaker 1: scale attack on Washington and the entire rest of the country,

583
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:31,600
Speaker 1: today the plans are much more focused around a devolution

584
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:36,520
Speaker 1: of power outside of Washington. I mean, the modern threats, uh,

585
00:41:36,560 --> 00:41:41,480
Speaker 1: you know, North Korea, Iran, rogue states, terrorist groups make

586
00:41:41,520 --> 00:41:45,480
Speaker 1: it much more likely that actually something would happen to Washington.

587
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: But then leave most of the rest of those three

588
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:54,759
Speaker 1: d and twenty four million people alive and untouched, but leaderless.

589
00:41:55,920 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 1: And so that's why today all of these facilities are

590
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:03,080
Speaker 1: are fully staffed twenty four hours a day. They don't

591
00:42:03,160 --> 00:42:07,920
Speaker 1: rely on evacuation and warning in the same way that

592
00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:10,880
Speaker 1: they did, uh. And it was really the combination of

593
00:42:10,960 --> 00:42:15,520
Speaker 1: both nine eleven and then in a slightly earlier attack

594
00:42:16,200 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 1: in the by a doomsday cult in Tokyo that released

595
00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:25,600
Speaker 1: sarin gas in the subways there that led the government

596
00:42:25,640 --> 00:42:28,040
Speaker 1: to realize, wow, you know, something could happen just to

597
00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:33,439
Speaker 1: the capital, just to our leadership, and the whole rest

598
00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:37,920
Speaker 1: of the country would still be still be around, untouched

599
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:41,560
Speaker 1: and needing leaders And so that part of what many

600
00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:45,719
Speaker 1: people don't understand about the presidency today also is that

601
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:49,239
Speaker 1: the president isn't just the person that we elect on

602
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:53,400
Speaker 1: the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The

603
00:42:53,480 --> 00:42:59,280
Speaker 1: presidency actually encompasses several hundred people, and so you have

604
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:03,160
Speaker 1: the people in that that direct line of succession, the

605
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:06,200
Speaker 1: Vice President, the Speaker of the House, the President pro Tempo,

606
00:43:06,200 --> 00:43:08,799
Speaker 1: the Senate, and then all down through the cabinet. But

607
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:13,360
Speaker 1: then also each of those Cabinet secretaries has their own

608
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:18,399
Speaker 1: line of succession. Uh, you know, twenty people long, and

609
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 1: some of those people are by design outside of Washington,

610
00:43:23,280 --> 00:43:26,399
Speaker 1: d C. So that in the event that something did

611
00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:28,960
Speaker 1: happen to the capital, you would still be able to

612
00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:32,759
Speaker 1: have people step into those cabinet roles, but it would

613
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:35,840
Speaker 1: be sort of an odd assortment of people like the

614
00:43:35,960 --> 00:43:39,720
Speaker 1: U N Ambassador, the U. S Attorney for the Northern

615
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:44,000
Speaker 1: District of Illinois, the top federal prosecutor in Chicago, and

616
00:43:44,239 --> 00:43:49,399
Speaker 1: people like the manager of the Department of Energies Savannah

617
00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:54,400
Speaker 1: River Operations Center outside of Savannah, who would suddenly announce

618
00:43:54,440 --> 00:44:00,320
Speaker 1: themselves as the leaders of the United States. Oh man,

619
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:04,560
Speaker 1: this is heavy stuff, you guys, And I feel like

620
00:44:04,560 --> 00:44:06,759
Speaker 1: we're gonna we need to take another quick break and

621
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:08,400
Speaker 1: hear a word from our sponsor, and they get right

622
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:23,400
Speaker 1: back into it, and we have returned, assuming that civilization

623
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:29,160
Speaker 1: has not fallen while we're on an add break. One

624
00:44:29,200 --> 00:44:33,040
Speaker 1: thing that's one thing that's fascinating here about this discussion

625
00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:35,680
Speaker 1: is if we if we do a little bit of

626
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:42,759
Speaker 1: a thought exercise and we imagine a nation um devolving,

627
00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:48,319
Speaker 1: as you said, Mr Graff, in this devolution into um

628
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: align US secession for leadership right a line of succession

629
00:44:51,640 --> 00:44:59,120
Speaker 1: for leadership. Then there's there's this amazing question, would someone who,

630
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:02,920
Speaker 1: let say, lives on the other side of the country

631
00:45:03,080 --> 00:45:10,720
Speaker 1: or lives in the Midwest, would they acknowledge the rise

632
00:45:10,800 --> 00:45:15,640
Speaker 1: of a Savannah based organization of people who survived or

633
00:45:15,680 --> 00:45:19,160
Speaker 1: officials or government that survived the catastrophe saying this is

634
00:45:19,200 --> 00:45:23,120
Speaker 1: now the leadership of the US, because it seems like

635
00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:25,399
Speaker 1: one of the big things people would have to uh

636
00:45:25,560 --> 00:45:31,319
Speaker 1: worry about organizationally would be the acceptance of authority. And

637
00:45:31,360 --> 00:45:34,839
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if there are, if there are any plans

638
00:45:35,480 --> 00:45:37,920
Speaker 1: to do that, because if it's already, I mean, this

639
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:41,880
Speaker 1: is a country that does have a large amount of

640
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:45,120
Speaker 1: um I guess self governments or autonomy and it's in

641
00:45:45,160 --> 00:45:48,080
Speaker 1: its DNA, and this is a country that has a

642
00:45:48,200 --> 00:45:54,320
Speaker 1: large amount of gun ownership and tension already before bomb drops.

643
00:45:55,000 --> 00:45:58,319
Speaker 1: What what if any plans uh do we know of

644
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:02,520
Speaker 1: involving uh? Are there any plans that we know of

645
00:46:02,560 --> 00:46:09,359
Speaker 1: that involved making the population a cohesive whole. So you've

646
00:46:09,400 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 1: caught right to the heart of one of the conundrums

647
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:17,920
Speaker 1: that the government really did struggle with, and the idea. Actually,

648
00:46:18,320 --> 00:46:21,319
Speaker 1: they came up with a couple of different phases of

649
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:27,239
Speaker 1: this as a response. The first was, in addition to

650
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:31,360
Speaker 1: all of these bunkers around the capitol itself, FEMA built

651
00:46:31,440 --> 00:46:35,360
Speaker 1: a series of regional bunkers around the country, eight of

652
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:41,279
Speaker 1: them UH in places like Maynard, Massachusetts and Denton, Texas

653
00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:47,359
Speaker 1: in UH. And these bunkers would have really overseen a

654
00:46:47,440 --> 00:46:51,280
Speaker 1: regional government, uh, you know, a half dozen states perhaps

655
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:56,520
Speaker 1: at a time. In the idea was that that the

656
00:46:56,680 --> 00:47:02,360
Speaker 1: federal government would devolve to these regional bunkers for and

657
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:09,480
Speaker 1: regional governments for some period of time while the national government,

658
00:47:09,800 --> 00:47:14,719
Speaker 1: the federal government itself was reconstituted and rebuilt, but that

659
00:47:14,920 --> 00:47:18,040
Speaker 1: for all intents and purposes, the major decisions would be

660
00:47:18,040 --> 00:47:22,200
Speaker 1: being made out of these regional bunkers with these regional governments.

661
00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:27,200
Speaker 1: The UK actually came up with a relatively similar system

662
00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:31,279
Speaker 1: where they built regional command regional government bunkers all over

663
00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:35,879
Speaker 1: the country. And the thinking again being that it would

664
00:47:35,880 --> 00:47:39,840
Speaker 1: take a little bit of time to restore the total

665
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:45,400
Speaker 1: power of the federal government, and so they wanted to

666
00:47:46,520 --> 00:47:49,160
Speaker 1: you know, have in place, at you know, effectively a

667
00:47:49,239 --> 00:47:54,200
Speaker 1: temporary government that could carry over until the national government

668
00:47:54,239 --> 00:47:57,200
Speaker 1: was ready to reassert control over the whole country. So

669
00:47:57,400 --> 00:48:00,960
Speaker 1: when a lot of these plans were original nading post

670
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:03,480
Speaker 1: World War Two, and then as we get into the

671
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 1: Cold War and it reaches its heights, the the known enemy,

672
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:12,200
Speaker 1: the known known enemy, I guess of the United States

673
00:48:13,080 --> 00:48:17,239
Speaker 1: were the Communists in all of the different ways that

674
00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 1: they existed. And there were some plans that were put

675
00:48:21,080 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 1: in place even before, like let's say, a nuke attack

676
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:29,960
Speaker 1: was confirmed. There were plans in place to round up

677
00:48:30,040 --> 00:48:34,520
Speaker 1: subversives on US soil, and it was called Plans C.

678
00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:36,319
Speaker 1: And I was won. I was wondering if you could

679
00:48:36,320 --> 00:48:39,080
Speaker 1: go over what that is and then perhaps what a

680
00:48:39,120 --> 00:48:43,560
Speaker 1: contemporary version of that looks like. Yeah, So we talked

681
00:48:43,600 --> 00:48:46,800
Speaker 1: a little bit about the president's nuclear football, the black

682
00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:50,439
Speaker 1: briefcase that follows him around. A lot of people don't

683
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 1: know that through much of the Cold War, the Attorney

684
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:59,320
Speaker 1: General was also followed around by basically the Attorney General's football,

685
00:49:00,200 --> 00:49:04,879
Speaker 1: the emergency briefcase that followed him wherever he went. That

686
00:49:04,960 --> 00:49:11,480
Speaker 1: would have contained plans to suspend habeas corpus, to the

687
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:17,480
Speaker 1: suspensive liberties, to declare martial law across the country, and

688
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:22,839
Speaker 1: to round up more than ten thousand suspected subversives and

689
00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:27,800
Speaker 1: foreign agents who lived across the United States that FBI

690
00:49:27,880 --> 00:49:31,640
Speaker 1: director jag Or Hoover kept tabs on, and he wanted

691
00:49:31,680 --> 00:49:35,360
Speaker 1: them swept up in the opening minutes, opening hours of

692
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:40,080
Speaker 1: an attack on the country. So these plans existed through

693
00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:45,040
Speaker 1: most of the Cold War. UH. The subversive list in

694
00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:49,160
Speaker 1: its sort of existing current form was sort of wound

695
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:54,759
Speaker 1: down UH in the post Watergate era. But we have

696
00:49:54,920 --> 00:49:59,719
Speaker 1: every reason to believe that some version of these draft plans, this,

697
00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:04,560
Speaker 1: these draft executive orders, these this draft legislation, even this

698
00:50:04,760 --> 00:50:11,759
Speaker 1: draft subversives list, probably still exists today. And that in

699
00:50:12,239 --> 00:50:16,960
Speaker 1: the in the remarks of in the event, in the

700
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:22,520
Speaker 1: wake of events like nine eleven, you saw officials admit

701
00:50:22,760 --> 00:50:26,279
Speaker 1: that effectively, if things had gotten worse, they would have

702
00:50:26,400 --> 00:50:30,280
Speaker 1: just declared martial law. That any sort of large scale

703
00:50:30,400 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 1: catastrophe would come with this suspension of civil liberties, the

704
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:40,600
Speaker 1: declaration of martial law, and you know, things like habeas

705
00:50:40,640 --> 00:50:46,279
Speaker 1: corpus withdrawn until something more like peacetime was able to

706
00:50:46,320 --> 00:50:51,640
Speaker 1: be re established. It's fascinating, and it's also there's a

707
00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:57,360
Speaker 1: one question that we keep seeing come up, which concerns

708
00:50:57,160 --> 00:51:02,160
Speaker 1: a private industry. We touched a little bit on the

709
00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:08,760
Speaker 1: ideas of czars right and the devolution of normally state

710
00:51:08,800 --> 00:51:12,680
Speaker 1: powers to private entities. But one thing that a lot

711
00:51:12,719 --> 00:51:15,880
Speaker 1: of people have been asking us about are the rise

712
00:51:16,160 --> 00:51:21,080
Speaker 1: of privately owned bunkers, you know, everything from everything, yeah,

713
00:51:21,120 --> 00:51:25,799
Speaker 1: everything from the small um, the small family bunker, to

714
00:51:26,080 --> 00:51:30,320
Speaker 1: the larger I think there are even some renovated former

715
00:51:30,440 --> 00:51:33,839
Speaker 1: missile silos that people have sold on real estate here,

716
00:51:34,120 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 1: And I guess one of the questions that we have

717
00:51:36,960 --> 00:51:40,879
Speaker 1: is are those on Are those a fat or are

718
00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:46,480
Speaker 1: they legitimately on par with some of the professional the

719
00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:52,839
Speaker 1: state's sponsored bunkers. M hm, so they're They're definitely at

720
00:51:52,960 --> 00:51:55,759
Speaker 1: some level of modern fat. I mean part of this

721
00:51:55,920 --> 00:52:02,960
Speaker 1: challenge of worrying about doomsday thing and things like the

722
00:52:03,000 --> 00:52:07,440
Speaker 1: modern versions of these threats like the electromagnetic pulse that

723
00:52:07,600 --> 00:52:11,200
Speaker 1: could wipe out electrical grids in the event of a

724
00:52:11,280 --> 00:52:16,319
Speaker 1: high altitude nuclear explosion. But at the same time, we've

725
00:52:16,360 --> 00:52:21,160
Speaker 1: seen this straight through all of the Cold War and

726
00:52:21,360 --> 00:52:25,799
Speaker 1: the history of continuity of government planning, where private citizens

727
00:52:26,400 --> 00:52:29,600
Speaker 1: you know, have built and maintained their own fallout shelters,

728
00:52:29,640 --> 00:52:33,520
Speaker 1: built and maintained their own bunkers, and a lot through

729
00:52:33,560 --> 00:52:36,840
Speaker 1: the Cold War, a lot of private companies actually had

730
00:52:36,880 --> 00:52:40,840
Speaker 1: their own bunkers. Companies like IBM or or A T

731
00:52:41,000 --> 00:52:45,120
Speaker 1: and T were very tightly integrated into these government plans

732
00:52:45,200 --> 00:52:49,480
Speaker 1: and so kept their own bunkers for their own executives. Um,

733
00:52:49,520 --> 00:52:53,520
Speaker 1: you know, Iron Mountain. Uh. The what we think of

734
00:52:53,560 --> 00:52:57,239
Speaker 1: now is sort of a record's retention business really grew

735
00:52:57,320 --> 00:53:01,960
Speaker 1: out of people in private companies beginning to want to

736
00:53:02,000 --> 00:53:07,960
Speaker 1: have their own nuclear bunkers underground. M M all right,

737
00:53:08,080 --> 00:53:11,200
Speaker 1: So you must have gotten some kind of special clearance

738
00:53:11,480 --> 00:53:14,800
Speaker 1: to learn about a lot of this stuff. I'm assuming,

739
00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:16,440
Speaker 1: and hey, you don't have to tell us about a Garrett.

740
00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:19,840
Speaker 1: It's cool. But you're wondering if if you learned anything

741
00:53:20,600 --> 00:53:23,960
Speaker 1: that you couldn't include in the book for national security reasons.

742
00:53:26,080 --> 00:53:29,239
Speaker 1: So I I didn't have any special clearance for this.

743
00:53:29,440 --> 00:53:33,520
Speaker 1: You know, this was all good old fashioned journalistic and

744
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:39,440
Speaker 1: UH archival digging, um, interviewing people who have been parts

745
00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:42,080
Speaker 1: of these plans over the years, that you know, cross

746
00:53:42,120 --> 00:53:48,560
Speaker 1: referencing old documents, be classified documents. But there were certainly

747
00:53:48,600 --> 00:53:52,440
Speaker 1: some details that I kept out of the book that

748
00:53:52,520 --> 00:53:55,319
Speaker 1: I did learn that fell into the category that I

749
00:53:55,360 --> 00:53:58,920
Speaker 1: discussed of what I described as tactical secrecy, I mean

750
00:53:59,040 --> 00:54:05,200
Speaker 1: the exact capabilities of specific facilities or specific vehicles that

751
00:54:05,320 --> 00:54:09,040
Speaker 1: might be used during these evacuations. But I think the

752
00:54:09,080 --> 00:54:13,600
Speaker 1: bigger problem is not the secrecy of these plans. It's

753
00:54:13,640 --> 00:54:17,480
Speaker 1: the lack of transparency of these plans. And so you know,

754
00:54:17,560 --> 00:54:21,160
Speaker 1: I certainly dug as much as I could, but I

755
00:54:21,160 --> 00:54:23,239
Speaker 1: think there's a lot more digging to do, and I

756
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:26,600
Speaker 1: hope we'll learn a lot more about these plans over

757
00:54:26,640 --> 00:54:30,919
Speaker 1: the months and years ahead. Fantastic, Mr Graph. We want

758
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:34,080
Speaker 1: to again thank you on behalf of our listeners so

759
00:54:34,160 --> 00:54:38,040
Speaker 1: much for your time and even more so for all

760
00:54:38,080 --> 00:54:43,240
Speaker 1: of the extensive journalistic effort. We we know that this took.

761
00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:47,480
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just imagining leafing through the f O.

762
00:54:47,600 --> 00:54:52,759
Speaker 1: I uh, the Freedom of Information Act request alone has

763
00:54:52,760 --> 00:54:56,680
Speaker 1: to be very time consuming. And as we end the

764
00:54:56,719 --> 00:55:01,080
Speaker 1: episode today, we would like to close on a final question, Matt.

765
00:55:01,080 --> 00:55:05,080
Speaker 1: I'll let you do the honors, all right, Garrett. I'm

766
00:55:05,120 --> 00:55:08,839
Speaker 1: just extrapolating here, but it feels like the ultimate continuity

767
00:55:08,840 --> 00:55:12,640
Speaker 1: of government in in what forty fifty, maybe a hundred years,

768
00:55:12,719 --> 00:55:16,480
Speaker 1: is going to be Mars. What say you, I think

769
00:55:16,600 --> 00:55:19,600
Speaker 1: you know. That's certainly what Elon musk Is is arguing,

770
00:55:19,640 --> 00:55:22,279
Speaker 1: is he pushes us more into the space world. So

771
00:55:22,960 --> 00:55:29,160
Speaker 1: I think that there is no shortage of opportunities outside

772
00:55:29,160 --> 00:55:32,000
Speaker 1: of this planet to help preserve the life on this planet.

773
00:55:33,040 --> 00:55:37,160
Speaker 1: That is a fantastic There is a poetic answer, Mr Graph,

774
00:55:37,200 --> 00:55:40,640
Speaker 1: and we are concluding our interview with Mr Garrett M. Graff,

775
00:55:40,760 --> 00:55:42,920
Speaker 1: the author of Raven Rock, the story of the U. S.

776
00:55:42,960 --> 00:55:45,880
Speaker 1: Government's secret plan to save itself while the rest of

777
00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:50,080
Speaker 1: us die. He has written other books including The Threat Matrix,

778
00:55:50,120 --> 00:55:54,360
Speaker 1: The FBI at War, angel Is Airborne, and The First Campaign,

779
00:55:54,719 --> 00:55:57,360
Speaker 1: Mr Graph. If people would like to learn more about

780
00:55:57,800 --> 00:56:01,120
Speaker 1: not just Raven Rock, but your work for all, where

781
00:56:01,120 --> 00:56:04,280
Speaker 1: can they go to find more information? Well, the books

782
00:56:04,320 --> 00:56:08,000
Speaker 1: are all available from Amazon or any of your great

783
00:56:08,200 --> 00:56:11,719
Speaker 1: independent local bookstores. Uh. And then you can always check

784
00:56:11,760 --> 00:56:15,480
Speaker 1: out my website at Garrett Graph dot com or my

785
00:56:15,560 --> 00:56:20,879
Speaker 1: Twitter Vermont g MG. Great. And that's the end of

786
00:56:20,880 --> 00:56:24,759
Speaker 1: this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions

787
00:56:25,000 --> 00:56:28,279
Speaker 1: about this episode, you can get into contact with us

788
00:56:28,360 --> 00:56:30,440
Speaker 1: in a number of different ways. One of the best

789
00:56:30,520 --> 00:56:32,319
Speaker 1: is to give us a call. Our number is one

790
00:56:32,480 --> 00:56:36,200
Speaker 1: eight three three st d w y t K. If

791
00:56:36,200 --> 00:56:38,000
Speaker 1: you don't want to do that, you can send us

792
00:56:38,000 --> 00:56:41,239
Speaker 1: a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i

793
00:56:41,360 --> 00:56:44,920
Speaker 1: heeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to

794
00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:47,759
Speaker 1: know is a production of I heart Radio. For more

795
00:56:47,800 --> 00:56:50,560
Speaker 1: podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,

796
00:56:50,640 --> 00:56:53,520
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.