John Barnes - Directive 51

Like any imaginable continuity-of-government policy, Directive 51 gives the NCCC the power to decide and do whatever is necessary without check or balance. Our only protection against the obvious potential for coup, corruption, suppression of all our liberties, deliberate aggressive war, concealment of high crimes, and other abuse up to and including the abolition of the Republic is the honor of the individual designated as the NCCC, the good faith of the surviving Federal officers, and the commitment of the American people to Constitutional government.

This book would have been much less fun to write without occasionally being able to run ideas past my small coterie of armchair strategists: John E. Johnston III, Trent Telenko, Tom Holsinger, John Ringo, Mike Robel, Kevin O’Donnell Jr., and Jack Greene. I would particularly like to thank Rick Willett for an extraordinarily thorough and accurate rescue of the text, and Michelle Kasper for wonderful patience in allowing him the time and space in which to do it. I also received much help from some other people who prefer, for a variety of good reasons that I must respect, not to be acknowledged by name.

John Barnesis the author of The Return with Buzz Aldrin.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barnes, John, 1957-

eISBN : 978-1-101-18629-9

1. United States—Officials and employees—Fiction. 2. Terrorism—Fiction. 3. Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction. 4. Regression (Civilization)—Fiction. 5. Political fiction. I. Title.

PS3552.A677D57 2010

813’.54—dc22

2009053981

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