Vince Houghton - Nuking the Moon - And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board

4. The proposed design was far too small, and making it bigger would cost far too much money. There wasn’t enough room for “essential staff support and housekeeping support.” Someone needs to get the general’s coffee. And the floor of this underground command facility isn’t going to mop itself.

So the Joint Chiefs didn’t like the DUCC, but the JCS is merely an advisory committee, there to give the president sound military options and guidance. They had no real power in this fight—and even if they did, the DUCC was supported by the president and other principals.

Thus the plan went forward, and in early 1964 the Department of Defense requested funds in fiscal year 1965 for further DUCC research from the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) as part of the U.S. Army’s military construction appropriations. It’s rare that I feel sorry for members of Congress, but the DUCC request really put HASC firmly between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, they had all of the head honchos in the government telling them they wanted money for the DUCC. On the other hand, they had learned that the JCS recommended against the project (this was Washington; nothing like that ever remains secret for long).

In the finest tradition of the U.S. Congress, HASC did exactly what you would expect in a situation like this: nothing. They punted, and created a special subcommittee to “study” the issue thoroughly.

The DoD was not deterred. For fiscal year 1966, the Defense Department requested $26.2 million for the DUCC, and this time Congress did, in fact, make a decision—they reduced it to $4 million, which would give the Pentagon at least a little money “to more fully develop plans and to again present the actual construction authorization request” for fiscal year 1967.

I’ll translate what this says to me: “Please don’t make us do this. Here, have some money. It’s not much, but it will keep you busy. Come back next year. Maybe then we will give you more.”

Yet there would be no “next year.” Secretary of Defense McNamara apparently saw the writing on the wall, and in March 1966 he ended the program. There isn’t much written on McNamara’s ultimate rationale for this decision. Anything I say here would be a guess—an educated guess, but a guess nonetheless. If I had to put money on it, I would say that several things probably led to SecDef’s termination of the DUCC project.

But one stands out among the others: Vietnam. The concept of the DUCC was envisioned during a time when nuclear war, and really nothing but nuclear war, was on everyone’s mind. In the decade leading up to the cancellation of the DUCC, we had the launch of Sputnik, the first ICBMs, the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and China’s development of an atomic bomb (to name just a few). But by the mid-1960s, the Vietnam War was sucking up more and more of the focus of policymakers, and more and more of the funding available from Congress.

So McNamara and the DoD were now spending their time worrying about the war they had, rather than the war that might never come.

AND THEN WHAT?

The Pentagon was fighting in Vietnam, but that didn’t mean they were completely ignoring the maintenance of continuity of government and nuclear command and control. They continued to invest in upgrading the survivability and communications for NEACP and Raven Rock.

How much? And what else did they do?

Check back with me in about fifty years. There is nothing more classified than the specifics of modern-day continuity of government and nuclear command and control. Of course there are bunkers around Washington, DC, and throughout the country. Of course there is a plan in place for getting the president and his top civilian and military leadership the hell out of Dodge when World War III begins. We just don’t know where they are, or what it is.

And that’s fortunate, because our lack of knowledge means these plans have never been necessary.

We do know, however, bits and pieces of the infrastructure. Nothing concrete. Nothing comprehensive. But we have hints of what’s been put in place, and how things might go down in a real nuclear crisis.

And it’s not good.

Ten years after the formal end of the Cold War, on a rather normal Tuesday morning in September, most everyone in New York and Washington was going about their lives the same way they had every other day that year. The president was down in Florida, visiting with some schoolchildren. The vice president was in the White House, and the secretary of defense and his staff were at the Pentagon. Colin Powell, the secretary of state, was in Peru, and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was also abroad, discussing economic policy in Japan.

When American Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and it quickly became apparent that America was under attack, it launched a security protocol for President Bush (and his potential successors)—the continuity-of-government plan.

It was a complete mess.

When Air Force One left Florida that morning, United Flight 93 (which later crashed in Pennsylvania) was still in the air. By that point, two aircraft had hit the towers in New York, and the Pentagon had already been hit as well. Because of spotty communications around the country, very few people, even at the highest levels of government, had a complete picture of what was happening in the country—on the ground or in the air.

We’ve talked a lot about communications—or lack thereof. As Air Force One was preparing to land at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana to refuel, Russian president Vladimir Putin was trying to get through. He was wondering why the United States had upped the readiness posture of its strategic forces (nuclear forces) to DEFCON (Defense Condition) 3. (It goes from 5 to 1. DEFCON 5 is peace. DEFCON 1 is nuclear war. Anytime you get closer to 1, it’s a big deal.) You’ll never guess what happened.

Okay, maybe you will—he couldn’t get through. For thirty really stressful minutes, the White House communications team tried to establish a secure link between Air Force One and the Kremlin, finally giving up. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who spoke fluent Russian, then got on the phone with the Russian president to agree on a cooperative stand-down.

Rice was down in the emergency White House bunker along with Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, who on most days had a fairly unassuming job. Not today. He was directing the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision to ground all aircraft in U.S. airspace.

Meanwhile, Bush was trying to get the pilots to return him to Washington, despite specific plans to avoid exactly that. Air Force One’s pilot was frustrated: “We had the president who didn’t want to follow our plans for a nuclear attack, which is hide him, keep him safe and allow continuity of government.” Against all advice to the contrary, Bush flew back to Washington later that day.

Okay, fine. If the president doesn’t want to do what he’s supposed to, then at least we can try and keep those down the line safe and out of harm’s way. Right?

Nope. Vice President Cheney refused to budge, and stayed at the White House (which, if you recall, was one of the likely targets for United Flight 93). The fourth person in the line of succession, Senate Pro Tem Robert Byrd of West Virginia, also refused to evacuate and instead went home, just minutes’ walk from the U.S. Capitol, another possible Flight 93 target. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (seventh in line) was at the Pentagon when it was attacked. He also decided to stay, sending his deputy Paul Wolfowitz to Raven Rock for safety.

According to reports, not one of the principals knew the plans in any detail, and four of the five top successors to the presidency declined to follow the continuity-of-government protocols.