Back to the Bunker 404
Oldsmobile writes "On Monday, June 19, about 4,000 government workers representing more than 50 federal agencies will say goodbye to their families and set off for dozens of classified emergency facilities stretching from the Maryland and Virginia suburbs to the foothills of the Alleghenies. They will take to the bunkers in an "evacuation" that sources describe as the largest "continuity of government" exercise ever conducted, a drill intended to prepare the U.S. government for an event even more catastrophic than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The vast secret operation has updated the duck-and-cover scenarios of the 1950s with state-of-the-art technology -- alerts and updates delivered by pager and PDA, wireless priority service, video teleconferencing, remote backups -- to ensure that "essential" government functions continue undisrupted in an emergency."
Credibility gap (Score:5, Interesting)
Men/Women Ratio? Dr. Strangelove wants to know (Score:3, Interesting)
Tinfoil hat time! (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, conspiracy theory over!
Re:Where are the bunkers to protect Citizens ? (Score:4, Interesting)
As we were instructed during my Navy boot camp: find a shielded spot, sit down, place your head between your knees, and kiss your 4ss goodbye...
Nobody should be surprised by this. I mean, surely I wasn't the only one that noticed that the Federal governments first response after 9/11 was to protect itself (i.e. Federal buildings, etc.)? State, County, and City governments were left to fend for themselves until the Fed had its ass covered; us mere citizens don't get squat, if you don't count the 'protection' we get from TSA airport screeners, the Patriot Act, and other catchy-titled programs.
Re:I can still see a need... (Score:1, Interesting)
I mean, I'm all for sensationalist propoganda and fear based war-mongering, but that's some pretty futuristic fture you've got there.
What a perfect opportunity (Score:3, Interesting)
All you'd need to happen with the execs were safely away is some cooked up "terrorist" attack, maybe a series of dirty bombs going off coupled with a financial crisis. Good excuse to roll the military out into the streets.
Nah, couldn't happen here, right? Just because something similar happened...well, several times in the past is no reason to think it could ever happen here.
Not a troll what actually happned (Score:4, Interesting)
Wed Aug 21, 7:45 PM ET
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism -- it was to be a simulated accident.
Officials at the Chantilly, Virginia-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure.
The agency is about 4 miles (6 kilometers) from the runways of Washington Dulles International Airport.
Agency chiefs came up with the scenario to test employees' ability to respond to a disaster, said spokesman Art Haubold. No actual plane was to be involved -- to simulate the damage from the crash, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building.
"It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility," Haubold said. "As soon as the real world ( news - Y! TV) events began, we canceled the exercise."
Terrorism was to play no role in the exercise, which had been planned for several months, he said.
Adding to the coincidence, American Airlines Flight 77 -- the Boeing 767 that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon ( news - web sites) -- took off from Dulles at 8:10 a.m. on Sept. 11, 50 minutes before the exercise was to begin. It struck the Pentagon around 9:40 a.m., killing 64 aboard the plane and 125 on the ground.
The National Reconnaissance Office operates many of the nation's spy satellites. It draws its personnel from the military and the CIA ( news - web sites).
After the Sept. 11 attacks, most of the 3,000 people who work at agency headquarters were sent home, save for some essential personnel, Haubold said.
An announcement for an upcoming homeland security conference in Chicago first noted the exercise.
In a promotion for speaker John Fulton, a CIA officer assigned as chief of NRO's strategic gaming division, the announcement says, "On the morning of September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his team
The conference is being run by the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute.
___
On the Net:
National Reconnaissance Office: http://www.nro.gov/ [nro.gov]
Central Intelligence Agency ( news - web sites): http://www.cia.gov/ [cia.gov]
National Law Enforcement and Security Institute: http://www.nlsi.net/ [nlsi.net] "
Although his link is from "prison planet" the original article is from AP.
Hey ... Wait a damn minute here... (Score:5, Interesting)
I might need a tin-foil hat here, but it just seems to convenient that they are having a 'practice run' like they were practicing before 9/11.
Re:Tinfoil hat time! (Score:4, Interesting)
Uhm... given that both major terrorist attacks... (Score:5, Interesting)
State-of-the-art (Score:1, Interesting)
(Interesting: the two capchas I've gotten so far posting to this thread have been "harbored" and "feared" - how do it know?)
Q: How many people, did you say? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:...never to be seen again (Score:2, Interesting)
You forgot to mention the part about actually storing nuclear waste there. It really would kill three birds with one stone.