With few exceptions, the media ignored what well could be the most startling revelation to have come
out of the Iran/Contra affair, namely that high officials of the US government were planning a possible
military/civilian coup. First among the exceptions was the Miami Herald, which on July 5, 1987, ran the
story to which Jack Brooks referred. The article, by Alfonzo Chardy, revealed Oliver North's
involvement in plans for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to take over federal, state and local
functions during an ill-defined national emergency.
The Constitution does not directly address the question of what should happen in the midst of a major
national catastrophe. But neither does it give the slightest support to notions of turning matters over to
non-elected civilian or military officials with plenary powers. The best guide is to be found in
Amendment Ten which states that the powers of the federal government are those delegated to it by the
states and the people. The states and the people have not delegated the power of martial law. Thus in a
true crisis (such as a nuclear attack) the answer seems quite plain: the country should be run as a loose
confederation of fifty states until a legitimate federal government could be re-established. In the
interim, the highest constitutional officials in the land would be the governors.
According to Chardy, the plan called for 'suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the
government over to the Federal Management Agency, emergency appointment of military commanders to
run state and local governments and declaration of martial law.' The proposal appears to have forgotten
that Congress, legislatures, and the judiciary even existed.
In a November 18, 1991 story, the New York Times elaborated:
"Acting outside the Constitution in the early 1980s, a secret federal agency established a line of
succession to the presidency to assure continued government in the event of a devastating nuclear attack,
current and former United States officials said today."
The program was called "Continuity of Government." In the words of a report by the Fund for
Constitutional Government, "succession or succession-by-designation would be implemented by
unknown and perhaps unelected persons who would pick three potential successor presidents in advance of
an emergency. These potential successors to the Oval Office may not be elected, and they are not
confirmed by Congress.
According to CNN, the list eventually grew to 17 names and included Howard Baker, Richard Helms,
Jeanne Kirkpatrick James Schlesinger, Richard Thornberg, Edwin Meese, Tip O'Neil, and Richard Cheney.
The plan was not even limited to a nuclear attack but included any "national security emergency" which
was defined as "Any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological or other
emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States."
This bizarre scheme was dismissed in many Washington quarters as further evidence of the loony quality
of the whole Iran/contra affair. One FEMA official called it a lot of crap while a representative for
Attorney General Meese described it as 'bullshit."
The problem is that there is a long history of compatibility between madness and totalitarian takeovers,
Adolph Hitler being a prime but far from lone example. Further, there is plenty of evidence in this case
that the planning was far more than simply an off-the-wall brainstorm. At least one report found that
the US Army had even gone so far as to draft a legal document providing justifications for martial law.
Nor was the planning limited to crises involving the total breakdown of society as in the aftermath of a
nuclear attack. Among the justifiable uses of martial law were "national opposition to a US military
invasion abroad" and widespread internal dissent.
At least one high government official took the plan seriously enough to vigorously oppose it. In a
August 1984 letter to NSC chair Robert McFarlane, Attorney General William French Smith wrote:
"I believe that the role assigned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the revised Executive
Order exceeds its proper function as a coordinating agency for emergency preparedness . . . This
department and others have repeatedly raised serious policy and legal objections to the creation of an
'emergency czar' role for FEMA."
FEMA was clearly out of control. Another memo, written in 1982 to then FEMA director Louis
Giuffrida and given only tightly restricted circulation even within the agency, made this astonishing
assertion:
"Over the long term, the peacetime action programs of FEMA and other departments and agencies have
the effect of making the conceivable need for military takeover less and less as time goes by. A fully
implemented civil defense program may not now be regarded as a substitute for martial law, nor could it
be so marketed, but if successful in its execution it could have that effect."
The memo essentially proposed that the American people would rather be taken over by FEMA than by
the military. When those are the options on the table, you know you're in trouble.
The head of FEMA until 1985, Giuffrida also once wrote a paper on the Legal Aspects of Managing
Disorders. Here is some of what he said:
"No constitution, no statute or ordinance can authorize Martial Rule. [It commences] upon a
determination (not a declaration) by the senior military commander that the civil government must be
replaced because it is no longer functioning anyway . . . The significance of Martial Rule in civil disorders
is that it shifts control from civilians and to the military completely and without the necessity of a
declaration, proclamation or other form of public manifestation . . . As stated above, Martial Rule is
limited only by the principle of necessary force."
Those words come from a time when Giuffrida was the head of then-Governor Reagan's California
Specialized Training Institute, a National Guard school. It was not, for Giuffrida, a new thought. In
1970 he had written a paper for the Army War College in which he called for martial law in case of a
national uprising by black militants. Among his ideas were "assembly centers or relocation camps" for at
least 21 million "American Negroes."
During 1968 and 1972, Reagan ran a series of war games in California called Cable Splicer, which
involved the Guard, state and local police, and the US Sixth Army. Details of this operation were
reported in 1975 in a story by Ron Ridenour of the New Times, an Arizona alternative paper, and later
exhumed by Dave Lindorff in the Village Voice.
Cable Splicer, it turned out, was a training exercise for martial law. The man in charge was none other
than Edwin Meese, then Reagan's executive secretary. At one point, Meese told the Cable Splicer
combatants:
"This is an operation, this is an exercise, this is an objective which is going forward because in the long run
. . . it is the only way that will be able to prevail [against anti-war protests.]"
Addressing the kickoff of Cable Splicer, Governor Reagan told some 500 military and police officers:
"You know, there are people in the state who, if they could see this gathering right now and my presence
here, would decide their worst fears and convictions had been realized -- I was planning a military
takeover."
The Reaganites were not, however, the only ones with such thoughts. Consider this from a NSC directive
written by Frank Carlucci in 1981:
"Normally a state of martial law will be proclaimed by the President. However, in the absence of such
action by the President, a senior military commander may impose martial law in an area of his command
where there had been a complete breakdown in the exercise of government functions by local civilian
authorities."
And the wet dreams and discernible tumescence continue
with - given the "pedigrees" of most of those in the
top positions - what can accurately be described as the
Revenge of Iran/Contra Administration.
