Eisenhower feared attack, formed secret government

By Hope Yen
The Associated Press

	RON EDMONDS / AP Retired Gen. Andrew Goodpaster, staff secretary for President Eisenhower, stands next to a portrait of the former president last week at the Eisenhower Institute in Washington, D.C. "The president was planning for the unthinkable," Goodpaster said of Eisenhower's establishment of a group to help oversee the government in the event of a Soviet attack on the United States.
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Stanton knew his friend, President Eisenhower, was agonizing over how to respond to Sputnik and the terrorizing thought that permeated America: Had the Soviets gained a huge first-strike advantage in the nuclear-arms race?

But Stanton learned Eisenhower also was wrestling with how best to ensure the U.S. government could function if a Soviet attack wiped out many U.S. leaders.

Stanton, who had no experience or ambitions in government, was taken aback when the president asked if he would be willing to oversee a federal communications agency after such an attack.

"I was surprised and startled by the breadth of the assignment," said Stanton, who lives in Boston.

	Frank Stanton

Nervous about the awesome task of keeping the nation's telephone, radio and television systems operating after an attack, Stanton, now 96, said he nevertheless "agreed to do my chore."

Stanton was one of six private citizens recruited secretly and granted authority by Eisenhower to run major components of the government in an emergency. The plan was confirmed by recently publicized Eisenhower administration letters.

"The president was planning for the unthinkable," said retired Army Gen. Andrew Goodpaster, Eisenhower's staff secretary. "He wanted to bring in the wisdom and competence to reinforce whatever elements of the government survived and provide some assurance that our government could not be decapitated."

Presidents are granted vast powers under the Constitution to lead the nation in times of war or enemy attack.

Shadow government organized WASHINGTON — In the event of a devastating attack on the capital, a shadow government of 75 to 150 government officials is ready to take control under plans established by President Bush. The officials, drawn from every Cabinet department and some independent agencies, would work out of two fortified locations in mountainside bunkers outside Washington, D.C. Officials would rotate in and out and be barred from telling anybody where they are and why. Congress would gather at a hotel in the D.C. area and nearby military base. Within the Cabinet agencies, Bush set by executive order in December 2001 the lines of succession, generally designating an undersecretary or general counsel to take the helm should a secretary and the deputy be killed or incapacitated. A line of succession to the presidency is defined clearly, starting with the vice president. How to keep Congress functioning if a large number of members are killed is not so clear. The Constitution allows state governors to appoint new senators quickly but does not specify how to repopulate the House beyond holding special elections. A government commission created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to review succession procedures called for a constitutional amendment allowing for gubernatorial appointment of House members. The measure has stalled.

President Bush created a shadow government soon after the 2001 attacks, but those officials were in government when they were given the assignment. Eisenhower is believed to be the first president to go outside government to look for leaders in a crisis.

"Eisenhower went beyond the normal lines of succession, which I think was a reflection of the widespread paralyzing fear that swept the country in the 1950s," said Peter Kuznick, a history professor and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University.

Besides Stanton, appointees included George Baker, a Harvard Business School professor who was tapped to oversee transportation; Harold Boeschenstein, president of Owens-Corning Fiberglas, in charge of manufacturing and production; Aksel Nielsen, president of Title Guaranty, housing; J. Ed Warren, senior vice president of the First National City Bank of New York, energy; and Theodore Koop, vice president of CBS, to oversee an emergency censorship agency. Koop would have had 40 civilian staff members to monitor and control wartime information about the devastation.

Eisenhower also appointed two Cabinet secretaries and Federal Reserve Chairman William McChesney Martin to emergency posts for currency stabilization, food and labor.

"The people Eisenhower chose, while they were his friends, they were also the captains of industry of his day. People like Bill Gates today," said Bill Geerhart, editor of a Web site called Conelrad (www.conelrad.com), or Control of Electromagnetic Radiation. That was the name of the nation's first emergency-broadcasting system, established by President Truman.

The site posted the Eisenhower documents after obtaining them from the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kan.

Selections were based as much on the appointees' geographic location and personal relationships with Eisenhower as their expertise. Nielsen, for example, was Eisenhower's regular fishing buddy.

The presidential form letters dated March 6, 1958, provide for the appointees to take office immediately in the event of a national emergency. They were promised an undisclosed salary, but there were few specifics about their jobs.

The documents show the secret group met in July 1960 with the now-defunct Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization to discuss staffing. But work barely had started before the group was relieved of its duties by President Kennedy, who took office in 1961.

Subsequent administrations have made contingency plans for government continuity — often involving citizens outside government. For example, Kennedy's director of emergency planning, Frank Ellis, said in 1961 that the president had emergency appointees for transportation, agriculture and communications.

During the Reagan administration, then-Rep. Dick Cheney, R-Wyo., and Donald Rumsfeld, who was chief executive of the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle, were key players in a secret program to set aside the legal lines of succession and install a new president in a catastrophe, The Atlantic Monthly reported this month.

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