Daschle irked Congress was kept in
dark Bush should have told leaders of
'shadow government,' he says
Zachary Coile, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Monday, March 4, 2002
Washington -- The Senate's leading
Democrat chastised the Bush
administration yesterday for not
informing Congress about a "shadow
government" that the White House set
up after Sept. 11 in case of a
catastrophic attack on the nation's
capital.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle,
D-S.D., raised questions after a
Washington Post report last week that
the administration has dispatched
about 100 senior civilian managers to
live and work at two fortified secret
locations on the East Coast. White
House officials were motivated by fear
that al Qaeda terrorists might try to
explode a nuclear bomb in
Washington.
Daschle said he supports the notion of
a contingency plan in case of an attack
using weapons of mass destruction, but
was dismayed that members of
Congress were not consulted.
"None of us knew about the secret
government," Daschle said on "Fox
News Sunday." "Not knowing things as
basic as that is a pretty profound
illustration of the chasm that exists
sometimes with information."
Daschle also proposed that any shadow
government operating outside of
Washington should include some
members of Congress and the federal
judiciary.
Republican lawmakers responded to
Daschle's charge by saying the White
House was being prudent by not
disclosing much information about the
classified effort, known officially as the
"Continuity of Operations Plan."
Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott,
R-Miss., said he believes the
administration had offered to brief key
members of the Congress and that the
Senate's sergeant-at-arms was aware of
the secret government.
"This is an extra precaution," Lott said
on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I don't
think there's a lot of cost involved. And
the Congress, frankly, should do the
same thing. We shouldn't expect the
administration to do it for us."
Lott noted that one of the two sites -- a
government bunker in the Blue Ridge
Mountains of Virginia, 75 miles west of
Washington -- was where congressional
leaders were taken in the hours after
the Sept. 11 attacks.
The plan was developed by President
Dwight Eisenhower's administration as
a way to keep a skeletal government
operating even after a nuclear attack.
The plan had never been put into
action until the White House deployed
it just hours after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Since then, 75 to 150 civilian officials
have been on "bunker duty," living and
working underground 24 hours a day
for shifts as long as 90 days.
Daschle and other Democrats said
yesterday that the administration must
provide more details about its war
plans if it wants Congress to approve
Bush's request for $379 billion in
defense spending in 2003, a $48
billion increase over this year's budget.
"We have shown that we can stick with
this president when we think he's
doing the right thing," California
Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, a
member of the Senate Foreign
Relations committee, said on CNN's
"Late Edition." "We ought to know
where we're going next. Because if
we're surprised about it, how can we
really be as strongly united behind our
president as we should be?"
With the Senate scheduled to take up
Bush's energy plan this week, Daschle
also said the administration's proposal
to open the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge to oil exploration appears to be
dead.
Last year, the Republican-led House of
Representatives passed an energy bill
that would allow for oil drilling in the
1.5 million-acre sanctuary, but several
Senate Democrats have pledged to
stage a filibuster to protect the refuge.
Daschle said Republicans do not have
the 60 votes to break the filibuster.
Daschle said he is pushing for a
Democratic plan to boost the fuel
efficiency standards of cars and light
trucks, which he said would save the
equivalent of 15 times the amount of oil
that the refuge could produce. The
measure would require that the
average fuel economy of vehicles --
currently 27.5 miles per gallon for cars
and 20.7 miles per gallon for light
trucks -- be increased to 35 miles per
gallon by 2013.
Lott said the new fuel economy
standards would hurt families who
need bigger cars and could lead to an
increase in automobile fatalities as
more lightweight cars hit the road.
"This is once again . . . the nanny
government telling you what you've got
to drive," Lott said. "I guess there's
some people that think we ought to all
be driving Honda Civics. I don't."
Lott said the only way for the United
States to reduce its reliance on foreign
oil is to dramatically boost domestic
production of energy.
"I'm willing to try to do things on the
conservation side and on alternative
fuels -- which I really don't think would
work or will produce very much -- but I
also think you need to have the
production side," Lott said.
E-mail Zachary Coile at
zcoile@sfchronicle.com.
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