Directive 51

AFTERWORD

Presidential Directive 51 is real, but despite what you may read on the web, it is probably not anything to fear. The unclassified part of Directive 51, like its predecessors, specifies what we will do in case of “decapitation”—sudden destruction of the top echelons of the Federal government.

President Bush signed it into existence in 2007, replacing the Clinton Administration’s Directive 67 (1998), which replaced George H. W. Bush’s Directive 69 (1992) and Directive 37 (1990). The earliest continuity-of-government directive whose existence is public seems to be Reagan’s Directive 55 (1982). It is believed that the first continuity-of-government policy may have been issued as a classified Executive Order in 1947 or 1948 by President Truman.

To his credit, George W. Bush was the first president to make any substantial part of a continuity-of-government directive public. All continuity-of-government directives prior to Directive 51 remain entirely classified. Much—we citizens don’t know how much—of Directive 51 itself is classified, on grounds that an enemy who knew our national survival plans prior to an attack would be in a position to do much more harm.

By its nature, continuity-of-government planning violates the separation of powers, which, you probably learned in high school, is a cornerstone of Constitutional government. The Constitution gives Congress the power to determine the succession to the presidency, and puts the President or his subordinates in charge of carrying out the will of Congress.

But Congress cannot know which of the president’s officers would survive a decapitation attack, what resources would be available, or what the situation might be. Therefore Directive 51, like every succession directive or executive order before it, provides that in case of an unprecedented disaster, a specific Federal official will become a temporary dictator, with nearly unlimited power and a mission to restore Constitutional government as quickly as possible. The person on whom this terrible responsibility might fall is to be called the National Constitutional Continuity Coordinator, or NCCC. We do not have an NCCC as I write this; the office exists only if the worst has already happened, a practical precaution so that the NCCC cannot take power arbitrarily.

Directive 51 designates the person in charge of assuming power as NCCC after a disaster; at the moment I write this, it is to be the Chief of Staff of the Department of Homeland Security. In normal times, this is the person who ensures that DHS personnel are assigned to appropriate duties and coordinates things like high-level meetings and major long-term projects. The reason for designating the DHS Chief of Staff as the NCCC-in-waiting is that the job entails:1. a very high security clearance 2. extensive knowledge of security/military/police/intelligence operations in progress, and 3. no direct responsibilities during an attack.

Or in short, this is the person who knows the most while having the least to do; the best-informed person we can afford to send out of Washington just before the nuke goes off or the gas is released. In all probability, the NCCC-in-waiting will be the holder of some different office by the time you read this—presidents change and there are innumerable reasons for designating one office or person rather than another—but the general principle of the best-prepared least-essential person has been followed for at least a quarter century.

Like any imaginable continuity-of-government policy, Directive 51 gives the NCCC the power to decide and do whatever is necessary without check or balance. Our only protection against the obvious potential for coup, corruption, suppression of all our liberties, deliberate aggressive war, concealment of high crimes, and other abuse up to and including the abolition of the Republic is the honor of the individual designated as the NCCC, the good faith of the surviving Federal officers, and the commitment of the American people to Constitutional government.