The Doomsday Memo

The Outcoming Administration Prepares The Incoming For The Worst-Case Scenarios

(CBS)  Even as most of Washington prepares to greet the new president, there are people in that city who are hard at work drawing up plans for a worst-case scenario.

They are deeply aware of the chilling possibility that looms over the transition of power from President Bush to President Obama, reports CBS News correspondent Rita Braver.

"The most urgent threat that he'll have to deal with, and other presidents after him will have to deal with, is an attack on our homeland," Mr. Bush said in his news conference on Jan. 12.

That is why the administration has been preparing an unprecedented set of scenarios for a dark day that could come to the next White House.

"In the post-9/11 world, this isn't just good manners, good government; it's a national security responsibility," said outgoing White House chief of staff Josh Bolton.

So this past week, outgoing Bolton and his Obama counterpart Rahm Emanuel took part in something that has never happened before: a mock homeland security exercise for top incoming and outgoing officials.

The premise: In the wake of train and bus bombings in London and Madrid, how would the U.S. government deal with bomb attacks simultaneously targeting transportation and other major systems in numerous American cities?

"We need to train, exercise, and execute as a team," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "And we built the process based on a lot of some of the tough lessons learned over the last few years that now works."

But mock domestic attacks, such as one staged in Seattle last year to simulate how rescue workers would respond to a dirty nuclear bomb set off in an American city, are just part of the planning.

Memories of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa have led the National Security Counsel to create a memo suggesting options for dealing with future attacks on U.S. facilities abroad - just one of about a dozen scenarios dealing with possible overseas crises that could impact the United States.

"As far as I know, this is the first time that policy contingency papers have been created," NSC spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, adding that his boss, National Security Adviser Steven Hadley, came up with the idea.

"Steven Hadley was here for the transition from ... I believe it was Ford to Carter ... and they were left no paper. All the safes were left empty. The Clinton administration left the Bush administration a little bit of material. But obviously the world is a substantially different place in 2009," Johndroe told Braver.

Other crisis scenarios include a major conflict between India and Pakistan, disruption of energy supplies to the U.S., or a North Korean nuclear explosion, with options for how to respond to them.

"So what we have done is created a document that goes over several scenarios of what could happen if North Korea does X, and I won't get into many details, and I think you can understand why," Johndroe said.

"What we try and do is provide the incoming team with a little bit of the history of the subject, but also some options that they could choose from if they're faced with some immediate crisis," the NSC spokesman said. "They could use them, they could discard them, but we thought it could be useful that they could see what we have come up with."

The Bush White House has laid out another key scenario, too, one that many intelligence experts believe needs immediate attention from the new president's team: A cyber attack launched from overseas to disrupt critical computer systems.

Why is it so important for the new administration to be up to speed on Day One?

"Because we're electronically undressed, and everything we do is done on an electronic network. All the information we create is created electronically," said Joel Brenner, National Counterintelligence Executive, the government's top cyber security official.

Brenner said it is unlikely that anyone could disrupt top secret government computer systems the way terrorists did in a recent episode of the television show "24."

But Brenner believes that water and sewer systems, electricity grids, air and ground traffic control, and financial markets are all possible targets.

"If instead of attacking the Twin Towers, al Qaeda had taken down a major bank, the economic consequences would have been an order of magnitude ten times greater than the economic consequences of 9/11," Brenner said. "I don't say the personal physical damage but the economic damage of taking down a system would be enormous and would reverberate through the world financial system."

In what way?

"You couldn't clear transactions, you wouldn't know who owned what in that bank anymore, and the banks all have inter-related accounting systems," Brenner said.

All this comes after many in the Bush administration came to believe that the Clinton team didn't wave enough red flags about potential threats, Braver reports. But current White House Officials say they are not just trying to be sure no one points a finger at them.

"No, I think this is an effort to provide the incoming team as much information as we possibly can, just because the world in 2009 is so different from what we found in 2001," Johndroe said. "It is moving at lightning speed. And the incoming team is going to have a lot of 'incoming' as soon as they get to the White House on Jan 20."

[ausus-2009]

Matrix2003,

For PANIC do you mean (Preservation webservices Architecture for Newmedia and Interactive Collections)?

[matrixrx2003]

Lets not PANIC and get paranoid

[ausus-2009]

antoniof123,

I think there was plenty of blame to go around for Katrina. Yes, Nixon, Reagan, GHWB and GWB could have done something to upgrade the levees, but then so could Carter and Clinton.

As well, Louisiana had a Democrat Governor and Democrat Mayor at the time, what were they doing?

Louisiana had Democrat Governors from 1880 to 1980 and until Bobby Jindal had Republican Governors for only 12 of the past 100 years. Couldn''t any of them told the Congress and President that better levees were needed?

[antoniof123]

LBJ WAS TO BLAME for building an inadequate levee system in the first place.

Posted by repo_man_08 at 05:49 AM : Jan 19, 2009

All neocons are dumber than dirt. LBJ was President like 40 years ago and levees should be looked at each year so let me see who is to blame once again you neocons blame everyone but yourselves and guess what we Americans are sick and tired of that nonsense.

Stop blaming and find answers and solutions and maybe we will give you a slim chance otherwise remain in the wilderness for at least 2 generations.

[racam_us]

Bush and Cheney are still using their scare tactics. Pitiful old, morons that they are.

[dragon8me]

I don''t know how to say this without sounding a little crazy. I was watching Broken Arrow with John Trivolta last night and it popped into my head. Do you remember when the 6 nukes we''re flown from Minot AFB down to Louisiana? Well the media only reported finding 5. What happened to the other one? Some think Bush/Cheney were behind it so it could be used in a false flag incedent. A while back a B52 crashed in the Pacific near some small islands. Keep in mind some people expected Bush to declair martial law to stay in office. Anyway, I just had this feeling that if they we''re going to do it, tomorrow at the inauration would be the perfect scenario for it. I told you it would sound crazy. I know they prepared for a lot of things but this would be hard to stop if people in power we''re behind something like this.
I really don''t think anything will happen, especially now that Bush has lost all creditability, and there are conspiricy theories about this sort of thing, but anythings possable.

[wardoglrs]

The US government is prepping you all with Fear it works great especially when they have the arsenal to carry it out

[jsutaguy]

To the unbelievable idiot posting that is "very very wise", and "if we had practiced, maybe Katrina wouldn''''t have been such a disaster":

Dear moron. FEMA *WAS* specifically practicing and preparing for a Cat 4/5 hurricane hitting New Orleans BEFORE BUSH CANCELLED THE PROJECT AND PUT HIS TOADY BROWN IN CHARGE OF FEMA, you idiot.
The exercise was 75% complete when Bush/Chertoff/Brown cancelled it 2 years before Katrina hit.


If you are going to be part of the political discussion, you owe it to yourself to learn something about it before you post idiocy. Google makes finding information easier than ever in the history of mankind.

Bush/Cheney/Chertoff/Brown are the worst emergency response administration ever. Bar none. E.V.E.R.
this idiotic "memo" is simply a last minute lame attempt to distract from the fact that they''''ve gutted the nation''''s finances, military, and domestic security capabilities, being utterly ineffective while destroying the civil liberties of actual US citizens.

We have no border fence, but we *do* have no-warrant wiretaps and email surveillance allowed on US citizens. No FEMA funding for real emergency response, but FULL FUNDING for strip searches of 90 year old grandmothers trying to board planes. A one trillion dollar deficit, but Wall Street bankers getting 10 million dollar bonuses.

Idiot.

[histbuff2]

I can''t believe this site just censored the four letter abbreviation for Pakistan. I guess Pak* is a profane word now...

[histbuff2]

watt1944- I''''m sure if we carpet bomb the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan we could get Bin Laden. Of course there might be few civilian casualties. But it is easy to destroy when you don''''t have to worry about civilians. That maybe why it is hard to get the S O B .

Posted by jschmidt27

That is the most stupid statement I have seen all night. Lets say a single B-52 could lay a carpet of bombs 1 mile long by a few hundred feet wide. The Afgan-*** border is several hundred miles long. We currently have 84 B-52''s in service. So sending every bomber we have on one pass would lay a carpet 84 miles long by 200 feet wide. How many passes would it take to get Osama??????

[histbuff2]

Why are they concerned about Al Qaeda taking down a bank?

Posted by zmonster4

Unlike a few decades ago we now live in a financial system where everything is run by computers and paper copies are a best sitting in boxes and at worst do not exist. Were someone able to destroy both the working data and the backups for even one large bank the effects would be felt across the worldwide financial institutions lke ripples on a pond. Take down a few and the world would be in chaos. The good news is the terrorist would also be destroying their own financial networks and that is likely the only reason they haven''t tried it yet.

[jschmidt27]

watt1944- I''m sure if we carpet bomb the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan we could get Bin Laden. Of course there might be few civilian casualties. But it is easy to destroy when you don''t have to worry about civilians. That maybe why it is hard to get the S O B .

[ausus-2009]

junogoose,

If you know anything of the history leading up to Pearl Harbor, you will know that it was total incompetence over a number of years that led to the US being caught off guard. At the time of his death, FDR was in the process of selling out Eastern Europe to Stalin.

[ffoulkes-2009]

Posted by WyoDutch at 09:54 PM : Jan 18, 2009
____________
besides all that...why are you being a Bin Laden apologist? Do you admire the man? Want to grow up to be just like him?

[ffoulkes-2009]

Hmmm. Like this? On the 13th February 1945, 773 Avro Lancasters bombed Dresden. During the next two days the USAAF sent over 527 heavy bombers to follow up the RAF attack. Dresden was nearly totally destroyed. As a result of the firestorm it was afterwards impossible to count the number of victims. Recent research suggest that 35,000 were killed but some German sources have argued that it was over 100,000.


Posted by WyoDutch at 09:54 PM : Jan 18, 2009
______________
Not all died. They were sent into a difficult situation that had a chance of dying in, but also the chance to live. Suicide is more like the damned kamakazi''s.

[ffoulkes-2009]

Simpletons will over-simplify.

Posted by junogoose at 09:54 PM : Jan 18, 2009
_____________
...kinda like you just did with that post...

[wyodutch]

"All I will say is that to order a man, woman or child (in Bin Laden''''s case all of the above) to kill themselves purposefully in order to purposefully kill as many CIVILIANS as possible is a cowardly act."

Hmmm. Like this? On the 13th February 1945, 773 Avro Lancasters bombed Dresden. During the next two days the USAAF sent over 527 heavy bombers to follow up the RAF attack. Dresden was nearly totally destroyed. As a result of the firestorm it was afterwards impossible to count the number of victims. Recent research suggest that 35,000 were killed but some German sources have argued that it was over 100,000.

[junogoose]

FDR had been president eight years when Pearl Harbor was attacked on his watch. GWB was president only eight months before 9/11. And you call FDR a hero.

Posted by ausus
---------------

Simpletons will over-simplify.

[ffoulkes-2009]

Are you saying then that George Bush was a coward to send some PFC to Iraq.. rather than himself or his kids? (You make no sense)

Posted by WyoDutch at 09:46 PM : Jan 18, 2009
_______________
You are so dense. I don''t want to waste time trying to argue points with another floydzeppd type.

All I will say is that to order a man, woman or child (in Bin Laden''s case all of the above) to kill themselves purposefully in order to purposefully kill as many CIVILIANS as possible is a cowardly act. You may disagree, but then you are welcome to strap some hardware on and run into a crowd yourself if you wish...I won''t order you to do so.

[wyodutch]

"When I see him fly a plane into a building, or strap on explosives and blow himself up instead of sending someone else...or when I see him stand with a gun to defend himself rather than hide in a cave...then maybe he won''''t be a coward."

Are you saying then that George Bush was a coward to send some PFC to Iraq.. rather than himself or his kids? (You make no sense)