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831Il faut mesurer l’intensité de certaines réflexions aux USA, des réflexions qui ne sont rien d’autre que des paniques ou des hystéries, — ou les deux — à peine policées. Un homme, qui appartient évidemment à la mouvance que l’on peut qualifier d’intégriste aux États-Unis (aussi bien les néo-conservateurs, intégristes de l’expansionnisme déstructurant et moralisant, que les chrétiens évangélistes), s’est “spécialisé” dans l’alerte apocalyptique de la destruction de la direction américaine. “Spécialité” comme une autre, dans ces temps de virtualisme. Norman Ornstein appartient à l’American Enterprise Institute (AEI), pépinière néo-conservatrice, de Perle à Ledeen, et il est donc officiellement un néo-conservateur.
« Call him the Cassandra of Capitol Hill », écrit Michelle Cottle, qui l’interroge pour Atlantic Monthly, pour le numéro de juin du magazine. Les textes de Ornstein et les réponses de Ornstein à Cottle restituent l’atmosphère de panique apocalyptique des années 1955-64, au temps du Docteur Folamour, quand les Américains construisaient des abris anti-atomiques, quand l’holocauste nucléaire était appréhendé pour le lendemain. Même état d’esprit, au point où l’on se demande évidemment si cette hystérie n’est pas fonction d’une psychologie générale (américaine, ou plutôt américaniste) plus que des menaces qui pèseraient sur l’Amérique.
Le “sérieux” de Ornstein, où l’hystérie des autres c’est selon, ou encore ce qu’on pourrait nommer “conformisme hystérique”, — tout cela est attesté par le fait que Ornstein ait réussi à se faire prendre au sérieux au point qu’une Commission a été mise en place, sous son inspiration zélée. Il s’agit de la Continuity of Government Commission (CGC), dont tous les détails de constitution et de fonctionnement se trouvent sur un site dont l’intitulé dit tout : http://www.continuityofgovernment.org/home.html. La CGC a pour mission de trouver les moyens de faire continuer à fonctionner le gouvernement en cas d’attaque de “décapitation” qui éliminerait une majorité du Congrès, et/ou la Cour Suprême, et/ou le gouvernement, sans parler du président lui-même. Ce que nous dit le site à propos de cette CGC :
« The Continuity of Government Commission was launched in the fall of 2002 in order to study and recommend reforms to ensure the continuity of our governmental institutions in the event of a catastrophic attack.
» The commission is an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Brookings Institution project headquartered at AEI. It is funded by the Carnegie, Hewlett, Packard, and MacArthur foundations. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford are the honorary co-chairs of the commission and Lloyd Cutler and Alan Simpson are the chairmen. The commission includes members who have served in government at the highest levels.
» The commission will focus its attention on preserving Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court. The central issue that the commission will address is how Congress could function if a large number of members were killed or incapacitated... »
La CGC est donc un organisme sérieux, très “politically correct”, ayant même réussi à embrigader le brave Carter. On peut lire effectivement, dans la même présentation, la référence que nous signalions plus haut à la période la plus folle et la plus hystérique de la Guerre froide : « The events of September 11 led to several ongoing efforts to preserve the continuity of Congress. There was a similar effort in the 1950s and 1960s to deal with these same issues. » Le texte de Michelle Cottle nous montre un Ornstein jonglant avec les hypothèses de destruction massive, arrivant à des situations si grotesques qu’elles en deviennent burlesques et surréalistes, surtout lorsqu’on relève les préoccupations de Ornstein par rapport aux hypothèses apocalyptiques qu’il développe. (Et si la Chambre des Représentants était réduite à 5 membres, les 430 autres ayant été liquidés par l’attaque, et que sur ces 5 on trouve les trois gauchistes de service, — Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, et Nancy Pelosi, — formant une majorité qui transformerait les USA en une république populaire marxiste ?)
Cet ensemble de personnages, de projets et de situations, dominé par l’intéressante personnalité de Ornstein, nous fait mesurer le degré d’hystérie méthodique auquel est arrivé Washington D.C. Il est difficile de voir là-dedans un montage ou un complot. On doit garder à l’esprit la réalité de cet état d’esprit, qui mesure l’évolution de la direction américaine depuis 9/11. Si l’on tient compte de ce contexte, on comprend que des entreprises d’auto-désinformation, conduites par des organismes spécialement mis en place pour cela (l’OSP de Rumsfeld, par exemple), parviennent à décrire des champs d’armes de destruction massive qui n’existent pas en Irak, comme argument d’une guerre contre ce pays. D’autres entreprises du même genre devraient donc suivre, à moins que la réalité s’avère trop difficile à transformer.
Ces vaticinations hallucinées, basées sur des hypothèses évidemment possibles en théorie mais absurdes en réalité, font mesurer la dépendance de l’état d’esprit de la direction américaine d’un système (le système américaniste) et non de la continuité d’une nation. On peut voir renforcée l’idée que l’attaque 9/11 a libéré un flot d’obsessions et de frustrations fondées sur l’inexpérience historique de l’Amérique et sur son absence d’identité transcendantale. Ce choc conduit à la confrontation de la dépendance absolue de la direction américaniste d’un système par essence vulnérable, face aux hypothèses factuelles qui ne sont contenues par aucun bon sens, ce bon sens que donnent justement l’expérience historique et la solidité identitaire.
Ci-dessous, on trouve un portrait-interview de Ornstein par Michelle Cottle, extrait du numéro de juin de The Atlantic Monthly, et un article de Ornstein paru dans le Wall Street Journal publié le 11 mars 2002 : « Preparing for the unthinkable : Bush’s “shadow government” is a start, — but only a start »
What would happen if a bomb wiped out the federal government? – By Michelle Cottle
Call him the Cassandra of Capitol Hill. For nearly two years Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has been running around Washington auguring doom and calling on lawmakers to ponder a horrific question: What would have happened if United Flight 93, brought down in the fields of southwestern Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, had departed Newark on time?
''We know that United 93 crashed in Pennsylvania only because it left forty minutes late,'' Ornstein says; otherwise its passengers would not have learned that their hijackers were on a suicide mission, and so would have had little incentive to risk storming the cockpit. Rather than roaring to earth near the town of Shanksville, Flight 93 would have continued south to Washington, where the terrorists, it is now believed, intended to guide their stolen missile into the dome of the Capitol. ''Hundreds of people could have been killed,'' Ornstein says. Hundreds of others could have been gravely injured. ''The Capitol dome is cast iron, so if the plane had hit it the way those planes hit the Trade Center, you would have had molten iron raining down on the heads of hundreds or thousands of people.'' In considering the potential carnage, Ornstein says, it occurred to him, ''Wait a minute—what does that mean for a quorum?'' The Constitution dictates that House members may be replaced only through special elections, which take months to organize. ''So at the worst possible time,'' he says, ''there's no Congress''—which means no one with the authority to declare war, appropriate money, or make laws. ''What you're doing is condoning for what would be a sizable period of time a form of martial law. And when people say, 'Well, what's so bad about that?' I say, 'Two words: John Ashcroft.'''
Thanks to the passengers of Flight 93 (and the inefficiency of the airlines), Congress escaped catastrophe on 9/11. But next time, Ornstein says (and he is certain there will be a next time), it may not be so lucky: ''As you think about the history of al Qaeda, they go after a target and if they don't get it, they'll come back in a couple of years.'' Ornstein's mission is to prod lawmakers into writing, in effect, a collective will that would prepare the federal government to handle mass casualties within its ranks.
Through endless phoning, lobbying, and writing on the subject, Ornstein has recruited enough supporters to create a blue-ribbon commission. Launched last fall, the commission is co-chaired by the former senator Alan Simpson and the former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler, and includes such political luminaries as the former congressmen Newt Gingrich and Thomas Foley. Operating under the deceptively soothing name Continuity of Government Commission, these political insiders and constitutional scholars spend their time debating macabre questions: Precisely how many House members must die to trigger a state of emergency? What constitutes a quorum if fifty senators survive a sarin attack but twenty of them are temporarily incapacitated? Worst case: who assumes the presidency if a deranged Islamist sneaks a nuclear suitcase bomb into an inaugural (Ornstein's doomsday scenario of choice), vaporizing not only the President and the Vice President but also most of the Cabinet, the Supreme Court, and Congress?
The commission's first report, released this spring, recommended ways to cope with the sudden decimation of Congress. A second report will tackle casualties in the executive and judiciary branches. Although differences among the commissioners abound, all agree that the current system threatens to leave the nation rudderless in its most vulnerable hour.
In reviewing existing law, the commission has outlined some of the more outrageous scenarios that could come to pass. For instance, the Constitution says that the House may conduct official business only when a quorum is present—currently at least 218 of the 435 members. Since the Civil War, however, the House parliamentarian has interpreted a quorum as a majority of members ''elected, sworn, and living,'' in Ornstein's words. Ornstein finds this interpretation not only constitutionally dubious but also, in practical terms, absurd. ''You could end up with, say, eight members being alive—five of them constituting a quorum,'' he says. Imagine a three-person quorum consisting of the ultraconservatives Tom DeLay, Ernest Istook, and Dan Burton—or of the leftists Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, and Nancy Pelosi. How legitimate would the country consider such a body? Even more frightening, Ornstein adds, this abbreviated quorum could elect a new speaker of the House, who would then jump up the line of succession for the Oval Office. As set by the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (which Ornstein calls ''an abomination''), the line now goes from the Vice President to the speaker of the House to the Senate president pro tempore (who until two years ago was the terrifyingly dotty Strom Thurmond) and then down through the Cabinet, according to the order in which the offices were created. ''You have a provision in this law,'' Ornstein says, ''which is just mind-boggling—that if you go down to the Cabinet level to fill the presidency, the speaker can at any subsequent point bump that person and assume the office.'' In other words, if a catastrophe made Secretary of State Colin Powell acting President, a quorum of Burton, Istook, and DeLay could elect DeLay the new speaker, and he could elbow President Powell right out of office. Not scared yet? Assuming that the Supreme Court had also been destroyed in the blast, President DeLay would then be in a position to fill all those vacancies.
In recommending a new strategy, most of the commissioners settled on a short, simple constitutional amendment granting Congress the authority to establish guidelines for selecting temporary members in an emergency. (Making the amendment itself more detailed, Ornstein says, would increase the risk of ''unintended consequences.'') Congress could fashion whatever system it chose, but Ornstein—among others—favors having the nation's governors take the lead in selecting replacements. Following an attack each governor would determine whether a majority of his or her state's congressional delegation was ''dead, missing, or out of service.'' If so, the governor would sign a proclamation to that effect; if a majority of governors signed such proclamations, each governor would make temporary appointments. As for whom the individual governors would appoint, Ornstein favors a provision like the one added to Delaware's constitution during the Cold War, whereby each elected official, before being sworn in, compiles a short list of possible replacements. In an emergency governors would pick from these lists. ''So you still have gubernatorial discretion,'' Ornstein reasons, ''but you make sure it's somebody that basically fits within the guidelines set by the former incumbent.''
The commission just recently turned its attention to the issue of presidential succession, but Ornstein long ago began a dialogue with the White House about what he regards as a necessary overhaul. ''Just making sure one Cabinet schnook is kept away from the State of the Union is not adequate anymore,'' he says. ''And you've got all kinds of people in the line of succession who should not be. Look at this Cabinet—or look at the last Cabinet. Or any Cabinet where the President makes choices based on ethnic considerations or geographical considerations or ideological considerations.'' What's more, the Constitution stipulates that the line of succession should go from the Vice President ''to such other Officers—capital O—as Congress will designate,'' he says. '''Officer' means an executive-branch officer. And the Constitution makes it clear that a member of Congress''—such as the speaker of the House and the president pro tem of the Senate—''can't be an executive-branch officer.''
But despite the commission's labors, and Ornstein's relentless lobbying, Congress seems disinclined to take up the cause. In February of last year a House judiciary subcommittee held hearings on the subject. ''It was a perfectly good hearing,'' Ornstein told me. ''But it became clear to me during and afterward that Steve Chabot, who's the chairman of the subcommittee, really had no intention of doing more than holding a hearing ... And I think that was probably pretty much the direction he got from the speaker and the chairman of the committee.'' And although amendments dealing with congressional continuity have been introduced in both the House and the Senate, the amendments appear unlikely to move toward a vote anytime soon. ''For the life of me,'' Ornstein says, ''I can't understand how smart people in positions of authority and those who care about their own institutions can look at this and not say it is irresponsible for us not to take some steps to protect the country.'' The foot-dragging appears to have several causes. ''There is some resistance to the notion of a constitutional amendment,'' Ornstein says, ''although I have to tell you that a lot of that resistance comes from people who support amendments on abortion and flag-burning and the like.'' Other members cling tightly to the traditional House, a body composed entirely of elected members—distinguishing it from the Senate, to which governors may appoint replacements. Still others think in personal terms. ''They think of their governors replacing them and say, 'Well, I'm not going to let him replace me,''' Ornstein says. He can understand, for example, the unease of New York Democrats at the idea of having George Pataki replace them. ''But you know, what you have to say to these people is, 'You'll be dead. Consider the alternatives.'''
Therein lies perhaps the biggest problem. Unsurprisingly, most lawmakers are less than eager to contemplate their own violent demise. ''To the degree that they've been willing to grapple with the dangers,'' Ornstein says, ''their attitude is that what you have to prepare for is to make sure you can evacuate in the case of an emergency. They don't even think that the worst-case scenario is that they're all dead.'' Ornstein acknowledges that there's something a bit creepy about discussing the repercussions of mass slaughter in the chilly, bloodless terms of constitutional law, but he maintains that the issue is too important to ignore. ''Think of a couple with small children,'' he says. ''They go off together on some dangerous trip, without any resolution of custody issues. They basically say, 'Aw, everybody will sort it out—even though I've got a sister who will take it to court because she doesn't like my in-laws. It'll work out.' We would look at those people and say, 'How irresponsible can you get? That's really dumb.'''
Michelle Cottle is a senior editor of The New Republic.
[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit être lu avec la mention classique à l'esprit, — “Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.”.]
Bush’s “shadow government” is a start, — but only a start, – By Norman Ornstein
The overblown flap over whether President Bush notified congressional leaders that he had created a ''shadow'' government assembled in a secret location outside the capital distracted attention away from the real issue: how seriously the White House takes a terrorist threat on Washington. The news reports suggest that U.S. intelligence especially fears the ossibility that the remaining al Qaeda network might obtain a ''suitcase'' nuclear weapon that could destroy a wide swath of official Washington.
The shadow-government initiative is a prudent one. But if the Bush plan to send 100 or so senior civil servants outside the capital would provide some assurance of continuity in government in the event of a disaster, it is no panacea. The prospect of the country governed during its worst moment by a group of unelected bureaucrats, none officers of government under our Constitution, is an unsettling one.
The Bush move should be only the first step in a wholesale rethinking of issues of succession and the continuity of governance in an era of terrorism. Now that the president has acted, Congress needs to step up to the plate in two additional important areas: ensuring the continuity of Congress in the event of a catastrophic attack on Washington, and revamping the Presidential Succession Act to ensure the continuity of presidential leadership.
In both areas, we have critical lapses in our Constitution and laws. Start with Congress. If United flight 93 had left on time on Sept. 11 instead of 41 minutes late, its brave passengers might not have known they were headed for a suicide mission. The plane was headed for Washington, and might well have crashed into the Capitol at around the same time as another plane hit the Pentagon--just before 10 a.m., with a House chamber and the Capitol building itself filled with members and staff. A plane crash followed by jet fuel explosion might well have killed 200 or more members of Congress and sent hundreds more to burn units in hospitals. That would have meant no Congress for weeks or months — during a time when Congress authorized the use of force to respond to the attacks, appropriated vast sums of money for disaster relief and military buildup, beefed up aviation security, and took numerous other key steps during the crisis.
Why no Congress? The Constitution requires a quorum of half the members of each house of Congress to do official business. This requirement has been interpreted since the Civil War to mean half the living membership. Theoretically, if 430 members of the House were killed in an attack, three of the five remaining members could constitute a quorum and act — representing a tiny slice of the country, and making decisions up to and including a declaration of war. But if hundreds of members were alive but incapacitated, there would be no quorum, and no Congress.
The problem is a limited one in the Senate, where the Constitution allows states to make appointments when vacancies occur. All House vacancies have to be filled by election — and special elections to the House typically take anywhere between three and six months. But the current process, whether via appointment to the Senate or election to the House, does not contemplate widespread disability. In the age of terror, with anthrax or smallpox in the arsenal of attack, disability may be a greater danger than death.
What is needed is a narrowly targeted constitutional amendment allowing — when large numbers of members are killed, missing or disabled — for temporary appointments by governors or state legislatures to Congress to replenish the body until members are able to return to service, or until special elections can be held to fill seats vacated by deceased lawmakers.
During the Cold War, amendments with this intent passed the Senate several times, but were never taken up by the House. Rep. Brian Baird (D., Wash.) has introduced an amendment in this Congress. It needs debate and refinement, which should be well under way. But with the exception of one hearing, Congress has so far shown no great interest in pursuing the issue, preferring denial of the problem instead.
At the same time, Congress should reconsider presidential succession. The Constitution, supplemented by the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, sets a line of succession in place if the president is killed, from the vice president to the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, on through the cabinet in order of the creation of the posts (starting with the secretary of state).
We should go back to square one on the act itself. One question is whether it is appropriate for members of Congress to be in the line of succession for the head of the executive branch — including those from the opposite party of the president. A second is whether it is a good idea to include in the line the president pro tempore of the Senate, traditionally the most senior (and often oldest) member of the majority party. A third is whether the line should extend through the entire cabinet, potentially leaving the secretary of education or of veterans affairs to take over the reins of power during a monumental crisis.
***
The most urgent question now is how to expand the line of succession to include some figures from outside Washington. When the president delivers his State of the Union message, one member of his cabinet is always designated to be away from the House chamber at an undisclosed location--so that if the Capitol takes a direct hit, with the president, vice resident, speaker, president pro tem and the cabinet all in the House chamber, one figure in the line of succession will be alive.
But we must now contemplate the possibility of a surprise attack taking out all of Washington, leaving nobody in line for the presidency and a situation of chaos, with dozens perhaps jumping up to say ''I'm in charge here.'' The best option is to include governors in the line.
The Constitution requires those in line of succession to the presidency to be officers of the United States. Attorney Miller Baker has suggested allowing the president to deputize several governors as heads of their state militias, making them officers, and allowing him some say in the succession to his own office.
There may be other, and better ideas. But Congress needs to take the president's lead and act quickly to consider them, protecting our institutions, our democracy and all of us from the worst consequences of a worst case scenario that is now all too real.
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