All language subtitles for While.The.Rest.Of.Us.Die.S01E02.1080p.WEB.h264-BAE.ENG

♪♪

-The true story of 9/11

was a total, absolute collapse
of authority.

-I turn.
"Mr. Vice President, sir,

we got a bogey eight miles out,
low and fast,

inbound to the White House."

He goes, "Don,
do we have an asset

that can take a shot at him?

Do I have anything
over Washington, D.C.,

we can engage him with?"

The Secret Service
and I are going,

"Seven... six... five..."

He goes, "Don, I'll authorize
an over-the-horizon shot.

If you got a radar-guided
missile over Baltimore

and you can lock onto him,
shoot him."

As I sit in the secure facility
deep under the White House,

there are people outside
pushing civilians to the south

or clearing civilians
to the north,

and they're going to take
a body blow

right here in front of them.

-Everybody out.

♪♪

-For over 70 years, our leaders
have told us one thing

under the bright lights.

-The protection of the lives
and property of Americans

is the responsibility of all
public officials.

-I care, we're trying.

-And it is my first duty
as president

to protect the American people.

-We have it so well
under control.

-But America's shadow government
has spent trillions of dollars

on secret plans
that serve one premise...

When the [bleep] really hits
the fan, we're on our own.

-I have nothing, nothing.

-For decades, the government has
invested trillions of dollars

in a secret plan to save itself.

[ Buzzer ]

While the rest of us die.

♪♪

♪♪

[ Explosion ]

Fears of nuclear Annihilation
fueled the creation of a system

to ensure the continuity
of government

even during a nuclear war.

It's known as C.O.G.

-The Continuity of Government
system, from bunkers

and airborne command posts

to tractor-trailers
hidden around the country,

have been developed
over decades.

-This massive secret project

funneled unbelievable
amounts of money away

from the public good and towards
the survival of the wealthy,

the elite, and the powerful
of the United States.

-Through the Cold War
no one had ever tested

whether it would actually work
in an emergency.

We'd written down
all of the plans on paper.

We tested them all in exercises.

But when an actual crisis
happened,

would any of it actually work?

- Made.
- Yes, made. Get ready.

- Cake.
- Yes, cake. Get ready.

- Cane.
- Yes...

-President George W. Bush is
visiting an elementary school

in Florida,
a routine public appearance

to promote literacy,

where he reads a book called
"The Pet Goat"

to a room of first graders.

The White House Chief of Staff
whispers in the President's ear,

"America is under attack."

Bush takes a moment
to gather his thoughts

and continues with the reading.

For months during the summer
of 2001,

warnings of a terror attack

had been pouring
into the White House.

[ Gunfire ]

-We began to receive
lots of intelligence indications

that there was going to be
a major terrorist strike

by Al-Qaeda,
by bin Laden's organization,

against the United States.

CIA said the attack would be
overseas,

but they couldn't rule out
that the attack

would be in the United States.

The Bush Administration

did very little in response
to that intelligence,

despite the CIA director
telling him repeatedly,

despite my warnings.

The Bush Administration
didn't go to a war footing,

didn't try to find Al-Qaeda
people in the United States,

didn't try to preempt the attack

by going after
bin Laden in Afghanistan.

They didn't really believe
the warnings, I think.

-Underestimating the threat
of an Al-Qaeda attack,

America is caught off guard
on 9/11,

setting off a disastrous chain
of events.

-In the seconds after the attack
on the World Trade Center,

the Bush Administration
went into

an absolute
tailspin of confusion

and anarchy.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

There were moments
in this country

where no one had any idea
who was in control,

no one had any idea
who had executive power,

who was calling the shots.

[ Sirens wailing ]

-The American people
were completely in the dark.

Much of our national security
apparatus

and our political system
was in the dark.

That information void
expanded across

most of the federal government

and definitely across
the population.

♪♪

-As the National Coordinator
for Security,

Richard Clarke is also in charge

of the Continuity
of Government program.

-For the first time
in the history

of the Continuity of Government
system, we activated it.

-It's to ensure the security
of the principals...

The separation and the security
of the president,

the vice president,
and the speaker of the house.

That no matter what happened,

one of them would be available
to step into the Oval Office.

-With no destination in mind,

President Bush is
rushed onto Air Force One

and launched into the sky.

The number-one priority
of the pilot...

To get the plane
as high as possible

and as far away from anyone else
as he could.

-At that point, Washington
was a combat zone.

We were literally still waiting
for the combat aircraft

from the Air Force to get up
and to protect us

in the White House.

The Secret Service director
and I and the Vice President

all urged the President
not to come back.

-Throughout the Cold War,
the plan had been to evacuate

top government officials
out to mountain bunkers

in Raven Rock, Pennsylvania,
and Mount Weather, Virginia.

The hope was that everyone
could be evacuated

in the first 15 minutes
after an attack.

Over the course
of that morning, though,

none of that happened.

-Most of the top people in the
President's line of succession

are unable to get to the bunkers
or never contacted.

Others are uncooperative.
Vice President Dick Cheney

refuses to evacuate
the White House.

-At about 9:30 in the morning
on 9/11,

Vice President Cheney
was bundled up by Secret Service

and moved to a basement next to
the White House Situation Room.

I think, within an hour or so,

they moved him through
a long tunnel and blast doors

to a Presidential Emergency
Operation Center

beneath the East Wing of
the White House.

-Speaker Dennis Hastert is
rushed from the Capitol Building

to Andrews Air Force Base,
wheels squealing

as his motorcade
rushes off the Capitol grounds.

-The Speaker of the House
was rushed onto that helicopter

and whisked out of the city.

So we had
a constitutional survivor,

someone in the constitutional
chain of command

who was outside of the city.

-Across the Potomac River,

a third plane crashes
into the Pentagon.

-There is a lot of confusion
here at the Pentagon.

It appears that something hit
the Pentagon

on the outside
of the fifth corridor.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

-All units, I said, all units...

-Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld,

the key link to
the nation's military,

stands up from his desk
and goes out to the crash site.

♪♪

-When he heard the plane
hit his building,

hit the Pentagon, his natural
instinct was to go to the scene.

It was his building.
His people were hurt.

So he left the command post,

in a natural instinct
of a leader,

wanted to be part of the rescue.

♪♪

Now, that was dramatic.
It was emotional.

He should have stayed
in the command post.

He ordered his deputy secretary
to fly out

in a helicopter, fly
out of the target zone.

And, so, for a while
neither the Secretary of Defense

nor the Deputy Secretary
of Defense was available.

-This is an extensive military
command and control system,

and to watch it break down
at an instant

because one person was
so overcome by human emotion...

He just took
a multibillion-dollar program

and broke it.

[ Sirens wailing ]

-Every federal agency is ordered

to activate
an alternative headquarters

outside of Washington,

but things don't go
according to plan.

-It was impossible
to get out of Washington.

As soon as the attack
started occurring,

everyone was trying
to leave Washington.

All the roads were blocked.
All the bridges were blocked.

The cell phones weren't working
because they were overloaded.

And we had no helicopters to get
the other departments' teams

out of town.

-Clarke remains in
the situation room

in the basement of the West Wing
of the White House.

It's the nerve center of
presidential crisis management.

With Air Force One
flying at 45,000 feet

for extra security,
communication becomes difficult.

-And they don't even
really know where to go.

They don't know
really what to do.

They don't know whether
more attacks are coming.

The Pentagon is
a smoldering mess,

and that's what the President
is facing

as he's flying in Air Force One.

-Under attack from
an unknown enemy,

America's defenses default
to their Cold War footing.

The Pentagon escalates
the country's nuclear readiness

by going to defense condition 3.

-Once Continuity of Government
is declared, the nuclear forces

and the strategic forces
go to DEFCON 3.

And, so, it's a really big deal,

and by declaring an alert
of this sort, a lot of things

happen that the Russians detect.

Airplanes going into the skies,

submarines going on sorties,

missiles being
put on higher levels of alert.

And the Kremlin calls to speak
to the President to inquire

as to what's going on.

And because the communications
are spotty,

the decision is made
in the White House

that Condoleezza Rice...

She's a Russian and Soviet
specialist...

Will speak to Putin instead.

-Because of the breakdown
in communication,

a critical conversation between
world leaders during

a moment of crisis
doesn't take place.

-George W. Bush,
in a strange turn of events,

sort of became an observer
to the tragedy

and the spectacle, leaving
Vice President Dick Cheney

to basically take over
the authority of the presidency

and start to handle
this burgeoning newborn war

that America was finding
itself in.

So it was a total, absolute
collapse of authority.

-In a way, Dick Cheney had
trained his entire adult life

for the morning of 9/11.

He had been Defense Secretary

and a White House
Chief of Staff.

Now Cheney,

in the bunker underneath
the White House,

takes charge of the
US government's response

to the attacks.

With no formal role in
the chain of command,

the Vice President
began to issue orders

and spur the military
into action.

-You have to appreciate
the magnitude of the decision

that he was entrusted with,
and that is a decision

I wouldn't wish on anyone.

-With the chain of command
in disarray

life-and-death decisions

at the core of
Continuity of Government

are about to be tested
for the first time.

♪♪

♪♪

-Two planes have just slammed
into the World Trade Center.

A third has hit the Pentagon.

A fourth hijacked plane

heading straight toward
the heart of the capital

is still in the air
over Western Pennsylvania.

-It occurred to me that
more attacks might be coming.

We evacuated the White House
complex.

-Everybody out.
Everybody out.

-We sent the Vice President into
the bomb shelter

in the East Wing.

-The decisions in the bunker
that morning

cut to the heart
of the questions

and the moral calculus
of the Continuity of Government,

the idea that some lives
are worth more than others,

that there are people
in the government

who, because of their position,
because of their authority,

are worth
protecting over other Americans.

♪♪

-We knew that there were at
least two more aircraft aloft.

We believed that the White House
was a target

for an incoming aircraft.

-One in particular,
United Airlines Flight 93,

appears to be headed
back towards Washington.

-Deep underground
in the heavily fortified

Presidential Emergency
Operations Center, it's chaos.

[ Phones ringing ]

-I reached down and I picked up
a receiver.

The gentleman on the other end
goes, "Major,

we have another
hijacked aircraft

16 miles south of Pittsburgh,

inbound Washington, D.C."

-Lieutenant Colonel
Robert Darling

was a Marine Corps
helicopter pilot

assigned to the White House
military office.

On September 11th,

he was supporting
the Vice President

and the
National Security Advisor.

-I was like, "Whoa, you're gonna
have to hold on."

I turn to my right, and who's
standing right next to me

but Vice President Cheney.

-Cheney tries but fails to reach
Donald Rumsfeld.

The Secretary of Defense

remains at the chaotic scene
outside the Pentagon,

keeping him
out of the chain of command

at another critical moment.

-The Pentagon asks for
an unimaginable authority.

Can we shoot down
a commercial airliner

full of Americans
over American soil?

-Without hesitation,
Vice President Cheney said,

"Shoot that aircraft down."

-Two F-16s
are scrambled with orders

to intercept Flight 93,

but the fighter jets
are unarmed.

At the time,
having armed fighters

standing by to defend the
capital from a domestic threat

wasn't part of the national
defense strategy.

♪♪

So their only option is to try

and bring down the airliner
with 44 people on board

by ramming the plane
out of the sky.

One of the pilots plans to crash
the plane into the cockpit.

The other plans to target
the tail.

But this scene never happened.

Flight 93 had crashed
before the jets even took off.

- "Aircraft down, aircraft down."

[ Sirens wailing ]

"68 miles south of Pittsburgh.
No survivors."

All eyes on the Vice President.

He was staring at those
three speaker boxes.

He turned around.
He walked right over to me.

He goes, "Major,
we just shot that plane down.

I really need to talk
to the President."

-In the chaos, it's only after
Cheney gives the order

to shoot down Flight 93

that he informs the President
of his decision.

And for much of the morning,
the officials inside the bunker

didn't know whether they were
responsible for bringing down

a passenger jet.

Only later would it become known

that it was the passengers
storming the cockpit

who caused the plane to crash.

A half-hour later, another,
this time unidentified, plane

is picked up on radar.

-I turn.
"Mr. Vice President, sir,

we got a bogey eight miles out,
low and fast,

inbound to the White House."

This time, Donald Rumsfeld,

the Secretary of Defense,
was back in the building.

He goes, "Don,
we got a bogey seven miles out.

Do we have an asset
that can take a shot at him?

Anything over Washington, D.C.,
we can engage him with?"

-Meanwhile, in the unreinforced
situation room above,

Clarke and his team make a
fateful decision of their own.

-At one point, I realized
that we might not survive.

And so I asked most of
the people there to leave.

They refused.

I asked them then
to write their name

and Social Security number, date
of birth on a piece of paper,

and we e-mailed that list
out of the White House.

In case the building was hit,

the people who had to rescue us

or find the remains would know
how many people to look for.

♪♪

-Down in the bunker,
time is running out.

-The Secret Service
and I are going,

"Seven... six... five..."

-Cheney has the Secretary of
Defense, Donald Rumsfeld,

on the line
who tells the Vice President

he's got other fighter jets
screaming toward the capital.

-He goes, "Don, I'll authorize
an over-the-horizon shot.

No visual confirmation required.

If you got a radar-guided
missile over Baltimore

and you can lock onto him,
shoot him.

Shoot him.
Shoot him."

As I sit in the secure facility
deep under the White House,

there are people outside
pushing civilians to the south

or clearing civilians
to the north,

and they're going to take
a body blow

right here in front of them.

When all of a sudden, all the
satellite radios blared to life,

"That's not a bogey."

That's a medevac helicopter
heading to the Pentagon

to save lives talking
on the wrong frequency.

♪♪

-Meanwhile, in New York City,
Mayor Rudy Giuliani

has his own plans
to ensure survival.

In 1999, he built a $13 million
bomb-proof shelter

nicknamed Rudy's Bunker,
but there's one problem.

His Emergency Operations Center

was built in
the World Trade Center itself,

a location that terrorists
had already bombed once before

back in 1993.

So in the opening minutes
of the attack,

New York found itself without
its Emergency Operation Center,

leaving Mayor Giuliani

and other officials
to wander the streets

attempting to find a place
to set up a command post.

♪♪

-To create a bunker
that cost millions

or tens of millions of dollars
that's centrally located

in what we now know is
an incredibly vulnerable place,

but failing to provide radios
that worked to firefighters,

I think, is
a perfect illustration

of how broken our system was.

If we had prioritized money
and resources in the right way,

more firefighters
would have lived.

-Paul Rieckhoff was on
the front lines that morning,

deployed to the rescue efforts
at Ground Zero.

-I was in the National Guard
in New York.

I started the morning sleeping
in late

with a dental appointment,
and I ended the evening

in camouflage standing on a pile
in the wreckage of Ground Zero

digging up bodies.

The magnitude
of a gaping chest wound

in New York City
was unfathomable.

And even now,
when I reflect on it,

I think my mind probably censors
a bit of the enormity of it.

-It turns out America was
totally unprepared

for the threat it faced
on the morning of 9/11.

None of the plans
that we had developed

during the Cold War would work.

The FAA and the military
found themselves with radars

only facing out.

The fighter planes
that were scrambled into the sky

thought that they were trying
to repel Soviet bombers

and flew first out
to the Atlantic

before realizing that the threat
was already behind them.

Across the country,

the military trained for
the Cold War found itself

outclassed by 19 hijackers
with box cutters

aboard commercial airliners.

-The truly demoralizing truth

is that the massive Continuity
of Government project,

which redistributed
incredible amounts of wealth

away from social projects
like education

and health care
and infrastructure

and the betterment of the lives
of American citizens,

is it created this hulking
rusting infrastructure

that never actually worked
at any moment.

It was completely incompetent
and unnecessary.

-But 9/11 wasn't the only fail.

Just days later, the US
government found itself

under attack again,
this time from an enemy within.

-The big fear
through the fall of 2001

was when was the next shoe
going to drop?

When was the second wave
of attacks?

-This nation stands with the
good people of New York City

and New Jersey and Connecticut,

as we mourn the loss
of thousands of our citizens.

-In the weeks after the worst
terrorist attack on US soil,

a shadowy figure drops
an anonymous letter

addressed to Senate Majority
Leader Tom Daschle.

♪♪

-Senator Tom Daschle received
a pile of mail,

constituent mail.

One of the interns

starts opening up the mail.

And the one she selected

was postmarked from a fourth
grade school in New Jersey.

So she picked that one up,
wanted to open it up,

and found it was taped shut.

So she took a pair of scissors

and carefully sliced up
the side,

and gray-white powder fell out.

She also noticed
it drifted up into the air.

♪♪

-After 9/11,
FBI agent Scott Decker

was transferred to
the counterterrorism branch

and now was assigned
to investigate

the rapidly
unfolding anthrax attacks.

-If it's a positive,
they'll turn bright red.

If it's a related
bacteria, another Bacillus,

sometimes they'll turn pink.

We get false positives.

But when the Capitol Police
test this

and test it again and again,
they keep getting bright red.

So they're pretty sure it's not
a false positive this time.

-The government's top
biological defense lab confirms

the white substance is anthrax.

Anthrax is a highly infectious
and deadly disease

caused by inhaling
or touching a bacteria.

Letters were mailed to another
senator and major news outlets.

-In just a week's time,

we have had four confirmed cases
of anthrax.

-The letters sent to NBC
and the "New York Post"

were the same...
"Death to America.

Death to Israel.
Allah is great."

-As soon as a wave of letters
began to arrive

across the country
with weaponized anthrax

and people began
to sicken and die,

everyone believed
this was the next wave,

this was Al-Qaeda's second act.

It came at a time
when the nation's psyche

was already fragile, and now,

across the country, people
were dying of a new attack.

-Meanwhile, in D.C., the fallout
from the anthrax attack

continues to grow.

-The Capitol Police cars
were contaminated with anthrax,

their bomb dogs
were contaminated with anthrax.

The stuff that had been mailed
to Senator Daschle

was so concentrated, so dried,
and such a fine powder,

it spread all over
Capitol Hill very quickly.

-The attacks raise
a frightening possibility

ignored during the Cold War.

-The spate of anthrax
scares across the country,

particularly to Congress,

you see a situation
where anything that wasn't

that large in magnitude,

which wasn't two superpowers
flexing their muscles,

went completely unnoticed
and unhindered,

which really exposed
the impotency of the system

in the first place.

The problem is, for all of
the money, time, and effort

spent in creating this system,
is that it left America

vulnerable to small attacks,
to unpredictable

events on a human level.

-The anthrax attacks
also reveal a critical weakness

in Continuity of Government.

-The anthrax attacks
made Congress realize

how poorly their own plans
for continuity operations

actually were.

They didn't have
a fallback location,

and they didn't have
a good system to replace members

who might be sick or killed.

Congress realized that they had
let their Cold War plans atrophy

and they hadn't replaced them
with anything.

There was no backup plan
for Congress.

-In a doomsday scenario,
sweeping powers

would fall
to the Executive Branch,

while a central piece of
American democracy

would be left to die.

But during the Cold War,
millions of dollars

were spent on a secret plan
to make sure that didn't happen.

♪♪

-They were in a small
upland valley.

We sit at 2,000 feet surrounded
by the Allegheny Mountains.

So when you walk out
of the hotel, you encounter

a big broad lawn
surrounded by cottages,

and then right after that, you
come to the golf clubhouse.

-In 1978, Bob Conte is hired
as the official historian

at The Greenbrier,
an elite resort

that dates back to 1778.

-When I first moved here, people
would tell me about this rumor

that there was a bomb shelter
at The Greenbrier.

And why is there
a 7,000-foot airport

for a town of 3,800 people?

So I sort of heard these rumors,
and to be honest,

I didn't know what to...
What to make of them.

-Bankers, industrialists,

and government advisers
all hobnob at the resort.

Its guests include dignitaries
and presidents.

Then, in 1992,
"Washington Post" reporter

Ted Gup comes calling.

-So he walks in,
he introduces himself.

He puts a tape recorder
on my desk, and son of a gun,

he says, "I'm here to talk about

what's under
the West Virginia Wing."

"Oh, it's an old rumor,
it goes back

to when they built
the West Virginia Wing.

It was during the Cold War.
Just a silly rumor.

There's nothing
under the West Virginia Wing."

And there's a sort of awkward
silence where he's looking at me

because, clearly, he...

He doesn't believe
a word I'm saying.

And it was pretty clear to me

that this was going to lead
to an article

and disclosure of the bunker.

-On May 31, 1992,

Gup blows the lid
off The Greenbrier bunker.

-Actually, what happened, one
of the most memorable moments

of, well, my career,
maybe my life,

is that Friday morning,
the boss calls a meeting,

and I go into his office,
and Ted Kleisner,

the president
of The Greenbrier, stands up

and says, "Today
we are going to acknowledge

a 35-year secret relationship
with the federal government

maintaining a bomb shelter here
at The Greenbrier."

I could have fallen over
at that moment.

-The facility is swiftly
shut down as the truth

about Greenbrier is exposed.

Hidden beneath
the vast extension

known as the West Virginia Wing

is a massive bomb shelter
stocked with supplies

for members of Congress
in case of disaster.

-The Greenbrier Congressional
bunker

was one of the most closely
held secrets of the Cold War.

Built under cover of a resort
expansion in the 1950s and '60s,

the bunker was staffed
through the Cold War

by a team of secret
government workers

working for a front company
known as Forsythe Associates.

-I must say, they hid their
tracks pretty well.

Everybody who worked
here worked for The Greenbrier,

except for these guys.

They were the audiovisual
consultants,

but they were sort of mysterious
kind of guys, you know.

I mean, when you talked to them,
they were sort of normal people.

But it was sort of funny
that you had this one operation

where they weren't... they
weren't Greenbrier employees.

♪♪

-Three years after
its controversial disclosure,

Conte finally gets to see
the secret bunker for himself.

♪♪

-I'm peeing in my pants,
oh, my God,

I'm actually going to see
this bunker, you know.

We walk in.
We walk into a cafeteria.

And I'm going,
"Wait a minute, stop.

This is... This is
the secret bunker?

It looks like a high school
cafeteria here, you know."

I just assumed that the bunker

was hundreds of feet
underground.

Turns out it was
right in front of our nose,

and I'd never really realized.

This door we went through,
which I... well, I guess

I never knew what was on
the other side of that door...

Leads into the bunker proper.

What was overwhelming to me
was how large the bunker was.

We're talking
a thousand people here.

We're talking about bunk beds,

we're talking
about a dining room,

we're talking about
a power plant.

We just kept going on
and on and on.

I guess what I didn't realize

was that
they were to continue to be

the Legislative Branch
of the federal government.

It wasn't just a matter of a
place for them to sleep and eat

so that they could stay alive.

They were moving down the
whole institution of Congress.

And this is part of this larger

Continuity of Government
program.

-One of the most uncomfortable
surprises inside the bunker

was a large weapons cache
that had been meant

to be used by security guards
to keep out ordinary Americans

who might try to show up
at the Congressional bunker.

The weapons cache was
a physical manifestation

of the difficult moral calculus

that lies at the heart
of these continuity plans,

that the government officials
are worth protecting

over the lives
of ordinary Americans.

-In the event of a nuclear war,
members of Congress

would seal themselves inside
the bunker with their staff,

while their spouses and children
would be locked outside.

♪♪

-To me, the tragedy of
continuity of government

is one that's a story
that's not really well-known.

-The big secret... who gets
saved often has nothing to do

with making sure
the government survives.

-They had to send a special
US Customs Service jet

to Bonaire
to fly her back to Washington,

even though the airspace
of America was closed.

♪♪

-The truth of America's secret
doomsday plans

is often stranger than fiction,

but occasionally, the creators
of Hollywood movies

and TV dramas stumble
on a bit of reality.

-When Aaron Sorkin was writing
and researching the show

that ultimately became
"The West Wing,"

he met with
George Stephanopoulos,

then a top Clinton
Administration official,

who showed him, during
a conversation over drinks,

something that looked
like a bus pass

in Stephanopoulos' wallet.

-What's the card?

-Tells you where to go in
the event of a nuclear attack.

-Sorkin turned that card
into an episode

involving Deputy White House
Chief of Staff

Josh Lyman getting
an emergency evacuation card

and worrying that
his colleagues didn't.

-Sure.

A-A-And my staff goes with me,
or do they have separate...

♪♪

Oh, God. Sorry, you know what?
I just got it.

Sorry. Okay. Sure.

Just gonna...
I'll stick this right here,

right next to my...
My video club membership,

and there's no reason,
I guess, why my staff

ever has to know
anything about it.

So there it is.

- "The West Wing" episode
pulls back the curtain

on a secret Armageddon VIP list

unknown even to many
Washington insiders.

♪♪

-Then, on the set, White House
Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers

pulled Sorkin aside and said,

"You know,
those cards don't exist."

Dee Dee Myers had made it
all the way to the White House,

all the way to becoming
White House Press Secretary,

worked with
George Stephanopoulos for years,

and she never understood that
she wasn't going to be included

if there was a nuclear war.

That George Stephanopoulos
would be evacuated

and she would be left behind.

-The evacuation cards
are a combo

of a driver's license
and a Yahoo! map

that helped get personnel
out of the capital

and to the relocation facilities
as quickly as possible.

[ Sirens wailing ]

-Some officials are only given
cards with driving instructions,

to find their own way
to the bunkers,

if and when they can,
in an emergency.

The most elite versions,

though, come
with evacuation instructions

for how helicopters
will locate these key officials

and whisk them away, wherever
they are, 24 hours a day.

There was nothing more exclusive
in government service

than a golden ticket on one
of the evacuation helicopters.

-But it's not just VIPs
who will be saved first.

-The government's doomsday
plans, though,

have always
encompassed more than people.

One of the things
that the planners

began to realize
as they figured out

what was worth saving in America
was that it was important

to preserve
America's history, as well.

And so you saw, in
the Cold War, plans to evacuate

the Declaration of Independence,
the Constitution,

the Bill of Rights,
the Gettysburg Address,

even works of art in
the National Gallery,

ranked, ordered
so that curators would know

which pieces
to grab first in an emergency.

-The government's doomsday
planners

took on the responsibility

of deciding
what parts of history

needed to survive the apocalypse

in order to preserve
the idea of America.

-They start making these
very technocratic decisions

about what should be saved,
including the American people.

I mean, you start looking
at the plans

for saving
George Washington's uniform,

and you start realizing
how much time

and manpower and resources have
gone into saving these things.

Meanwhile, American families
could be dying

by the millions
around the country.

[ Explosion ]

-9/11 put some of the realities
of Continuity of Government

into stark relief.

-To me, the tragedy of
Continuity of Government

is one that's a story
that's not really well-known,

which is how much effort,
energy, and American tax dollars

went into protecting the adult
children of Dick Cheney.

Cheney had two daughters,

one of whom was an official
in the State Department,

and the other
was a private citizen.

And she was scuba diving
in Bonaire.

The amount
of effort that was required

to move Cheney's other daughter
back to the United States,

where they had to send a special
US Customs Service jet

to Bonaire
to fly her back to Washington,

even though the airspace
of America was closed,

that those parts
of Continuity of Government

that really do represent
the imperial presidency,

that really do represent

nothing that has to do with
the command of the government

or the constitutional leadership
of America,

that is what I really think
needs more attention.

-But instead, more attention
will be put on creating

an even safer space
for the president

to ride out threats
from enemies abroad

and perceived enemies
right here at home.

[ Rhythmic clapping ]

-Peaceful protest!
Peaceful protest!

-May 29, 2020.

As protests erupt
in Washington, D.C.,

after the death of George Floyd,

demonstrators close in
on the White House gates.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

[ Explosions ]

The Secret Service decides
to rush President Trump

down into
the White House bunker.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

♪♪

-The great irony of Donald Trump

being rushed into the bunker
under the White House

is that he wasn't
being protected

against some
sort of foreign threat

or imminent nuclear apocalypse.

It was the anger of the American
people themselves.

-Later, Trump denies
he was hiding in a bunker.

-I went down during the day,

and I was there for a tiny,
little, short period of time,

and it was much more
for an inspection.

-It was a story
that was quickly contradicted,

even by the President's
own Attorney General.

-Things were so bad
that the Secret Service

recommended the President
go down to the bunker.

We can't have that
in our country.

♪♪

-As Trump takes to Twitter,
tensions escalate

at the gates of the White House.

It's not only the President
who is taken to the bunker.

The First Lady and their son,
Barron, are also rushed there.

The bunker itself is
part of a new secret development

that begins after 9/11.

-On 9/11,
the bunker didn't function

very well at all.

Among other problems,

it turned out that you couldn't
listen to both the TV

and watch a video conference
at the same time.

So, through the morning,
Vice President Cheney

had to turn down the cable news

in order to listen
to government officials

and turn down the government
officials in order to listen

to cable news.

-That Presidential Emergency
Operation Center itself

was a rather stark facility.

There was a conference room

and there were a number
of support rooms

and there were places
of residence

for just one or two people.

-Engine 101 getting cracked open
there at a Pentagon,

is that correct?

-The terror attacks prompt
National Security officials

to call for a more
advanced bunker.

During the Obama Administration,

a conspicuous
construction project

begins on the North Lawn
of the White House.

-They decided to rebuild
the Presidential

Emergency Operations Center,
so they built a big bunker

underneath the White House
Situation Room.

-The project
is shrouded in secrecy.

The public is told
the construction

is to replace existing
White House infrastructure

and put up a fence.

The new bunker
includes a main conference room

and several support rooms

with food
and a self-contained air supply.

It's sealed off to prevent
radiation from seeping in,

and there are
underground tunnels

heading out of
the White House entirely.

-And that is able to accommodate
the president

and the vice president
and the cabinet

in a more comfortable way.

-When Trump arrived
at the White House in 2017,

he and a few select officials
were given a tour

of the facility,
part of an ongoing expansion.

It was clear that
the White House bunker

needed upgrading,
but after 9/11, investment

in the national security state
soars to new levels.

In the D.C. area alone,
33 new building

complexes for top-secret
intelligence work

are either under construction
or have already been built.

♪♪

-The truth of the matter is
the Pentagon will continue

to get the money that it gets
and civil needs

will continue
to be begging for money

because the Pentagon gets
the priority on all spending,

and we won't change our system,
but part of why we won't change

our system
is this kind of secrecy

and hiddenness associated
with believing that the military

is more important
than it really is.

And that... that

is a product of the world
of Continuity of Government.

-You have to consider
that this project

is a complete redistribution
of tax dollars

in order to create
this redundant government

that is completely
beyond the reach

of representative government,
beyond the reach of elections,

beyond the reach of
the Constitution.

A shadow government that is
ready to take over

at a moment's notice,

and it becomes this situation
where representative government

is just sort of done away with.

[ Camera shutters clicking ]

-One of the most troubling
aspects of these plans

is the realization
that almost all of them imagine

suspending the American
democracy as we know it.

That the secret government plans
for an emergency

involve suspending
civil liberties,

declaring martial law,
and even, we believe,

suspending the very idea
of a three-branch

check-and-balance government,

doing away, effectively,
with the Legislative Branch

and the Judicial Branch
until an emergency is over.

-You had an entire American city
essentially wiped off the map

while an American government
stood by and watched.

-We see
America's prejudices manifest.

-Go, go!

-We have been busy
fighting outside

and we failed to guard
our own back door.

-We've met the enemy
and the enemy is us.

-It's a traditional
fascist spiral.

As soon as they protest that
you've attacked them,

you use that as evidence
that they're dangerous.

-Your government is here
to protect you.

Why should you worry?

♪♪