I first heard about this last night, in our own Dailykos' Diary rescue -- National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, by phreephallin. I thought I'd look into it a little more throughly, since it touches on issues that I've studied in the past.

Basically the directive states the in the case of a national Catastrophic Emergency", the President, along with the head of Homeland Security, can take over the government and do whatever they please in order to provide "continuance".

Here's the quote right from the White House website:

(b) "Catastrophic Emergency" means any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions

Sounds innocent enough, right? But look at that phrase "regardless of location". What the hell is that supposed to mean? Stephen Pizzo at the Smirking Chimp puts it quite beautifully:

Regardless of location? Would that include, say, a terrorist attack on Saudi oil fields and refineries? That would certainly "disrupt" the U.S. population and economy. "or government functions." Would that include mass public protests such as those during the Civil Rights and Vietnam War eras? But it get better. We may not even have to wait for a real "national emergency" to hit before the President can assume the mantle of near-dictator. Under the guise of "maintaining government continuity, the President could just sign a "NEF" - a National Emergency Finding:" " As a result of the asymmetric threat environment, adequate warning of potential emergencies that could pose a significant risk to the homeland might not be available, and therefore all continuity planning shall be based on the assumption that no such warning will be received." Once the President signs "detects" a real or imagined threat, and signs a NEF, here's what he gets for his signature: The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government. In other words, to quote the old Christian hymn, "He has the whole world, in his hands, the whole world, in his hands..."

You can read the entire press release on this at the White House's website, listed above. Ah, but you can't read the whole thing:

(24) Security. This directive and the information contained herein shall be protected from unauthorized disclosure, provided that, except for Annex A, the Annexes attached to this directive are classified and shall be accorded appropriate handling, consistent with applicable Executive Orders.

And another thing I found disturbing about the order:

(22) Revocation. Presidential Decision Directive 67 of October 21, 1998 ("Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations"), including all Annexes thereto, is hereby revoked.

Hm, who was President in 1998? Oh yeah, that other guy. So whatever Clinton decided would work in this regard has been simply tossed out the window and replaced with the Bush/Cheney/Gonzales plan for "continuance". Great.

Now, you might think that this is something that any president has to deal with, and it certainly is. However, the Criminal Wing of the Republican Party has been working on this for YEARS.

There are many familiar names in the history of nefarious plans to subvert the Constitution and intill Martial Law throughout our country. Cheney. Rumsfeld. Oliver North.

Oliver North? Yup. Here's a nice article from way back in 2002 entitled "Foundations are in place for martial law in the US". This article was alarming enough that the Democrats' own Jim McDermott got a little freaked out about it:

I recently read an article published in the Sydney, Australia, Morning Herald entitled ``Foundations Are in Place for Martial Law in the United States.'' The author is a man named Ritt Goldstein, an investigative reporter for the Herald, and he said that recent pronouncements from the Bush administration and national security initiatives put in place in the Reagan era could see internment camps and martial law in the United States. When President Ronald Reagan was considering invading Nicaragua, he issued a series of executive orders which provided FEMA with broad powers in the event of a crisis, such as the violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition against a U.S. military invasion abroad. They were never used. SNIP (and here comes the juicy part:) From 1982 to 1984, Colonel Oliver North assisted FEMA in drafting its civil defense preparations. Details of those plans emerged during the 1987 Iran-Contra scandal. They included executive orders providing for suspension of the Constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning over of government to the President and FEMA. A Miami Herald article on the 5th of July, 1987, reported that the former FEMA director's, Louis Guiffrida's, deputy, John Brinkerhoff, handled the martial law portion of the planning. The planning was said to be similar to one Mr. Guiffrida had developed earlier to combat a national uprising by black militants. It provided for the detention of at least 21 million American Negroes in assembly centers or relocation camps. Today, Mr. Brinkerhoff is with the highly influential Anser Institute for Homeland Security. Following a request by the Pentagon in January that the U.S. military be allowed the option of deploying troops on American streets, the institute in February published a paper by Mr. Brinkerhoff arguing the legality of this. He alleged that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which has long been accepted as prohibiting such deployments, had simply been misunderstood and misapplied. The preface to the article also provided the revelation that the national plan he had worked on under Mr. Guiffrida was approved by Reagan and actions were taken to implement it.

Bush doesn't need FEMA anymore for this, because he has his very own Department of Homeland Security. The Posse Comitatus Act doesn't apply to him, (according to him) and all he has to do is decide there's an emergency coming down the pike to suspend the constitution and start throwing whoever he feels like it into camps.

It would be nice to know more specifics about Reagan's plan, but:

Disturbingly, the full facts and final contents of Mr Reagan's national plan remain uncertain. This is in part because President Bush took the unusual step of sealing the Reagan presidential papers last November.

What we do know is that Cheney and Rummy have were also in on this in the 1980's. As Peter Dale Scott reported here, the illegal NSA spying program may have started even before 9/11, due to their planning of such "continuance" operations:

At the time, Cheney was a Wyoming congressman, while Rumsfeld, who had been defense secretary under President Ford, was a businessman and CEO of the drug company G.D. Searle. Overall responsibility for the program had been assigned to Vice President George H.W. Bush, "with Lt. Col. Oliver North ... as the National Security Council action officer," according to James Bamford in his book A Pretext for War. These men planned for suspension of the Constitution, not just after nuclear attack, but for any "national security emergency," which they defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as: "Any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States." Clearly 9/11 would meet this definition. As developed in the mid-1980s by Oliver North in the White House, the plans called for not just the surveillance but the potential detention of large numbers of American citizens. During the Iran-Contra hearings, North was asked about his work on "a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution." The chairman, Democratic Senator Inouye, ruled that this was a "highly sensitive and classified" matter, not to be dealt with in an open hearing. The supporting agency for the planning and implementation was the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA was headed for much of the 1980s by Louis Giuffrida, whose COG plans for massive detention became so extreme that even President Reagan’s then Attorney General, William French Smith, raised objections. Smith eventually left Washington, while COG continued to evolve. And in May 2001 Cheney and FEMA were reunited: President George W. Bush appointed Cheney to head a terrorism task force and created a new office within FEMA to assist him. In effect, Bush was authorizing a resumption of the kind of planning that Cheney and FEMA had conducted under the heading of COG.

Keep in mind, that "back when Reagan was considering invading Nicaragua", our current Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, was the number 2 guy at the CIA and besides wanting to bomb Nicaragua was a key player in the Iran/Contra criminality.

And by sheer coincidence, Cheney's old company Halliburton is now building detention camps in the United States to house, oh, just a whole lot of people. A 385 million dollar contract, and they're damn proud of it:

Halliburton Press Release

Dailykos: Concentration Camps Being Built on US Soil?

And this one is especially creepy:

Satellite Photographs Emerge of Halliburton's American Concentration Camp written by, supposedly, someone doing subcontracting work for KBR. (Kellog Brown Root, Halliburton's subsiidiary).

I'm gonna quote Stephen Pizzo again to wrap this up: