What is in the classified portions of the Executive order regarding continuance of the federal government after a terrorist attack that the Bush administration doesn’t want a member of the House Homeland Security Committee to see? (h/t to Pacific Views via Avedon):

WASHINGTON — Oregonians called Peter DeFazio’s office, worried there was a conspiracy buried in the classified portion of a White House plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack.

As a member of the U.S. House on the Homeland Security Committee, DeFazio, D-Ore., is permitted to enter a secure “bubbleroom” in the Capitol and examine classified material. So he asked the White House to see the secret documents.

On Wednesday, DeFazio got his answer: DENIED. […]

Homeland Security Committee staffers told his office that the White House initially approved his request, but it was later quashed. DeFazio doesn’t know who did it or why.

“We’re talking about the continuity of the government of the United States of America,” DeFazio says. “I would think that would be relevant to any member of Congress, let alone a member of the Homeland Security Committee.”

Now maybe this is just the Bush administration responding in its typical assholish way to a request made by a Democratic member of Congress. Then again, maybe it’s something else. As Congressman DeFazio is quoted in the Oregonian report as saying, maybe the people who believe in a conspiracy are right.

(cont.)
After all, this National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (NSPD 51/HSPD-20), dated May 9, 2007 (“NSPD”), already grants the President the sole power to determine what constitutes a “Catastrophic Emergency” sufficient to trigger the implementation of its provisions, since the President is designated as the person responsible for the continuation of “Constitutional Government” in the event of such an emergency. More troubling, perhaps, is that “Catastrophic Emergency” is a term that is defined in very vague and unspecific language in the NSPD:

“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 …

What constitutes “extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage or disruption” is not specified in the unclassified portion of the NSPD. And the language regarding “any incident, regardless of location …” is also problematic. Does that refer to “incidents” which occur overseas, outside the territory of the United States? Could an attack on one of our embassies constitute an incident triggering this order if enough people die in the attack? Presumably all these issues are to be determined at the discretion of the President, since the document itself gives so little guidance as to when and under what circumstances it applies.

The NSPD revokes a previous Presidential Directive entitled “Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations”” that had been issued by President Clinton in 1998. It is not clear what about the previous executive order has been changed or updated, or why the Bush administration waited until May 2007 to replace the prior executive order regarding these matters. Perhaps the changes from the Clinton executive order are trivial and insignificant; merely a matter of the Bush administration preferring their own order to one issued by the former Democratic administration which is so despised by the Bush White House.

On the other hand, if that is the case, why not allow members of Congress, and particularly those members sitting on the Homeland Security Committee, to review the classified portions of the order? I can’t imagine that Republicans in Congress would have stood for President Clinton refusing them access to the classified portions of his Presidential Directive on this subject. They would have raised “holy hell” about any such attempt at denying them that access, and rightfully so.

Of course, considering this Administration’s record on lying to Congress and the American people about any number of topics, from the use of torture, the operation of secret prisons in foreign countries, their programs of illegal surveillance of US citizens, to the phony intelligence they used to justify the Iraq War, it’s hard not to be suspicious of their motives in this instance. If they have nothing to hide regarding the provisions of this executive order, why act as if there were?