people -- several people remembered both vice president cheney and secretary of defense rumsfeld and years earlier in a program they took part in the 1980s. the continuity of government exercises established by the reagan administration. this was again at a peak of cold war tensions with the soviet union. the issue was what would happen

if there was a soviet attack on the united states, on washington in which several top officers were killed and the response of the reagan administration was to set up a secret program is elaborate exercises in which three different teams were established -- they actually ran drills, teams of -- i forget 30 to 45 career officials who would know how to run the government and they needed someone to be in charge of each team so they appointed several people who knew how the federal government ran, and then they would take a cabinet member. now the cabinet member could be someone like secretary of agriculture, john block, for example, someone who didn't know national security. but the person who would really know how to run the show would be a former white house chief of staff. and so both dick cheney and don rumsfeld who both served as

white house chief guesseses -- chiefs of staffs participated in these exercises and still relevant to some of the issues i'll talk about is they would go to different places each time. sometimes abandoned school yards. why? they did that because the earlier responses of the 1950s had been to create these famous bunkers outside washington in virginia, mount whether. and by the 1980s, 30 years later, the fear was nuclear weapons could damage or somehow get to these fixed facilities. so the idea was mobility, surprise and so on. and as i looked into this -- i wrote about this at some length. and the thing that bothered me the most was that there was no constitutional or legal basis for this. congress was not part of it. this is not a procedure that congress set up.

congress was taken out of the -- out of the legal line of succession. this was a procedure that was set up entirely from within the executive branch of government without ever checking with congress. and, you know, when i say this process of the commission and its recommendations is important and to be congratulated, it's because this is -- you are and hopefully are working with congress on actually addressing a procedure rather than simply having one which is set up without congressional authorization from within an executive branch. i mean, the program of the '80s was actually not the creation so

much of president reagan himself but of the nsc bureaucracy. vice president bush played a role but the lead operations officer on this was someone named oliver north. that would be the guy who later went on to be in charge of iran contra. you all are addressing this. you are making this -- you're giving consideration to the issues in a public way, and that to me is all to the good. when i look at the report, i find my own reaction is to find some important problems that are addressed in important ways -- very specific problems that i find are addressed well. as you suggest, you want to get the president pro tem out of the line of succession.

the idea that a senator who has a job by virtue of his age should be in the line of succession is something that should be fixed and fixed as soon as possible. we call this the strom thurmond provision if you want. but one way or another, that's all to the good. your recommendations on the inaugural are good. your recommendations on changing the strange procedure of bumping where one person can, you know -- where one person in the line of succession can bump another as people recover from problems and so on. that's all to the good. i want to reserve judgment on one of your most important recommendations, which is to get congress out of the line of succession. i haven't really thought that

through enough. i have some reservations about that because i'm not sure it's necessary. you are making good points. i will say as a constitutional matter, there seems to be some confusion as to what the constitutional issues are. the framers of the constitution were not worried about a change in parties. because, you know, they didn't exist at the time. so it's not -- that's not -- that's a policy question. that's not a constitutional question. and i don't know -- i'm not persuaded of the need to do that, but i think you are making good arguments on that. i want to turn for the last few minutes to the single provision which i have the greatest problems with. and that's the provisions to set up new officers outside of washington in the line of succession.

because i do have -- i think that creates new problems and that the problems it's meant to address could be fixed in other ways. so let's look at this. the suggestion is that there be several four or whatever new positions created, either of former senior federal officials or perhaps governors who would be in the line of succession. and that they would be ahead of existing cabinet members of all but the top four existing cabinet members. well, let's look at some of the people being suggested. first of all, governors -- i can't help by start what if the governors in argentina -- but,

you know, how are we going to choose which states the governors are from, small states would be against big-state governors. who chooses them? governors themselves have political ambitions. you talk about the political ambitions of a speaker of the house, for example, many governors are interested in running for president in the future and, in fact, i would say -- i would remind you that governors are well represented -- former governors are represented in the cabinet often including in this administration. i mean, the sorts of people who might be chosen as governors in these -- for these special jobs now are precisely the kinds of people who are in the cabinet. jan janet napolitano, kathleen sebelius. former officials, well, that

sounds nicer than i think it might turn out to be. i'm reluctant to give former presidents and former vice presidents an ambiguous new role in the national security apparatus. i think we've got a system that works just great the way it is. we have former presidents and vice presidents taking on the roles that they choose but without -- if it's a vice president, a former vice president might be interested running for president again, but one way or another, i have trouble seeing does the president of the united states -- he's the person who's going to choose these -- the people in these jobs. does he choose someone who might be a rival? does he not? let's take history of the last three or four months.

i'm among the people who think that vice president -- former vice president cheney or jimmy carter or any president or vice president has the right to say what he wants, express his views in public. that, you know, there's no obligation to shut up. but we're now going to give people access to new security information on which they can say my reading of the national security is that the new administration has weakened national security, i just see a lot of problems there. the president -- the new president who chooses the people for these positions is himself faced with a dilemma, okay, so if we're going to have four new federal officials in the line of succession, above most of the cabinet members, first of all, this downgrades the existing cabinet members. do you choose someone in line for a top federal job to run a cabinet position or maybe they'd

rather stay in the home state and be sixth in the line of succession. and above all, i'm not sure i see the need for this. we have a system now which is carried out as fran townsend has said -- there are procedures that take -- that are in operation at the time of the state of the union, inauguration, other times, where a cabinet member is out of town. we can have a cabinet member out of town nearly permanently. you know, just one at a time. you know, the cabinet members might like that, a requirement that, you know, one week out of 8 or 10 during the year, they're required to work out of town. it's certainly workable anyway.

>> buenas aries. >> well -- and, you know, they can claim that they're checking the, you know, sentiments outside of washington. i just don't see why setting up four or so new federal jobs -- to me it creates more problems than it fixes. so to me, i would extend the existing procedures for -- with the existing line of succession rather than create new jobs within the line of succession. thanks. >> thank you. thank you to all the panelists. as you can see, we didn't make this panel to be a panel of people who are officially associated with the commission to endorse every recommendation. in fact, i hear some of the arguments that we had internally on the commission.

there are some weighing of things on each of these issues if you push in one direction maybe you move in the other direction. you know, i think the commissioned some answers to these things and wanted to move in certain directions. just one point on one of the recommendations that jim mentioned on the last point about the cabinet members or the new positions outside of washington. we do recommend that the president appoint these people so it wouldn't be a precedent on the oldest state or the newest state but those are very reasonable arguments against that. i'm going to open this up and hope the panelists will talk amongst themselves. if any of you want to react to each other's comments and i'm going to open it up to the general audience. >> just a couple of quick

thoughts. i agree that the framers of the constitution, of the original constitution, weren't quite focused on party continuity. james madison thought there were additional -- there were all sorts of constitutional arguments above and beyond party continuity of presidential succession. but i do want to say the additional concern about party continuity isn't just the policy concern. it is a constitutional concern even if it wasn't part of the original constitution's concern. the twelfth amendment -- it's part of our constitution and it's about -- it ratifies an idea of national presidential parties. the 25th amendment seems to me to be an amendment very much embarrae embrace embracing a party model. these these are constitutional considerations in addition to the policy considerations even if james madison wasn't talking about them and didn't even need

them to make the case in my view a very pervasive case that he made in 1790. the second and only other point i want to make about having some people outside washington, d.c., in the line of succession -- baseball purists still haven't reconciled themselves to the designated hitter perhaps, but i think you can think about these people outside d.c. as kind of a designated hitter model, some baseball teams even have one person whose only job is to be a base runner in the late innings or, you know, a closer to deal with left-handed batters in the last inning. the reason i think maybe former presidents or former secretaries of state might suitably be appropriate people to be nominated by a president to be

these contingent people outside of washington, d.c., you have to understand when you have a double death or a double disability we're in an extreme situation, a situation that america has never undergone before. you just have to imagine, you know, psychologically that we're in such a situation. any amount of comfort and security that you can convey to the american people, to world leaders, to the markets, i think, would be to the good and -- and someone who's done it before, who's already served as president or as secretary of state, i think, could be -- and who knows what it is to be president really could be a perfect designated hitter-like person to do one unique function and, of course, as john fortier mentioned the president of the united states would be the person making the decision about who this designated hitter would be and the person would be subject to senate confirmation but i'm imagining someone who

doesn't need a lot of on-the-job training that she or he already knows how to do the job and, frankly, that's not true of lower cabinet officials. they don't quite have the credibility or the experience perhaps in these crises to step up and reassure everyone to the same degree that perhaps a former president or secretary of state or some really very considerable person nominated by the president to do this one very unusual thing in a low probability scenario would be able to do. >> thank you. if i could just state a little bit and i'll turn to jim, too. we sort of -- both john feerick had some criticisms of this proposal. that we took out -- that we recommended taking out the lower level cabinet members, those below the big four and jim more generally worried about bringing in these new people into the line. you know, we weighed those

things together. i mean, akil mentioned this is an extreme situation where the president and the vice president died at the same time and it's more extraordinary that the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, the secretary of treasury, the secretary of defense and the attorney general are all gone and now we are looking for number seven. we've cut out congress. we're looking for somebody way down the line. something extraordinary happened. we weighed both the question of wanting to make sure people were outside of washington that somebody was around and jim may be right that there certainly are ways to operationally have people in different places and that may be part of the solution. but then we also asked the question about these lower level cabinet members and i'm not denigrating anyone in particular but certainly the positions themselves are not picked for the same sort of national security reasons. they're not picked maybe -- people at quite the same level as one succeeding to the

presidency. and john has a question about the line being shorter but we thought this might be a group that brings a little more to the table and is outside of washington weighing those different factors. >> well, let me say on the designated hitters, if we're going to use the baseball analogy, they are not necessarily the happiest people on the baseball team. [laughter] >> and more to the -- more to politics, vice presidents as we all know through much of american history have tried to figure out what their job is, their main job is to be in the line of succession and day in and day out they're not quite sure what beyond that they're supposed to do. you know, we are now creating 3rd, fourth, fifth, sixth vice presidents. on the possibility that all

sixth of the top cabinet -- the senior officers, vice president, president and president, vice president and four top officers all die, it seems to be remote. on the other hand, it gives the president the problem of choosing from among former presidents and vice presidents and governors. it provides a kind of standing for former presidents and vice presidents to reemerge with a current role. i would point out that in the event of a catastrophe, that the president -- that the country tends to rally around whoever is in charge. we certainly discovered that after 9/11.

and that to me this is an entirely -- it's a very remote and yet unnecessary procedure. and i guess -- you know, i would strongly oppose it. >> just one point. i must say i find this report is terrific and generating the kind of discussion you've heard from my colleagues, and that's in and of itself going to be a major contribution. you're going to force, hopefully, a lot more focus on these subjects. i was thinking to myself that if you -- if you -- and again, i just read the report a few times in preparation for this panel. i'm revolving myself, i suppose,

because of the book update in this subject that i thought i had graduated from a long time ago. and it seemed to be true and back to it 'cause it's so important and interesting. i think i would give a little more consideration to dropping the acting secretaries. let's take your recommendation to the top four. if the number two person in the state department -- the number two person in the ag's office you start rendering more remote the possibility of what you worry about, everybody being wiped out 'cause now you have more people in the line of succession. and my recollection your commission was under-secretary, i think, of the state department. you'll have to double-check me

on that. and if it came to him having to step forward, he would have done a very fine job under the circumstances. and also in the federal law today, under 5 u.s.c. takes over the absence or death or vacancy of the head of the department and the 25th amendment in terms of conferring authority on the cabinet along with the vice president to declare a president disabled specifically in the legislative history and its -- we've seen it -- you know it, it contemplates the acting secretaries stepping up to be in place of the head of the department where there's no head of the department. as i say, what your report is going to do, i think, is produce

maybe a lot of ideas and suggestions and at the end of the day, if something emerges from the process, you will have made a major contribution so i salute you. >> i'm not going to answer every objection. we have a panel coming up which will probably talk about some of these issues. do we have any other comments on the panel before we turn to a few questions from the audience? let's open it up for a couple of questions and then we will move to our second panel. right here and you can identify yourself when the mic comes. >> john wallstetter senior policy institute. would you be able solve the fair amount of problem with the following simple requirement in any meeting which has -- let's say four of the big six or all of the big six present, meaning, president, vice president, and the four top cabinet secretaries in the line of succession. they have to take place in an

underground facility that is reinforced because if you're talking about a nuclear blast, it is not going to take out somebody, particularly, if it's a small device, it will wipe them all and a whole bunch of buildings, kill 50, or 100 or 100,000 people on the surface but if you are in a bunker at the white house or at the treasury department and you are 100 feet down, you will survive. and that, therefore, with some modification and also taking into account, for example, on some ceremonial occasions that you can have people -- a helicopter right away. they don't have to be in sacramento. it's just as good if they were in richmond. where you can get a lot of the -- reduce the chance of having people all taken out at one time. the second question, if i could throw a second quick one -- there's a related question -- i took a quick look at your scenario. the first thing that's going to happen after that is marshall law.

somebody is going to be taking command in the streets. and you need a provision that deals with marshall law whomever takes control if it's the president if he survivors or someone else there will be marshall law after a nuclear event or a big wmd event, whether you call it that or not. for example, you get 30 days maximum before, you know, it's half the period of the war powers act to commit forces overseas where whoever has marshall law gets it whether it's the president or some senior surviving commander. after that you have to go to some sort of a congress and get 90-day extensions at the same time but some sort of procedure to bound marshall law as well because you're going to have that after an event like that. >> i'll take on the first 'cause i'm not sure what to say about the second. that may be a wise idea. on the first, obviously jim mann brought this up for the idea of

operationally trying to make sure the members in the line of succession are not all together or not in danger and that, of course, goes on today. and, you know, this is the most extreme possibility for which we feel the need to have some people outside of washington is we hope very remote and extreme. i'm not sure your scenario completely deals with it, though, an underground bunker wouldn't stop someone with an infectious disease that was put upon us, a biological weapon. it's not as simple as putting them underground and your point is well-taken. it's complementary to what we say. if you think it's sufficient, we may not need to do this but it's something that we are generally in favor of the operation of. anybody else want to jump in? okay. do we have another question? if not, we can turn to the second panel. so i'm going to turn it to tom mann who's going to moderate the second panel.

[applause] >> let me thank jen marsico for helping with this event. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> how is this for seamless transition. a continuity from panel one to panel two. i'm tom mann. i'm delighted to be a part of this event and to be part of this project and the commission. norm and i have over the years collaborated with our two institutions on a number of projects. and going back a decade ago, john fortier has been an important part of all