History
A Continuity of Operations Plan (or Continuity of Government Plan) has been a part of government operations since at least the Cold War, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower provided (via executive order) various measures designed to ensure that the government of the United States would be able to continue operating after a nuclear war.
These measures included construction of underground facilities such as "Mount Weather", a hollowed-out putatively nuclear-proof mountain in western Virginia with a mailing address in Berryville, Virginia. The public can now tour one such facility, intended to house the entire United States Congress, on the grounds of the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Other provisions of the plans included executive orders that designated certain government officials to assume Cabinet and other executive branch positions and carry out the responsibilities of the position if the primary office holders are killed. There has been a formal line of succession to the presidency since 1792 (currently found in the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, 3 U.S.C. ยง 19). This runs from the Vice President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, President pro tempore of the Senate, and then through the Cabinet secretaries in a sequence specified by Congress.
Continuity of government plans are not limited to the federal government. The majority of states have constitutional provisions that provide for the succession of government in the event of an "enemy attack."
Read more about this topic: Federal Executive Branch ''Continuity Of Operations Plan''
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)