I am writing today on a secret government program, which is not a conspiracy theory.

It’s called Continuity of Government (CoG).

The program dates back to the Cold War with President Dwight Eisenhower’s executive order to develop underground quarters for top government officials in the event of a nuclear attack by Russia.

Ironically CoG continued as a sleepy program until President Ronald Reagan’s time in office when Russia threw up their hands up and said “Nyet”. In the 1980’s Congressman Dick Cheney and private citizen Don Rumsfeld, who had worked in President Gerald Ford’s administration, decided to rewrite the CoG program to update its relevance with Reagan signing off on it.

The new program did update the tunnels, but it also granted special powers to the CoG program. Now in the case of any special emergency (like the one declared over the Covid-19 pandemic) this secret alternative government could become operational.

The first public mention of CoG came during the Iran-Contra Congressional hearings in the spring of 1987. During his testimony before the Senate National Security Council staff member Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North attempted to bring up CoG as a reason for the illegal operation of using arms sales profits to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Before he could finish the phrase Senate committee chairman Democrat Daniel Inouye slammed his gavel and called a point of order saying that CoG was classified information, which could not be mentioned in open testimony.

Much of what we know about the CoG appears in the writings of Professor Peter Dale Scott, who coined the phrase Deep State in the early ’90’s.

One of the key provisions included in CoG is the suspension of the Constitution, specifically to the writ of habeas corpus and the succession of the presidency.

We saw portions of CoG implemented on the morning of 9-11 by its two new authors — then-Vice President Cheney and then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. While President George H. Bush was on Air Force One, some of the CoG protocols were instituted. The gang (Cheney and Rumsfeld) also used some of the special powers in the CoG executive order during the Lehman Bros. crisis in Sept. 2007.

So here we are today and we get glimpses of CoG in the daily briefings. Attorney General Bill Barr requested the suspension of habeas corpus, which includes many provisions for those charged with a crime including the rights to be seen by a judge for a bail hearing and a speedy trial.

While Barr requested of Congress the right to suspend the writ of habeas corpus formally, this has already occurred in some federal jurisdictions including the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York due to the virus outbreak.

Another peek behind the CoG curtain was when President Trump suggested last weekend that he was thinking of quarantining the New York metropolitan area due to soaring Covid-19 cases. This was not just an off-the-cuff remark, but it was a nod to the extraordinary powers afforded him under CoG. Trump did back off the thought, but it could have been a signal to those in the know that he was aware that many Constitutional rights hang in the balance right now.

The most dramatic dictates of CoG would be if President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence became ill due to Covid-19, then United States Air Force four-star General Terrence O’Shaughnessy, commander of the United States Northern Command, would be installed as office holder until either Trump or Pence could return to service or a new election could be held.

This is one of the most controversial aspects to CoG. Under the Constitution House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would be next in line in a scenario where President Trump and Veep Pence were unfit to lead.

It’s my belief that this succession plan would not be executed before martial law was instituted as a means to quell any follow-up unrest.

However we are in uncharted waters when it comes to our current situation and I believe that any and all aspects of Continuity of Government are on the table, it’s just that most of us are unaware.

Let’s hope this program remains under wraps and we move past this crisis.