It's September 11, 2001, and passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 have learned that their Boeing 757 has been hijacked. They also have learned, from desperate cell phone conversations with loved ones, about the terrorist crashing of jetliners into the Twin Towers in New York.

Flight 93 has turned south from its westerly Newark-to-San Francisco course and is headed toward Washington, D.C. No one knows what happened during the last seconds of Flight 93, but we do know that Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, and other passenger heroes aboard decided to rush the hijackers and sacrifice themselves, if need be, to keep the jetliner from becoming another suicide weapon against another terrorist target. Thanks to their courage, Flight 93 crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside rather than the U.S. Capitol building.

But what if Flight 93 had crashed into the Capitol, killing hundreds of members of Congress and incapacitating others with serious injuries? Or what if terrorists hit the Capitol with deadly biological agents? Or what if...? The "what if" doomsday scenarios are endless. And a private, high-powered commission of former government officials and think-tank types is exploiting these frightening scenarios on behalf of an ulterior agenda.

"Hole in the Constitution"?

Over the past year, the Continuity of Government Commission (COG) has been ramping up a major propaganda campaign to amend the U.S. Constitution. "The issue is real now," warns commission member Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami and former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration. "Those [9-11] attacks were a warning about how would we govern if there were some terrible tragedy," Shalala says.

"We have a hole in the Constitution that the framers never could have anticipated," says Dr. Norman Ornstein, who serves as COG's counsel and has written many of its op-ed pieces. Dr. Ornstein is also a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which, along with the Brookings Institution, is a principal sponsor of the commission's amendment effort.

In the event of a successful terrorist attack on Congress, the COG members warn, our government could be paralyzed when it is needed most. In light of 9-11 and the motives and capabilities of terrorist groups and their state sponsors, these concerns are not unfounded. Certainly we should take reasonable security precautions to protect elected officials. And prudence dictates that we review the laws and procedures for succession to insure continuity of government should the worst happen. We may indeed find that some changes would be wise.

However, is it necessary to change our Constitution to address these dangers? More importantly, do the amendment proposals offered by the Continuity of Government (COG) folks properly address those dangers, and are they being offered in good faith? (Concerning the "good faith" of the COG proposals and the background of its members and sponsoring organizations, see the TNA article "Who's Attacking the Constitution.")

On June 4th, at a Washington, D.C., press conference broadcast to the nation by C-SPAN, a COG panel issued a report and kicked off the current push for constitutional "reform." The Constitution, they pointed out, provides for state governors to appoint replacements for Senate vacancies until elections can be held. However, House members must be elected by the people. If a substantial number of Representatives were killed in an attack, the COG warned, it would take too long for the states to hold special elections to fill the vacancies.

What kind of solution has the COG brain trust fashioned to fix this alleged constitutional crisis? Here is the short version of COG's proposed amendment, as crafted by Brookings scholar Thomas Mann (an alternative, much longer amendment proposal by AEI's Ornstein is available on the COG website): "Congress shall have the power to regulate by law the filling of vacancies that may occur in the House of Representatives and Senate in the event a substantial number of members are killed or incapacitated."

Under this COG amendment scheme, a simple majority of Congress could pass legislation radically altering the constitutional prescription for House and Senate succession. "This bait and switch involving the Senate is a key indicator that the commission is disingenuously pursuing an agenda other than what it publicly claims," warns George Detweiler, constitutional scholar and former assistant attorney general for the state of Idaho. "In all of the commission's dire alarms about a supposed hole in the Constitution," says Mr. Detweiler, "the focus is on the alleged crisis concerning succession in the House. COG insists this must be remedied. The commission members point to the Senate succession as the model that the House should imitate, but then their proposed amendment sweeps away that same Senate succession as it is currently provided for in the 17th Amendment to the Constitution."

COG co-chair Alan Simpson, a former U.S. senator, has acknowledged the non-problem with regard to replacing vacant Senate seats in an emergency. During COG's C-SPAN program, Simpson said: "I think the thing that I would emphasize is that we can understand the situation in the House of Representatives. The Senate can be replaced in 24 to 48 hours. That's no problem. That's in the Constitution."

That's no problem? It's in the Constitution already? Then why is the commission trying to change something that it acknowledges is already working fine? The COG goal of making it possible for both the houses of Congress to be controlled by appointed members is a radical and dangerous proposition. This combining of the Senate with the House succession is a deliberate and transparent sleight-of-hand, which should signal the American people that the COG effort is marching under a false banner, Detweiler told The New American.

Genuine Dangers?

But are there not genuine dangers to our government like those cited by COG? Yes, the dangers posed by terrorism are real. But are the dangers really any greater today than they were during the Cold War, when the possibility of a nuclear missile attack presented a similar, if not greater, scenario of destruction? Is it now absolutely essential that Congress be able immediately to reassemble following an attack? So essential and urgent that we must dispense with elections and allow House seats to be filled by appointment? Do not the president, state governors, and local officials have the authority and the means to carry on the vital functions of government in an emergency until House vacancies can be filled by election? "I am unconvinced," says Detweiler, "that the terrorist scenarios pose a greater danger to the continuity of constitutional government than the changes proposed by COG."

Detweiler points out that the vague wording of the COG amendment is especially troubling. There are 100 Senators and 435 House members. How many of them must be killed or incapacitated to reach the undefined "substantial number" triggering the amendment? Who will determine if and when a living member is "incapacitated"?

Details, details - why get so concerned about such minutiae? Leave all that up to Congress. That's precisely how commission members responded to these concerns during their C-SPAN conference. Former senator and COG co-chairman Alan Simpson told the C-SPAN audience that "the word 'temporary' appears all through this document. That there would be temporary appointment, temporary this, temporary that, because you cannot - you cannot go much further than that. And we leave the legislation to Congress. We give the key to Congress, and they have to open the lock...."

Should Congress have this key to which Senator Simpson refers? Thomas Jefferson didn't think so. He warned that we must "bind men down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution." The men he was talking about were those holding the reins of government. He advised chains, not keys. The COG elite wants to unfetter government, to unlock those chains that were designed to make government the servant and the people its master.

During the COG's C-SPAN affair, a member of the audience asked this very pertinent question: "Were there any concerns, in proposing such a broad constitutional [amendment], of some possible mischief down the line, since this is a law that could change over and over again? And why not specify a direct process in the amendment for appointing people?"

Co-chair Lloyd Cutler responded: "One reason not to specify a direct process is that it may prove to be very difficult to organize elections.... [I]t's much easier to amend and correct for a mistake by further legislation than if everything had been incorporated in the constitutional amendment and then turned out to be a mistaken decision by the country as a whole."

But that is the very point of having a written Constitution: to set the structures, powers, and processes of government in a fixed order that may only be changed through a slow, laborious amending process that assures that changes in the basic law of the land are not made whimsically. The changes favored by Cutler, Simpson, and company would create an open-ended process that invites changes to our basic structures of government with every political wind change. This is a prescription for confusion and instability, not the stability the commission says it is trying to guarantee.

A confusing array of competing alternatives is already proliferating. Congress may choose to adopt the COG's proposal that governors appoint the replacements, selecting people of their choice or picking from a list of candidates that individual congressmen compile. Another option proposed by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) would ordain that surviving members of Congress make the appointments. Variations have been offered by Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

You can almost be certain that someone will propose an "independent, bipartisan" panel to make the appointments. In that case, don't be surprised if COG co-chairman Lloyd Cutler is appointed to head it, as he did the independent Quadrennial Commission that circumvented the Constitution to give Congress its biggest historical pay hike.

The Constitution requires that a proposed amendment be approved by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and then ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures. It is a purposely long process, usually given a seven-year time limit. However, commission members have expressed optimism that this amendment can be pushed through in one year. They hope to start the actual state adoption process rolling for the proposed constitutional amendment in 2004. Another serious terrorist attack, or a series of terrorist events, undoubtedly would help grease the skids for the COG schemes.

We say "schemes" - plural. The COG architects have more plans in mind. Later this year the commission will be issuing another report on its proposed reforms concerning presidential succession. There may also follow a proposal for judicial succession. It is becoming very clear that this is not a Continuity of Government effort, but a Co-opting of Government ruse. The task ahead for all who cherish liberty is to expose and oppose these ploys and to convince our legislators and fellow citizens to hold on tight to the Constitution.

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