Eisenhower’s Shadow Government

During the early stages of the Cold War, the Eisenhower Administration began preparations for a worst-case scenario, and created continuity of government (CoG) plans that would dwarf any prior civil defense strategy. At the heart of this planning was a secret list of officials waiting in the wings, who would assume immense emergency powers in the event of an attack, “to mobilize resources for a maximum national effort”. These emergency appointees were delegated powers ranging from the familiar (wartime transport and food production), to less glamorous specialties like energy and minerals. The wording of the letters Eisenhower sent out is matter-of-fact, and flatly conveys the exigency of the situation;

“…as soon as you have assured yourself, by any means at your disposal, that (each agency in question) has been created you shall immediately assume active direction of that agency and its function…”

Flying by the seat of your pants is not something top-level administrators are expected to do — this kind of rapid mobilization was only considered feasible to Eisenhower due to his wartime command experience, especially his familiarization with logistics on a massive scale. Even current CoG plans are not this drastic; the current-day emergency agencies and response groups are already demarcated (FEMA), and equipped for the job. This is why Eisenhower deliberated on his choices for years, and only sent out his letters after he was satisfied that his candidates would accept the offer, and perform to his standards. He was breaking new ground, and needed a team that he could rely on to back him up — the Eisenhower Ten.

Eisenhower’s standards for his emergency government were incredibly stringent. A half-century later, former Presidential staff secretary Gen. Goodpaster remarked; “that list is absolutely glittering in terms of its quality.” He was not wrong: two of Ike’s picks for the Emergency Agencies were Cabinet members he already knew — a third was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The last six, while not government employees, were leaders in their fields, all holding C-level positions prior to their letters from Eisenhower. Every single appointee had ample prior experience, more than enough for Eisenhower to trust them with emergency power — this is not conjecture: in his response to the only resignation of his appointees, Eisenhower states; “It has been all the more valuable, thanks to your facility — gained in long experience with government, perhaps? — for pointing a way to the solution of difficult problems.”

Once he was satisfied with his candidates, Eisenhower sent out a series of letters, all of them reading as follows:

Dear [ADMINISTRATOR_NAME]:

“It is always possible that the United States might need suddenly to mobilize resources for a maximum national effort. Although it is my devout hope that this will never happen, the national interest requires that against that possibility we achieve and maintain a high state of readiness. I am delighted to know of your willingness to serve as Administrator of the Emergency [X] Agency in the event that a national emergency would compel its formation, and, accordingly, I hereby appoint you such Administrator effective upon activation of the agency. As Administrator, you will, in the performance of your duties, be subject to the direction, control and coordination of the Director of the Office of Emergency Resources, and you will receive such compensation as the President may hereafter specify. Your tenure as Administrator-designate or as Administrator shall be at the pleasure of the President. In the event of an emergency, as soon as you have assured yourself, by any means at your disposal, that an Emergency [X] Agency has been activated, you shall immediately assume active direction of that agency and its function. This letter will constitute your authority. I have requested the Director of the Office of Defense Mobilization to communicate with you regarding any planning activities in connection with the creation of and activation of an Emergency [X] Agency. Until such time as an Emergency [X] Agency may be created, I am certain that you will treat your designation as Administrator as classified information and that you will impress upon any staff you select to assist you that their designations are to be treated similarly as classified information. You have my deep appreciation of your acceptance of this vitally important assignment.”

Origins

Eisenhower was deeply worried about the nation’s ability to react to a nuclear strike. His command experience taught him that the worst needed to be prepared for. In a 1954 bunker meeting, he voiced his concerns:

“The President referred to Mr. Weeks’ statement that he had sent 450 people to a relocation site rather smoothly. He reminded the Cabinet that in a real situation these will not be normal people — they will be scared, will be hysterical, will be “absolutely nuts”. We are simply going to have to be prepared to operate with people who are “nuts”. (Mr. Wilson at this point commented humorously that he could say he was used to working with people who were nuts.)”

The drastic difference between drills and actual conflict was not lost on Eisenhower, who had seen well-trained forces crumble under contact with the enemy in both World Wars. The difference of a ‘real situation’ has been evident in this century, too — the ground stop order issued on 9/11 was the third time all air traffic was grounded in the US, the previous two times being Operation Skyshield I/II — yet the third ground stop did not go nearly as smoothly as the first two.

“This characterization will apply to Department Heads — to the President himself; we will be a bewildered people. The plans for work at relocation centers should be drawn up on the simplest possible lines, in order to enable a man who will be completely beside himself with grief and apprehension about his family and his country to carry on and do something which will be of use.”

Very rarely does a President express the limits of his own faculties; to hear Eisenhower candidly describe the likelihood that he may lose control of himself is grim. It is a lesson that his combat experience taught him, a lesson that the Department of Defense has integrated into all levels of training. It is best summed up with a motto associated with elite units, like flight demonstration teams, or special operations forces: “You will not rise to the occasion, but default to the level of your training.”

“The President stressed the job of trained government people is to preserve some common sense in a situation where everybody is going crazy. Who is going to bury the dead? Where would one find the tools? The organization to do it? We must not assume that we are going to handle these problems with calmness. Any such assumption would be completely unrealistic.”

Eisenhower’s focus on dealing with mass quantities of dead civilians is a focus that did not leave the government — the Civil Defense pamphlets disseminated at a household level did in fact include instructions on burying the dead, though the pamphlets gloss over the fact that the dead are likely to be your family, and neighbors.

“The President added that he thought the greatest lessons we have learned is the growing understanding which all of us have found as to how necessary this work is.”

This ‘growing understanding’ was an understatement — to those born after the invention of nuclear weapons, the threat of atomic war is far more natural than to those who remember life before their use. At the time of these remarks, nuclear weapons had seen less than a decade of operational use and deployment.

“The President commented vigorously that we simply are not going to be issuing ration cards and deciding how much gasoline people will have. We will be running soup kitchens — we are going to be taking care of a completely bewildered population.”

Eisenhower’s strategic mindset really shines here — he clearly understood the nature of a countervalue strike; there are no front lines, there are no safe zones, every single civilian will be a potential target. This was a very valid concern for his administration, as well as his successors; cities were the focus of nuclear battle plans for several decades, only recently did countervalue strikes become the norm (countervalue strikes are city-focused, counterforce strikes focus on command and control infrastructure).

Operation Alert

For the first and only time, these nine men met, in utter secrecy — Operation Alert, a United States Federal Civil Defense Agency drill, had been a yearly exercise since 1954. It was during the first test of Operation Alert that Eisenhower voiced his concerns (quoted above) about the nation’s preparedness for a nuclear strike. The meeting was at Mt. Weather, one of the US’ major (known) CoG facilities. Assembling the expanded cabinet did not go smoothly — beyond issues with Mt. Weather’s capacity/command capabilities, the CIA director’s (Allen Dulles) Cadillac broke down, and he had to carpool with George Kistiakowsky, Eisenhower’s science advisor. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Twining, failed to make the meeting entirely, having missed his helicopter.

The Appointees

The candidates did not disappoint, especially in regards to the secrecy clause. Frank Stanton, the last living member on Eisenhower’s list, only spoke about the emergency plans fifty years later; at the age of ninety-six, in a 2004 telephone interview, Stanton mentioned that were it not for the inquiry, he would have never mentioned the program. He is the only member of the E10 to discuss the emergency agencies publicly. Compared to leaks coming out of many different classified programs over the years, this level of secrecy, for such a duration, is nothing short of exceptional.

Stanton’s ‘day job’ was President of CBS, a position he held for twelve years before his appointment by Eisenhower, and another thirteen years afterwards. Unsurprisingly, he was appointed as the Administrator of the Emergency Communications Agency — his wartime roles would have included the running of CONELRAD, the US government’s emergency broadcasting system at the time. Older radios still show evidence of CONELRAD — for a decade-long period, from the end of the Korean War, to 1963, all radios manufactured in the US had two Civil Defense frequencies marked on the dial, so that civilians would be able to tune in to Stanton’s emergency broadcasts.

His fellow agency administrators had similar positions that directly corresponded with their covert roles:

William McChesney Martin Jr., Chairman of the Federal Reserve, was selected by Eisenhower to run the Emergency Stabilization Agency — it had a very similar role to the Economic Stabilization Agency, the latter extant during the Korean War. Both agencies had a focus on exerting controls on the civilian economy, in order to keep scarce and critical goods available for defense manufacturing — the only difference being the magnitude and duration of the emergency in question. Martin was an excellent choice for the job, already known as the ‘boy wonder’, for his tenure as President of the NYSE, at the age of thirty-one.

Frank Pace Jr. was Eisenhower’s first selection for the Emergency Transport Agency, which would facilitate emergency logistics for the Emergency Agencies, as well as integration with surviving Department of Defense infrastructure. Pace was no stranger to emergency logistics, having served as the third Secretary of the Army, during the Korean War. For the next decade, including his tenure as an Emergency Appointee, Pace served as the CEO of General Dynamics, a position that further influenced his appointment. Despite these stellar qualifications, Pace felt he was unable to properly act as an Emergency Appointee, due to constraints Eisenhower himself acknowledged, when accepting Pace’s resignation: “I do understand the limits that have been placed upon your time and availability for this task.” Pace had a massive defense corporation to run, a duty that in wartime, would require all of his faculties.

George Pierce Baker was Eisenhower’s replacement for Pace, who tendered his resignation five days into 1959. Baker began his faculty tenure at Harvard in 1928, joined the Business School faculty in 1936, leaving in WWII to serve on the Civil Aeronautics Board, eventually appointed director of the Office of Transport and Communications Policy for the Department of State. Postwar, he served in the United Nations Transport and Communications Commission, and subsequently returned to Harvard, as the James J. Hill Professor of Transportation

Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower’s only Secretary of Agriculture, was the first clergy member to be a cabinet secretary in a century (Benson was President of the LDS Church from 1985, until his death). His appointment was to chair the Emergency Food Agency, which would be responsible for distribution, production, and storage in the event of an emergency.

Harold Boeschenstein, the first president of Owens-Corning Fiberglass, was appointed by Eisenhower to chair the Emergency Production Agency, which would be responsible for wartime production strategy, with an architecture heavily based on the Defense Production Act of 1950 — it would prioritize and allocate supplies/manufacturing sites for wartime production. Boeschenstein had prior experience — having served as Vice Chairman for Operations, on the War Production Board during WWII.

Theodore F. Koop, appointed to run the Emergency Censorship Agency, was also director of news and public affairs at CBS, and later named VP for the broadcaster, until his retirement. His authorship of a book titled Weapon of Silence: Secrets, Censors, and Spies, was demonstrative to Eisenhower of his deep understanding of the necessity of censorship in wartime conditions; it serves as a template for the actions he would have undertaken in his appointed position, and the underlying logic behind them.

James P. Mitchell, Eisenhower’s Secretary of Labor for two terms, was appointed to run the Emergency Manpower Agency, which would be involved in drafting civilians into war work, as well as reorganizing and reassigning surviving federal assets — the agency’s reorganization duties would be quite similar to what was brought up in Eisenhower’s cabinet meeting several years prior:

“He then asked if the Budget had any comments and Mr. Brundage remarked that he was impressed by the low priority which had to be given such problems as indemnification, losses, insurance, etc. — these things will have to wait. The Secretary of the Treasury voiced the general feeling that the consideration of such problems was totally out of place in the early stages of an attack.”

Aksel Nielsen, who was also appointed by Eisenhower to the Advisory Commission on Government Housing Policies and Programs, and later served on the Civil and Defense Mobilization Board, was chosen to chair the Emergency Housing Agency. This agency would be primarily responsible for housing the civilian population after an initial exchange, as counter-value attacks were still the strategic norm, and would be for another decade. Eisenhower knew this very well, he was directly involved in the strategic bombing planning in WWII, which often involved countervalue strikes, like the raid on Dresden. Eisenhower also knew Nielsen well — they were fishing partners, and Nielsen was the financial advisor to Ike’s in-laws.

John Ed. Warren, Eisenhower’s choice to run the Emergency Energy and Minerals Agency, was chosen in part for his wide-ranging connections and knowledge, that he had gained as an executive for the First National City Bank (presently known as Citibank)

Replacements for the Replacements

In the only meeting of the Emergency Agency Designees, at Mt. Weather, the topic of filling posts in the Emergency Agencies was brought up, and it was followed up by Leo Hoeigh, director of the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization — he sent out a memorandum, which included the following:

“Those Emergency Designees who have not already done so are to furnish me with the names of the persons they would select to serve as their immediate deputies or as “assistant administrators” of their agencies. Essential biographical data on each nominee will be requested. I will forward the nomination lists to your office for White House approval. Subsequent to the clearance provided for in step 2 above, I will send appointment letters to those selected for each of the positions. At the same time, I will invite them to become members of the OCDM component of the National Defense Executive Reserve in order to assure their availability for training-type assignments.”

We do not know anything further about these secondary appointees, though the National Defense Executive Reserve is still a part of CoG operations. It is currently operated by FEMA.

Dutton Memorandum

Every Presidential administration has issues with the transfer of power, but Kennedy’s incoming administration had a unique issue — Frederick G. Dutton, Special Assistant to the President, discovered the existence of the Eisenhower Ten, including that the appointments had no expiration date. In his letter to MacGeorge Bundy, the sitting National Security Advisor, Dutton delineated his concerns with this arrangement:

“You may recall that in late May, I wrote advising of the existence of classified letters from President Eisenhower to ten private citizens throughout the country giving them authority over various parts of the economy and total society in the event of a declaration of a national emergency. The President subsequently asked that letters from him to the individuals involved terminating their contingent authority be held until reorganization of the civil defense structure and related operations to take effect in the event of a national emergency. I would appreciate notification by you as to whether that outstanding authority should be terminated, as I recommend; continued under new letters of instructions from the President; or what course you may decide to have taken. This matter merely relates to cleaning up prior conditional operations in the field of national security and should , I presume, be routed to you before any action is taken.”

Dutton’s concerns were taken seriously — unchecked transadministrative authority is anathema to any democracy; the details of the Kennedy Administration’s reorganization of national security policy are classified, but we do know that the authority of the Emergency Agency Designees was rescinded. When asked in a telephone interview about the Kennedy Administration’s termination of their authority, Frank Stanton replied:

“I don’t recall if it was from Kennedy, but I do remember getting that kind of letter.”

Just as the Emergency Agency Designees’ letters were sent out in unison, it is highly likely that the termination letters were sent out the same way. What we do not know is whether the ‘new letters of instructions from the President’ were issued. If they were, one prime candidate would have been Howard Hughes — his involvement with the CIA’s Project Azorian is exactly the kind of willing cooperation Eisenhower needed from his appointees. It wasn’t the only time Hughes’ corporate interests worked surreptitiously with the government; the very first stealth helicopters were developed by the CIA, in concert with Hughes Aircraft, and Hughes Tool Co.