The Plane: Cruising to Armageddon

...The helicopter flight to the plane designed to save the President took over twice the allowed time...

...It costs $250 million...

...Airborne at last, Brzezinski began testing vital communications channels...

...three minutes...

...You’re talking about delicate equipment functioning under conditions which are still largely unknown...

...When it has them it will be called the E-4B...

...Now,” said Brzezinski, pushing the button again...

...Yes sir,” answered the officer...

...Of course the stuff will work,”says Brigadier General Anderson W. Atkinson...

...Brzezinski’s usually jocular press secretary, former Time corkspondent Jerry Schecter, answered inquiries about the Plane’s passenger manifest with, “What are you trying to that investigating the Plane was not only un-American, but dangerous...

...In any case, the theory behind the Plane is simple...

...Who would the Plane pick up then...

...The Plane is supposed to get our Leader (whom the Pentagon calls the National Command Authority, or NCA) into the air...

...Since even a nuclear war might last more than three days, we would need more than one...

...It’s dark...

...Brzezinski had been briefed on plans for rescuing the President in case of an attack on Washington...

...Some defense experts dispute the strategic assumptions which caused the Plane to be developed...

...Still they all have an opinion...

...While everyone agrees that Fort Ritchie is obsolete and that the special 707s (the Plane’s predecessor) aren’t up to the job, not everyone agrees that the Plane is the right replacement...

...It is classified...

...But upgrading the other three E-4s will have to wait...

...Others question its effectiveness...

...It’s the most expensive aircraft ever...

...As head of Project Command and Control, General Atkinson is in charge of all three existing nuclear attack survival centers: Fort Ritchie, the Pentagon, and the Plane (all Planes are considered one unit...

...could, in total privacy, direct the next moves of World War 111...

...Would the expensive new transmitter really get the message across in a heavily radioactive atmosphere anyway...

...While some reporters went beyond the newsweeklies’ r e w r i t i n g of the Pentagon line, pointing out equipment deficiencies and the difference between the price tag the Pentagon put on the Plane and what each would actually cost the taxpayer ($1 17 million against $250 million apiece), most accounts didn’t mention the Plane’s gravest flaw...

...Brzezinski was even less pleased on learning that this first test was almost his own last flight...

...A few years ago, a mountain retreat 60 miles outside of Washington at Fort Ritchie was supposed to serve the same purpose as the Plane...

...asked Brzezinski...

...And so it went...

...Would the Russians rather deal with the Commander-in-Chief or up to 60 different groupings of senior military officers...

...But note, unlike Time, I said the National Command Authority, not the President...

...When pressed, the best the General would do was ask, “Isn’t there an amendment that covers that...

...That is for landbased missles...

...If they had their way, the Plane would have 13 separate communications systems, running the frequency range from VLF (Very Low Frequency) to SHF (Super High Frequency), an electromagnetic interference system, and more than 50 antennae to make the Plane look like the first flying porcupine...

...And waited...

...Some of my men almost shot down your helicopter as an intruder...

...If they knocked out Washington there would still be a minimum of 20 nuclear subs, 20 Strategic Air Command planes, and at least 20 missile launchers surviving for a second strike...

...Most of the debate over the Plane has centered on whether it will work, and whether it will act as a deterrent or goad to Soviet nuclear expansion...

...The main field is littered with assorted Special Mission Air Force jets that could carry Chip Carter to Peking or a congressional group to Taipei...

...That’s good,” said Brzezinski, “because the President authorized me to do just that...

...Perhaps they were in the middle of a hand of cards,” muttered Brzezinski, who was not amused...

...The Plane can stay aloft 72 hours...

...More specifically, from “just u n d e r t h e c o c k p i t i n a s m a l l , windowless, gold-carpeted room...

...stammered the officer...

...You’re very lucky, an Executive Protection Agency official told Brzezinski when the President’s adviser returned to his office...

...Not that the Air Force doesn’t long to put in jazzy new equipment...

...Blame funding foul-ups and production .delays...

...In most, the President is not aboard the Plane...

...In the rear, bunks of a more Spartan quality accommodate the 15man battle staff that operates the radar and computers and the 27-man crew that actually flies the Plane and feeds its precious cargo...

...Brzezinski dashed for the helicopter Blythe Babyak is a Washington writer...

...There’s a relatively spacious presidential cabin with an imperial gold color scheme...

...During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Larry O’Brien, then one of President Kennedy’s top advisors, was told to prepare to head for the hill...

...After going along for the ride, the press painted the Plane as a sort of electrified Fairy Godmother that can swoop down and bear our Leader away from the nuclear unpleasantness...

...Of course, the 19th Amendment gives the order of presidential succession: Vice President, Speaker of the House, President Pro Tempore of the Senate...

...From bases all over the world men and equipment move through a number of grim scenarios...

...and her allies...

...So what’s all this talk about saving the President...

...But if you’ve heard of it at all, you most likely know it as the Doomsday Plane, the name reporters gave it last February when Carter took them along on the Plane’s first presidential dry-run-a trip back home to Georgia...

...Call the Joint Chiefs,” he ordered...

...These qualities make it impossible for the Russians to “dig it out” (that is, blow the Plane to smithereens), as they could a stationary target, like, say, a shelter beneath the White House...

...After the first strike these men might not even function under a single chain of command...

...Some of the surviving commanders might be in the Plane, some under the sea, others in remote posts that had not been first strike targets...

...One of the four Planes is now in the shop getting these features...

...Have you practiced...

...That’s why I’m here...

...The plane’s “crack” crewsupposedly always on alert and ready to take off in three minutes-still wasn’t ready to go when Brzezinski finally got there...

...This underground shelter is now considered too vulnerable to direct strike to protect anything more lively than federal papers...

...To the left, over by the VIP area are the planes that shuttled Henry Kissinger around the world-those oft-televised beauties, Air Force One and Air Force Two...

...The men charged with preserving the NCA acted as if they hadn’t a clue...

...Don’t bother to continue,” said Professor Brzezinski...

...This last feature of the war games may be the most realistic...

...Now Brzezinski wanted to see for himself...

...If they come by sea, all the efficiency in the world couldn’t save the President...

...the President and up to three other people...

...No one engages in Washington power struggles to get a seat on the Top S e c r e t m a n i f e s t . Indeed, when confronted with nuclear contingency plans, people react in strange but telling ways...

...In fact, at present the Planes are so ill-equipped that they lack the dataprocessing equipment essential to sorting out the information that would flood in at the beginning of the trouble...

...All this and more...

...At Andrews Air Force base, just outside Washington, it sits apart from the other presidential planes...

...There are several cases in which the President would not have the opportunity or would choose not to get aboard the Plane...

...We test this system all the time...

...You just flunked communications...

...Get me to safety...

...But there, over on the right, far away from the other planes sits the big one...

...Twice a year, he, the boys, and their Plane take part in a nuclear war game with the entire global force of the U.S...

...So said Time’s article on the Plane...

...Finally, the helicopter-supposedly always hovering on the alert-dropped in to “save” them...

...His “boys” drill daily...

...Since civilian leaders are in Washington while our military commanders are scattered around the globe, it is likely-even logical-that not Jimmy Carter or Harold Brown, but instead each military outpost’s command, would determine how the U.S...

...We’ve deterrence enough...

...Now...

...The plan is this: a few days into the war, the Plane would land in some remote spot and transfer the NCA to another Doomsday Plane...

...Once out on the back lawn the stand-in First Family caught their breaths and waited...

...While the brass would prefer to have the Commander-inChief aboard the Plane, they don’t dispute its value without him...

...It can also take along 94 passengers...

...Of course,” the officer said proudly...

...In most the Plane acts as command central...

...It seems the officer Brzezinski called in was so unnerved by the thought of actually running the operation he’d been in charge of for years that he forgot to give the code words that would have let the Secret Service know the escape helicopter was “OK...

...With a smile, Brzezinski asked him if he could really get the President out before the missiles came in...

...Who can tell...

...1 know who I’d take...

...If he can’t make it, the Plane will take off without him,” explained General Atkinson...

...The rule is three men to a button.] Remember, those officers are the guys who really take this stuff seriously...

...No one would say, but the presence of Brzezinski’s secretary would indicate there is...

...Then there’s no place for me, said O’Brien...

...and waited...

...He was one of those selected to survive the holocaust and run the country...

...The Joint Chiefs already own four of them, and there are many who think that we need twice that number to insure the nation’s survival...

...Good copy, but not quite true...

...Is there a seat reserved for Mrs...

...As to the object of Brzezinski’s nearfatal flight, the machine that becomes this country’s nerve center if it comes to Armageddon: That’s the Plane...

...To this delicate but crucial point we shall return shortly...

...And how...

...It’s just impossible to say...

...Because the Plane is classified, few officials are willing to discuss it on the record...

...First, most of the Plane’s supposedly ultra-modern gear is just transferred equipment from the 707s of the Nixon era...

...General Atkinson is proud of his Plane...

...The General gives the Plane a much higher rating than either the command post under the Pentagon or the one under Fort Ritchie because it is “mobile, flexible, and redundant...

...Carter...

...Carter...

...A man who spent five years psyching out the Russians for us puts it this way, “If you were in Moscow, and you wanted to play nuclear pattycake with us, you’d leave Washington intact so you’d have someone to deal with, wouldn’t you...

...rendezvous on the White House back lawn, pausing in the outer office only long enough to pick a pretty secretary to play the role of Mrs...

...Right away, sir,” answered the crewman, who put the call through the White House switchboard...

...Washington insiders place the J o i n t Chiefs, Mondale, Vance, the CIA’S Turner, Brown, Brzezinski and various undersecretaries of State and Defense on the Plane...

...He’d love to help, he said, but officially he wasn’t even supposed to admit the Plane exists...

...You can’t mean now,” protested the officer...

...shrugged a nuclear engineer who’s paid to know these things...

...A 747 bigger than Air Force One, with a proud UNITED STATES OF AMERICA emblazoned in four-and-a-halffoot high letters where an ordinary plane’s windows would be...

...The guest list is a print-out of those who are essential to the President, the ultimate Who’s Who...

...Translated from Pentagonese, this means the General likes the Plane best because there are several (“redimdant”) of them, which can move to different locations (“mobile”), and can be employed in a variety of ways (“flexible...

...We’d have only minutes between the time our warning systems picked up the first Soviet missles and the time they hit their targets...

...Brzezinski pushed back his left sleeve and pressed a button on his watch...

...It’s...

...The head of the Executive Protection Agency was equally unhelpful, if less unnerved...

...What’s the value of a command post that doesn’t survive...

...The list seems extensive, but there are days when an attack on Washington could destroy the entire chain...

...Even when swept clean of classified equipment (so the press could take a peek), the Plane is as impressive inside as out...

...One quarter of a billion dollars...

...But when you begin to think about who might actually be on the Plane in the event of a nuclear war, you realize there may be a simpler reason to question our need for it...

...should retaliate...

...Yes, that’s very good of you to pick that one up,” said the General...

...Brzezinski called in the old Irishman charged with the rescue...

...The Plane goes by the title of E-4 Advanced A i r b o r n e Emergency Command Post (AAENCP...

...There’s no place for your wife, he was told...

...Despite t h e i r vague answers, military planners have, of course, spent a great deal of time figuring out precisely who would be aboard the Plane if all competent civilian authorities were dead or unavailable...

...The Plane: Cruising to Armageddon by Blythe Babyak About a week after the inauguration, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the President’s assistant for national security, decided to run a little test...

...five minutes...

...Computers, transmitters, conference rooms, map rooms, and a situation room with electronic screens ready to flash pictures of battle theaters in any part of the world...

...A Russian sub loitering 200 miles off the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay could land a missle in the capital in less than five minutes...

...Pretend an alarm has sounded...

...The Plane is not supposed to accommodate only the President...

...It’s snowing...

...O’Brien, a family man, asked about his wife...

...Pretend I’m the President...

...The new Plane does carry twice as many people as the Nixon model, but that’s about it...

...Then the NCA, secure in the world’s most sophisticated airborne computer and communications center, can assume control...

...That is why we say the Plane is designed to save t h e ‘National Command Authority.’ ” While General Atkinson admits the President may not make the Plane, he shies away from getting specific about who’d take the Commander-in-Chief‘s place...

...Then the Cabinet-State, Treasury, Defense, Attorney General, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, HEW, and finally HUD...

...If this were really an attack the White House switchboard would be demolished by now...

...Brzezinski’s test showed that for all the military’s “can-do,” it has yet to get the fine art of saving the President down to a science...

...The interior bears little resemblance to your average 747...

...We d o n ’ t need t h e P l a n e f o r deterrence...

...The second hand began its sweep...

...Brzezinski cut short the excuses with a look and left the stunned officer babbling a series of breathless orders into the phone...