Since writing this journal, I have been astonished to find
that many people are taking it to indicate that I believed
that the White House would be destroyed by a nuclear weapon
over the weekend of August 18-19. How anyone could read
something so ludicrous into my words I cannot imagine. But I
would like to add this to the journal, from a posting that I
made on my message board today, August 22, on one of the
threads that contains this misunderstanding.
I wrote:
"I am completely at a loss to understand why people think
that my journal on this subject was predicting that the
White House would be nuked last weekend. Where did I say
that? What I did say was, "And I would hardly be surprised
to find that nothing particularly extraordinary happens next
weekend."
"Then I went on to talk about the White House, but not in
the context of August 18-19. I warned, as I have been
warning for years, that we need a National Recovery Act to
mandate what the governors must do to restore the union if
Washington IS destroyed."
"It is, without question, the number one target in the
western world for such an attack, and our preparations for
such a contingency are inadequate until there is law in
place that covers the worst-case scenario of the sudden and
total destruction of all three branches of government at the
same moment, which is exactly what would happen if a nuclear
device was detonated a thousand feet above the Washington
Monument, say, when congress was in session, the Supreme
Court was meeting, and the president and vice president were
in residence, which is true about 60% of the time."
Now, here is the journal as it first appeared on August 12,
without a word changed. Please don't read into it things
that are not there:
There was a report on this website recently to the effect
that a number of crop circles seem to be pointing to August
18-19 as a date of some importance. One such circle even
seems to suggest the interior structure of an atomic bomb
surrounded by a crescent symbol...or is that a Wankel Rotary
Engine? Or--most likely--is it entirely inappropriate to
read these messages into phenomena as enigmatic as the circles?
Now, I am not much of a believer in UFO-related predictions,
because I have seen so many of them come and go without
incident. And I would hardly be surprised to find that
nothing particularly extraordinary happens next weekend.
Nevertheless, there have been some odd indications recently
that something might indeed be building in the world of
terrorism. First, a few weeks ago, al Quaeda published a
brief video that showed President Bush in front of a burning
White House.
This goes beyond next weekend--far beyond. In fact, what I
am talking about is a disaster that could happen at any
moment, this year, next years, or in ten years. And we have
not prepared for it appropriately, and we need to change that.
A week ago, the Israeli
intelligence news website DEBKAnews published a story to the
effect that they were picking up chatter from al Quaeda
cellphones suggesting that they were going to engage in an
act of nuclear terrorism in an American city.
Homeland Security took this seriously enough to deploy
radiation counters in New York City, but nothing unusual was
found.
It is also true that August 19 is the anniversary of the
burning of the White House by the British on August 19,
1813, during the War of 1812.
Could it be that al Quaeda's objective is not New York but
Washington, and that they are going to try to attack the
White House on the anniversary of its burning?
Maybe and maybe not--but the fact that must be faced
remains: the number one terrorist nuclear target on this
planet is Washington, D.C.
In my book "the Secret School," I experimented with
prophecy--not very successfully, if you look at the book.
And I certainly hope that this particular one never comes
true.
Because of the threat, though, the president recently
ordered the entire federal government to create nuclear
survival plans.
This was a step that should have been taken years ago, and
it is very far from adequate. What would actually happen if
Washington was struck by a small nuclear weapon that
exploded--say--in a plane a thousand feet above the White
House, would be that the entire center of the US government
would be destroyed and immediately cease to function.
Within minutes, stock exchanges around the world would be
thrown into chaos. Most markets would close immediately.
Over the next few days, the US currency would collapse and
gold prices would soar.
It would be likely that all three branches of the US
government, not to mention the military high command, would
be decapitated. The military is prepared for command
decapitation, but it would still face complex, probably
insurmountable problems of command control and, above all,
supply.
Within a week, a combination of frantic cash runs and the
inability of the Federal Reserve to function, would result
in even the largest banks being without cash, and this
problem would quickly spread abroad, with extensive
consequences elsewhere.
Because of the fundamental mistake that there is no
established plan to reconstitute the federal government from
scratch, what would then happen is unknown. I recommended
in
the Secret School that a law be passed empowering the
governors to select an interim congress and executive
branch. But we have no such law, and therefore what would
follow would probably be years of political confusion,
economic catastrophe, and an enormous reduction in the
power
of the west.
And what if there was more than one bomb? Or if al Quaeda
could make convincing representations that there were
others?
The answer to that question is simple: with a single, small
nuclear weapon, they would have won. And what they might
then do, I can hardly imagine.
So, is this going to happen on the 19th? Probably not, but
that does not change the fact that it might happen, and that
our preparations to make sure that our way of life survives
are so sadly inadequate. We need a National Recovery Act
that clearly identifies just how the federal government is
to be re-created, should it suddenly be destroyed.
And we need that act now. No, we need it yesterday.
