For the development of the protection of prez press freedom and professional development and we have evolved into other areas over time holding news makers to account and also doing wonderful programs for the development of future journalists including charitable endeavors. So weve been at that since 1908. Which is why i have the phone out and i apologize for not well, tonight were pleased to host a lively discussion if it is not down right depressings given the nature of the book in some respects. Raven is a thoroughly researched book, and for years garrett who writes for politico and other publications is really dug into this to the point where nbc gave you a script option. [laughter] so forget about you have to, keep the mic. Im just mindings camera. We are on cspan. And interestingly enough, that it was an abc show thats popular right now survivor though abc gets the book. Competition is fair and square, right . The book raven rock delves into a schpeel on the continuity of government. A lot of us remember september 11th, a story that former Vice President dick cheney told many, many times about how the secret are service burst into the room and picked him up and shoved him off to undisclosed location. Theres a whole history behind that, and were excited garrett that youll be able to speak it that, why it came about and what its legacies are or its legacy is to the Current Administration and to future practices that we all sit around thinking god im not one of the magic numberses that going to survive incase somebody starts bolling the United States or Something Like that. But enough that. I want to thank some of our good people that put this, put tonight together. Our Headliners Team chaired by Betsy Fisher Martin and members was team who helped us tonight and heather weaver, and press club Lindsay Underwood were all appreciative of the hardwork that they do that we are bringing terms all of speakers to the club whether morning, noon or night and making sure that headliners come here are in the best interest and wonderfully newsworthy like garrett. So with the nuclear saver rally going on in north korea we might wonder especially those of us who lived both in the nations capitol what would happen if we face an eminent threat of being bombed . You know, who would survive . Who wouldnt survive whether security protocol and what whats the thinking that goes into that. And that gives us the book raven rock which if i remember right is named after underground bunker in my lovely home state of pennsylvania just north north of camp david. I want to garrett, ask you just to sort of map out, you know, fans, you know, you can do to whatever mod rn references you want it leave and go in there sutherland or whatever, to help people understand just how the continuity of government you know people talk about state of the union is always one member of the cabinet Supreme Court, it doesnt stay behind the case theres a disaster. Walk us through how this whole thing came about and then well get into some q and a. Sure. So thank you so much for having me tonight its a pleasure to be back here. This is the second time ive spoken at the National Press club of one of my books last book that i did was actually newly relevant once again a biography of Robert Mueller that yitd im sure someone will ask about that. Later tonight. But it was a very funny press club event that i remember distinctly because it was book is history of Robert Mueller and fbi and contingent of Russian Diplomats who came and sat right in the front row and proceeded to ask a bunch of questions about the fbis counterintelligence work in washington. [laughter] so anyway, i guess not that much has changed washington now over the last couple of years. [laughter] exactly. So this was a book that i started out writing i had in washington talked to those e vactd on 9 11, some people who were still part of these plans and this designated helicopters that would land wherever they were in washington and evacuate them and i actually for a story i actually flew on one of the helicopters from the base in andrews which you on a daily basis that are up there every day practicing for nuclear war and catastrophic attack on washington and evacuate nation top picials from across the city soso any time you see those blue and gold helicopters up there, thats what theyre doing. But when one of my colleagues at the magazine found a government id on the floor of a metro parking garage, an he brought it into me in the office he was like i figure you can figure out how to get this back to whoever this guy is. I explain metro to the subway and those who are in subway is not the vehicle you would want to use in evacuation. [laughter] for those who live here washington. It is while it is underground it is not among most reliable of the Transportation Options in washington. And so i look im looking at this id and i flip it over and it has these driving directions on the back of the id. And i get on google maps and google satellite and i follow these directions way out into West Virginia. And find that they end on the side of a mountain where this road disappears into what you can clearly see is like a concrete bunker door in side of unmarked mountain in West Virginia and not on any map. It is not a facility i had ever heard of. And i was like wow, like this is one of the modern parts of this program and it got me interested in figuring out where this program started. And where these programs started. And what resulted is this book raven rock is is just said named after one of the three primary bunkers around washington that the u. S. Government would use during an evacuation. Attack on washington and raven rock is the pentagon bunker outside wanes burrow, pennsylvania. And its enormous. Its withhold between 3,000 and 5,000 people. Its a literal hallowed out mountain with free stand ising buildings built inside of it. And you know has absolutely everything that you would need these massive reservoir for fuel, for drinking water. A Dining Facility, hospitals, Police Departments, Police Departments actually because of the way that government contracts workings and the benefit that accrue to, you know, minorityowned businesses, the bunker, Dining Facility is actually run by the indian tribe, the granite cove Dining Facility inside the mountain, and it is its one of what is just this Enormous Network of these facilities around washington. And some of them are pretty well known. Raven thes bunker where are Cabinet Agency cab tan secretaries would go in virginia which is run by fema which had is agency that runs all of these programs which are known as sort of collect ily as continue knewty of government program. But then almost during the height of the cold war almost every agency and dpght in the government had had their own bunker, and they have their own relocation facility, and state department set up this huge facility on cattle farm in virginia and green breyer bunker which many people around washington know is where congress would have gone. It was the large bunker hidden under the green breyer which had is Luxury Resort in white filter springs, West Virginia. Thats now open as a tourist attraction and is well worth going and you can sort of sit there in House Chamber and senate chaimer and like imagine what war would have been like in those days. But you know, every Government Agency had its own relocation facility and there were more than 100 facilities around washington. The book traces rise and fall offed that mrgs administration and municipal to present did i and they have two developments that arrived at the end of world war ii. The first, obviously, being atomic bomb and for the first tile the idea that an entire city could just be destroyed in an instant. And as atomic age developed the second part of this came into play which was the rise of the atomic arsenal and the rise of these Nuclear Weapons required new Communication System in order to allow the president of the United States to control and demand these Nuclear Weapons. And so raven rock is in some ways story of unfolding communications revolution, and a the story of this systems that we built to allow the president of the United States to have command and control and the launch authority for Nuclear Weapons no matter where in the world the president is. And sort of part of i think, what we forget about is all of these things that we think of is just being the modern ma jest imperial presidency are, in fact, just fancy Communications Tools to it allow the president to launch Nuclear Weapons from wherever he is. So air force one, marine one, you know the armored motorcade that we see around washington are effectively just fancy Communications Tools to ensure that the president of the United States can launch and access the Nuclear System wherever he is, and that all of this technology basically came into play as part of this. You know, the first president ial helicopter trips were evacuations from the white house lawn during the operation alert exercises of the 1950s which people of a certain generation will remember as the duck and cover drill and birth turtle from elementary school. And that the rise of these technologies in the rise of this weapon sort of preage another transforms in the course o of the government plans which is where the book somewhat blast humorous subtitle comes from the secret plan that government secret plan to save itself while rest of us die. Which is, you know, early on the government have these very are am pishes plans for saving civilian population of the United States, and the idea that you could actually evacuate large urban areas in time to carry out and preserve most of the civilian are population of the United States. Those plans are funny in and of themselves and how deeply organized and deeply planned they were you know new york city could be evacuated in precisely 3. 3 days, and they had calculated, you know, each of the roots out of new york city and each borough had its own evacuation relying on ferries and trains and planes and 46,000 people from queens qowb shuttled out of laguardia to southern pennsylvania and residents of the bronx would be taken Staten Island ferries up to syracuse on five round trip ferry trips of six ferries a piece. And you know about in washington they have similar sets of plans where each war sent out in a different direction, and then the plan when you begin to look at the paper fall aart where multiple wards come together and cross perm dig perpendicularly in seven quarters in West Virginia and nose who know washington traffic that did you want really work on any day when its raining let alone on any day when my people are panicking about looming Nuclear Missile launch. These planes gradually shrink over the course of the cold war until they get to be basically what the plans are today which is it shall the priority decision of the evacuation of a small number of high level Government Officials hidden away in these bunkers arpdz around the country, and but as part of that, we built just this tremendous infrastructure during the cold war. That most people dont have any idea existed. There were two especially designed navy ships the uss wright and uss northampton that served through the 1960s and 1970s as the floating white houses, and one of them was always off station on the coast or in the chesapeake. Ready to evuate president on the case in washington and little known fun National Press club trivia here. Bob woodwork did navy service among one of the president ial command ships where itd the president been evacuated it would have been bob woodward sitting there on the ship you know ready to receive the launch orders. For nuclear war aboard uss wright. Or the uss northampton and then, you know, we built these huge helicopter fleets and Airborne Command posts called Looking Glass where there was one of these planes that was in the air 24 hours a day from february 1962 until the early 1990s. You know, for almost 40 or almost 30 years these planes were constantly flying above the planes with one star is general who soul job was to be these last living person in the u. S. Chain of command ready to launch retaliatory strike if everyone on the surface of the planet was destroyed. And we have this whole fleet of president ial Doomsday Plane that National Emergency air Airborne Command post that still exist today. There is one of these planes shadowing President Trump in the middle east right now. Somewhere pretty close to where the pretty close to the airfield wherever air force one is parked at this exact moment one of the planes is ready to evacuate the president and will give the president three days flying aboard this plane to lead nuclear war from wherever he is anywhere on the planet and when president is here, in washington you know, theres one of those planes sitting on the runway in omaha, nebraska, 24 hours a day its engine is on. Fully staffed with everyone from emergency launch officers to meteorologists to supply officers sort of ready to be able to launch and command a nuclear war. And then from beyond that like, these plans get sort of weirder and weirder. You know, armored trains and secret tractor trailer convoys that question built thalsd sort of spread out across the country so that whatever assemblance of National Government existed qowb able to find one of these tractor trailer convoys somewhere and set up a communications hub. And then part of this was sort of thinking through not just the president ial launch system, but also, you know, what nuclear war would look like for the United States afterwards. And so every federal Government Agency had its own role after a u nuclear war. The post office was the agency that would have been in charge of registering the dead and figuring out who was still alive in the United States. And they had you know they have the list of we people live. So its sort of makes sense. National park service would have been the agency that would have been in charge of running the refugee camps because the thinking was that the National Parks qowld qowld not be targeted in a Nuclear Attack, and so you know you would flee from urban area out to Blue Ridge Mountain or yosemite or yellow stone and there your friendly park rangers waiting to receive you in tengt city and post office would take roles and then of course because you know plans exist ir are s would also be waiting with its own plans about how to raise revenue and levee tacks on damage because irs has a plan for after nuclear war. The Federal Reserve built this massive bunker in virginia twailg now a library of congress facility in which you ever have the chance to go out to, its their audio and film archive now. Where they actually do movie screening there because it sort of turns out that bunkers are really great for archives because theres low controlled humidity, you know, controlled climate. And so that they Federal Reserve has bunker in mongst pony that they stocked both would have had board of governor evacuated there but also had a special level of bolts that contain 2 billion is your honor city that currency the amount of money they expected the eastern United States to use to begin to print currency again. Now, part of what i think is sort of so opinionny about these plans is like awferl these these quirky detais because the government doing thissen playing so theres stuff that manges sense in the governments mind that sort of are really opinionny when you look back on them on paper. So the currency that we would have all been using after nuclear war were america decide that they didnt ever want to use 2 bill government had a lot of 2 billion so they decided rather than scrap them, they would move them all into mount pony bunker and put them up in huge pallet ten foot tall pallet after nuclear war with you would have no choice and happy to use the 2 bills afterwards. [laughter] yes. And that was back when 2 might have bought you more than 2 would buy you now. And then you know sort of part of i think also whats so interesting about these plans is the extent to which trying to figure out and think through what had needs to be preserved per the United States during and after a Nuclear Attack quickly becomes pretty big question about what america is. And so you know in washi