In U.S., Terrorism's Peril Undiminished

The visiting officials work at stainless steel desks and sometimes sleep two to a room when the facility is crowded. Packed with computers and communication gear, the underground vault maintains the records and capabilities that planners think they would need to reconstitute government and shift their headquarters to field offices outside Washington. The Energy Department, for example, has designated the Albuquerque Operations Office, its largest, as its successor headquarters, and the FBI has designated its own largest satellite office, in New York.

Three people with experience in the bunker said members of Bush's Cabinet take turns being present, residing in slightly less humble digs that are designated, with some irony, as the "commander in chief suite." There are many days when no one in the constitutional line of succession is at the site -- for example, when the president, Vice President Cheney or Cabinet secretaries are traveling. And there are Cabinet members whose presence is not relevant to succession. Housing Secretary Mel R. Martinez and Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao -- born, respectively, in Cuba and Taiwan -- are barred from the presidency.

At the White House, some officials see a dangerous hole in the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, a subject Bush has yet to address. If the top three constitutional successors are killed -- the vice president, speaker of the House and president pro tem of the Senate -- then succession moves down a list of Cabinet secretaries. But once the House elects a new speaker, the law is silent on whether the speaker may reclaim priority and replace the former Cabinet member as president. That sets up a potential struggle at a moment when the nation would need every available resource of unity and calm.

Congress has the gravest problems of survival after a catastrophic attack. The House, in particular, has yet to resolve a quandary that would shut down its lawmaking power for months -- at the height of a national emergency -- if a majority of elected members were killed or disabled. The Senate can be replenished swiftly by each state's governor in temporary appointments. The House requires special elections, which now take an average of four months. In the chaotic days after a national calamity, according to testimony by American Enterprise Institute scholar Norman J. Ornstein before a congressionally appointed Continuity of Government Commission, simultaneous special elections in many districts would take at least six months, leaving Congress without a constitutionally mandated quorum.

Some House members oppose any proposed remedy that allows the designation of emergency successors without election. "Never has a member . . . of the House of Representatives of the United States served who has not been elected," said Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), who co-chairs another study group on the subject.

Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), who favors allowing House members to make advance designations of their own emergency successors, said Cox's objection is one of the most common. Another is reluctance to amend the Constitution for any reason.

"People simply sometimes say, 'Well, people would figure out what to do,' " Baird said. "I don't find that a valid argument, but that's the third most common offered."

With the dismantling of the Ring Around Washington, officials said, there is no adequate prospect that the unexpected arrival of an atomic weapon or a radiological device -- conventional explosives packed with radioactive materials -- will be detected.

Combat teams drawn from Delta Force soldiers and Navy SEALs, who receive months of additional training for the nuclear disarmament mission, remain available on short notice to respond. Their mission, a secret adjunct to the well known Nuclear Emergency Search Team, or NEST, of civilian scientists, was disclosed by The Post in February.

Around the time of the Ring Around Washington experiment, the Joint Special Operations Command ordered the special teams to a readiness status that cut 30 minutes from their standard launch time. More than a year of that hair-trigger alert has begun to show its wear.

The nuclear response mission is now embroiled in interagency dispute. The Defense Department is pushing to shed responsibility for domestic nuclear response. According to sources in both departments, the FBI, which agreed to take on the job in 1999, did not staff or train a unit and is now asking to back out of the assignment.

With existing technology, random sweeps of cities and ports might find a terrorist with nuclear materials, one official said, if "he tries to bring in a big chunk or doesn't shield it right." The Energy Department's two NEST units exercised in random cities before Sept. 11, 2001. Now they exercise where intelligence points to a threat.