THE OBSIDIAN REGISTRY · TEXT MIRROR · no images, no scripts · index · full site · mirrors
FILE 041 · VOL VI · You're Not on the List
The Orders to Suspend Your Rights Are Already Written. You Can't Read Them.
The most dangerous sentence is the one written for an emergency that has not happened yet.
Based on: Presidential Emergency Action Documents
Intake record
| Recovered from | Personal papers of a retired government attorney; one bound draft marked SECRET (declassification status unknown) |
|---|---|
| Contents | Draft emergency order (heavily redacted), a resignation letter (unsent), a detention notice |
| Finder | Counsel for the estate |
| Status | The draft cannot be published. Its existence can. |
Recovered file
On the morning of December 1, 1974, a TWA airliner descending through fog toward Dulles Airport in Virginia struck a mountain called Mount Weather. All ninety-two people on board were killed. [1]
The crash should have been a tragedy and nothing more. Instead, it drew reporters to a place the government had spent two decades hiding. Mount Weather was not just a mountain. Inside it was a vast underground complex, operated by a civilian federal agency, designed to shelter the leaders of the United States government after a nuclear attack. It had its own reservoirs, its own power, its own hospital and broadcast studio. It is still there. It is still in use. [2]
What reporters could not see was the most secret thing at Mount Weather and places like it. Not the tunnels. The paperwork.
Since the Eisenhower administration, every President has inherited a set of documents called Presidential Emergency Action Documents. They are executive orders, proclamations, and messages to Congress, already drafted, waiting to be signed the moment an emergency is declared. In 2017 there were fifty-six of them. They are classified. Not one has ever been released or leaked. Congress, as far as anyone can tell, has never seen them. [3]
Researchers have pieced together, from the edges of other documents, what some of the older ones contained. Orders authorizing the detention of people deemed dangerous. Orders suspending the writ of habeas corpus, the right of a jailed person to challenge their imprisonment before a judge. Orders for martial law. Orders authorizing censorship of the news. [3]
They are written by lawyers. In quiet offices. Years ahead of time.
The rest of this file is sealed. The ending, the sources and the archivist's note unseal with the file.
Unseal File 041 ($2.99) · its volume · everything ($49.99)
Built on real, cited records. The stories are dramatized. Disclaimer · If you are in crisis in the U.S., call or text 988.