18-10-2015, 11:41 PM
Peter Lemkin Wrote:In April 1, 1962, Dallas Civil Defense, with Crichton heading its intelligence component, opened an elaborate underground command post under the patio of the Dallas Health and Science Museum. Because it was intended for "continuity-of-government" operations during an attack, it was fully equipped with communications equipment.
Hi Peter, this ^^^ is an example of the logic I'm trying to expand.
Dallas was one of eight federally designated "key cities". While everyone else was building their Emergency Operations Centers directly underneath their City Halls, Dallas and the other "key cities" were building theirs away from the metropolitan areas. These eight cities were structured differently from the others. There's not a lot of information on this, in fact if you look at the National Archives there's a curious gap in the "Office of Civil Defense" during the years 1961-1964.
The "continuity-of-government" operations in the key cities were necessarily more complex than the others, for the simple reason that the mayor and city government could not simply be moved downstairs - or if they were, there had to be communications in place for any kind of government to continue. The primary purpose of the communications in the EOC was therefore disaster management, and as a secondary consideration in the key cities there was special infrastructure for COG.
There was something called DISC, which later morphed into NISP, which defined the portion of the industrial base that was "almost as important as government". For instance there are corporate CEO's on the list of people to be transported to Mount Weather in the event of a national emergency. And, there are local executives on the list in Dallas. But Dallas contained at the time over half of the nation's oil executives and almost all of its explorers, and a heavy concentration of the people who actually knew how to build wells and equip them. The 488th when it started was called the "Strategic" Intelligence "Detachment", and its purpose was international petroleum research. Gradually during the Civil Defense period you mentioned (1960-1962) its interest changed from petroleum to subversives, and its title changed to "Military Intelligence".
I'm pretty sure there was special infrastructure in place in Dallas, to support COG. There had to be, because the setup of the shelters was different. The plan wasn't to get the Mayor and Police Chief to the fair grounds, it was to get them somewhere they could talk to the fairgrounds. In other words, the setup was being run by the military, not by the civilians. The military was the one mapping and planning the shelters, and it's interesting in that regard that as Director of the Dallas City-County Civil Defense and Disaster Commission, Boise B Smith had no staff! If you look at the archives of other cities, there is detailed information on how the CD decisions were made and who made them, but for Dallas.... nothing. Not even in the newspapers. The whole thing was kept tightly under wraps.