Reporters find FEMA's secret funding of fallout shelter

Cox News Service reporters uncovered a secret $2.9 billion FEMA nuclear war program through computer-assisted reporting and data analysis, revealing that FEMA spent $12 on nuclear contingency planning for every dollar spent on natural disaster response. The investigation succeeded where other media outlets failed because the reporters knew which specific questions to ask and had obtained GSA contract data that exposed the hidden program.

With every major news organization in the nation expending hundreds of hours to cover the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), you might wonder how $2.9 billion could slip through the cracks.

Larry Lipman and Elliot Jaspin of the Cox News Service found out earlier this year when their recent computer-assisted reporting venture uncovered that for every dollar spent responding to natural disasters, FEMA has quietly shelled out $12 on plans to keep the government running during a nuclear war.

It wasn't that other media outlets hadn't gone to the right people, said Jaspin. They just didn't know which questions to ask.

Only after he and Lipman confronted a source with information they had obtained during a six-month analysis of computer tapes from the General Services Administration (GSA) did they learn what only a few FEMA officials and 20 members of Congress had known all along -- that for the past 11 years, FEMA has spent billions on a top-secret nuclear war program set up with the help of former White House national security aide Oliver North.

"It was like putting a key in a lock," said Jaspin. "There was the great beauty and value of what I've been babbling about for years."

The story grew out of a suggestion from Cox member newspaper The Palm Beach Post. In the wake of Hurricane Andrew, the newspaper contacted Lipman and asked for a story on FEMA.

Lipman and Jaspin got to work shortly thereafter, downloading FEMA payments from a tape of government contracts above $50,000 handed out over the past four years. The tape is available for $100 annually from the GSA.

In reviewing the data, they noticed a number of payments to the Harris Corp. and several other national security contractors.

"At that point I was really baffled," said Jaspin. "I didn't know what FEMA would be doing with national security contracts."

The pair went to FEMA with the information they had uncovered and a request to view the contracts. Agency officials rejected the appeal, citing national security concerns.

But one of Lipman's FEMA sources agreed to talk with the two reporters. "It was enough," said Jaspin.

The source detailed a massive secret plan involving hundreds of high-tech communications vehicles, including one truck weighing 24 tons, all designed to make the government a moving target during a nuclear war.

Although sources from other news organizations had been covering FEMA for years, none had discovered the secret operation. Part of the reason lies in the fact that budgets for the operation totalling more than a billion dollars have appeared annually as a single line - "submitted under a separate package."

Lipman and Jaspin also learned that nearly a third of FEMA's employees operate within the top-secret project, three times as many as work on natural disaster programs.

According to the article, which ran over the Cox News Service wire in February, FEMA spent $1.3 billion on equipment, support facilities and personnel between 1982 and 1991 in order to provide communications for government leaders during a nuclear war. The agency spent an additional $1.6 billion on related national security programs.

Despite the obvious benefits the secret communications program could have in helping victims of natural disasters, no complete mobile unit has ever been used in such fashion. Most FEMA employees assigned to deal with Hurricane Andrew last year didn't even know about the agency's capacity.

After hunting down other sources to verify the information they had obtained, Jaspin and Lipman called FEMA again and requested an opportunity to see the Mobile Emergency Response Support units, known as MERS. To their surprise, officials approved the request, as well as a full scale briefing of the project.

Program details provided by FEMA officials filled in the gaps and gave the pair enough to publish their story on February 22.

On March 1, one week after the Post published Lipman and Jaspin's account, a blue-ribbon panel recommended that FEMA's top-secret national security functions be turned over to the military and that a new domestic crisis unit be created to handle catastrophes.