According to a Washington Post article on March 1, 2002, on September 11, 2001, Vice President Dick “Cheney became in effect the leader of a U.S. ‘shadow government.’: President Bush had dispatched a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work secretly outside Washington, activating for the first time long-standing plans to ensure survival of federal rule after catastrophic attack on the nation’s capital. …Known internally as the COG, for ‘continuity of government,’ the administration-in-waiting is an unannounced complement to the acknowledged absence of Vice President Cheney from Washington for much of the past five months. Cheney’s survival ensures constitutional succession, one official said, but ‘he can’t run the country by himself.’ …The White House is represented by a ‘senior-level presence,’ one official said…’ ”
– Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11, Page 237