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I had never heard anything about this before. A google on "CEO COM LINK" produced 47 hits, but no major news source reports about it.
From the April 2004 issue of "Harper's".
Executive Privilege
Inside corporate America's homeland security hot line
- By Tim Shorrock
Last April 8 and 9, more than seventy people, including policymakers from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the White House, the Treasury Department, and the FBI, gathered in a conference room in Washington, D.C., to consider a harrowing scenario. In it, scores of feverish people flood into Chicago-area hospitals, coughing up blood. Doctors recognize the symptoms to be those of pneumonic plague, a highly contagious disease that causes respiratory failure within seventy-two hours unless immediately treated with powerful antibiotics. Short on supplies, the city contacts DHS in Washington. But there, officials are already scrambling to contain another disaster: an inexplicable failure in the accounting systems of two of New York's largest banks. Both attacks, the scenario continues, are the work of terrorists who have unleashed a simultaneous, two-city attack.
The exercise was designed to hone the decision-making capabilities not of public-health officials or of police commissioners, but of high-level corporate executives, who were a majority of the attendees. DHS has refused to disclose which executives or companies participated in the exercise, or where it was held: the Business Roundtable, the association that organized the event, will say only that in included CEOs and executives from the health-care, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, financial, consumer-products, and manufacturing industries. All present had come together to test the capabilities of CEO COM LINK, a secure, exclusive telephone system established in November 2001 that allows chief executives to speak directly with Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge and other officials during a terrorist attack.
<snip>
Even in an administration notorious for its catering to corporate interests, CEO COM LINK affords the Business Roundtable and astonishing status. No other organization, public or private, has such a secure and open line to the top tier of government during a national disaster....Certain organizations, such as the Red Cross and the International Association of Fire Chiefs, say they take part in conference calls with Ridge and other top DHS officials when the terror alert is raised, but no dedicated hot line like CEO COM LINK exists for any other group: not governors, mayors, firefighters, hospitals, or police.
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I feel much safer knowing that Bechtel, GE, and Ford have direct access to Tom Ridge if something goes down. I wouldn't want Tom getting bothered with governors or mayors needing or sharing information.
This is further evidence that the Bush administration is NOT making the country safer. Unless by "the country" you mean Fortune 500 companies. How many electoral votes does Bechtel have again?
Sorry the article isn't available on line. It's certainly worth going out of your way for. It's a really good issue. I don't know if the April issue is in libraries and newsstands yet or not. Mine just arrived yesterday.
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