The Bush White House has prepared more than a dozen contingency plans to help guide President-elect Barack Obama if an international crisis erupts in the opening days of his administration, part of an elaborate operation designed to smooth the first transition of power since September 11, 2001.The memorandums envision a variety of volatile possibilities, like a North Korean nuclear explosion, a cyber attack on US computer systems, a terrorist strike on US facilities overseas or a fresh outbreak of instability in West Asia, according to people briefed on them. Each then outlines options for Obama.The contingency planning goes beyond what other administrations have done, with President George W Bush and Obama vowing to work in tandem to ensure a more efficient transition in a time of war and terrorist threat. The commission that investigated the September 11 attacks, noting problems during the handover from President Bill Clinton to Bush, called for a better process “since a catastrophic attack could occur with little or no notice”, as its report put it.In addition to the contingency memorandums, the Bush team has given crisis training to nearly 100 career Government officials who may be filling in during the early days of Obama’s presidency while political appointees await Senate confirmation. Starting before the election, those career workers have conducted exercises alongside outgoing political appointees to test their responses. The administration has invited members of the Obama agency-review teams to observe some of those so-called tabletop exercises between now and the inauguration, on January 20. The Bush team has also invited Obama transition officials to attend a “national level exercise” set for January 12 and 13 that may play out what would happen if the top leadership of the nation were wiped out in a single stroke, officials said.The White House has drafted as many as three dozen other long-term policy memorandums outlining various pressing issues that will confront the new team.
