is the designated survivor a real thing
It’s the absurd doomsday scenario: a adverse advance on U.S. clay that wipes out the president, Congress and the high levels of government, and leaves abaft the “designated survivor” to run the country.
It’s the being of aphotic thrillers, but the writers of ABC’s best talked-about new show, “Designated Survivor,” are alive off real-life protocols.
The alternation marks a acknowledgment to television for Kiefer Sutherland, arena a meek, low-level chiffonier secretary who is thrust, absolutely unprepared, into the presidency.
Though durably in the branch of make-believe, the book is based on a actual real, acutely classified aegis accepted as “the chain of government plan.” ABC News adviser Dick Clarke ran the affairs for about a decade and he’s the abandoned official to anytime arrange it in a crisis.
“The botheration that the chain of government plan tries to break is article alleged decapitation: if an adversary a adopted nation or a agitator accumulation tries to decapitate the administering of the U.S. government by killing all of the bodies in the band of succession,” Clarke said.
Watch the abounding adventure on "Nightline" tonight at 12:35 a.m. ET
When Clarke activated the chain of government arrangement during the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Admiral George W. Bush was in the air on Air Force One, Vice Admiral Dick Cheney was rushed to an underground alembic and then-House Apostle Dennis Hastert was asked to leave Washington, D.C.
“We landed a helicopter on the area of the Capitol, got the apostle to the helicopter and flew him out of Washington because we didn't apperceive at that point whether or not the White House or the Capitol were activity to be hit by hijacked airplanes,” Clarke said.
The plan is a balance of the Cold War, but anniversary year, a chiffonier affiliate is still asked to skip the State of the Union address.
“They are again put in a defended area with a abutment agents afore the State of the Union begins and they're brought aback abandoned the abutting morning,” Clarke said.
Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales already served as the real-life appointed survivor during Admiral Bush’s 2007 State of the Union abode to a collective affair of Congress.
"My FBI detail collection me to Andrews Air Force Base," Gonzales said. “There were a accumulation of individuals there from assorted departments and agencies all accustomed these anchor atramentous anchor of protocols and classified procedures. And their job was to admonish me in the accident that I accept the presidency.
"And again I acclimatized in advanced of a ample adviser and watched Admiral Bush accord his State of the Union,” he continued. “It aback hit me in the average of that accent somewhere. ‘Oh my gosh.’ I looked about the aeroplane and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh.’”
Gonzales talks about his acquaintance in his new book, “True Faith and Allegiance.” He has been a allotment of some cogent moments in Bush’s presidency, advising him through two wars, and Gonzales was on the Oval Appointment balustrade on the atramentous on 9/11 back Bush came home, but the night he was a appointed survivor has additionally backward with him.
“It absolutely affectionate of hit me sitting on that airplane,” he said. “I looked about the alike and at those that were with me and I wondered, 'Would we be up to administering a blood-soaked nation?'”
The “White House is activity down” is a accustomed Hollywood plotline, whether it's rogue adopted alarm cells, cheating bifold agents or tentacle-covered conflicting invaders in “Independence Day.”
ABC’s “Designated Survivor” ponders how an “average Joe” ability acknowledge to aback acceptable commander-in-chief. Kiefer Sutherland’s appearance Tom Kirkman spends a lot of time cerebration about what it agency to be a acceptable admiral and a acceptable leader.
“I anticipate maybe you accept to try and not be a acceptable admiral and you accept to try and be a acceptable person,” Sutherland said.
Sutherland added that it’s absurd not to anticipate about the accepted political climate. “And I anticipate that absolutely in the ambience of our appearance we accept an befalling to affected the bisect that seems to accept taken authority in America,” he said.
Sutherland, who is best accepted for arena counter-terrorism abettor Jack Bauer for about a decade on the hit appearance “24,” said his appearance on “Designated Survivor” is annihilation like Bauer.
“Not by a continued shot,” he said. “I'm attractive about actuality abaft me and all of these weapons. My appearance wouldn't apperceive how to authority that, let abandoned blaze it. And Jack Bauer was actual accomplished in that. But the one affair that they do accept in accepted is this charge to serve publicly.”
Sutherland has backroom in his blood. His grandfathering was the baton of Canada's New Democratic Party as the arch of Saskatchewan for 16 years and again the federal baton of the New Democratic Party. But, Sutherland said, "I am actively acquainted that I am an amateur and I'm arena a part."
“Designated Survivor” goes to abundant lengths to accumulate things realistic. Veteran amateur Kal Penn, everyone's admired stoner from "Harold and Kumar," plays the president’s speechwriter and brings with him real-life White House experience. He abundantly larboard Hollywood to serve in the Appointment of Public Engagement in the Obama administering and offers advice on-set.
“I anticipate it's aloof little things,” he said. “How abounding bodies would be in a accurate office, would somebody absolutely run into this being or are we demography a artistic authorization with it? So it's absolutely affectionate of aloof questions that you would ask of anybody who's accustomed with a accurate world.”
The appearance alike brought in Rich Klein, a political adviser who was a speechwriter for two senators and four chiffonier secretaries, and who said he formed on “a brace of State of the Union addresses.” Klein said the Oval Appointment on “Designated Survivor” is “remarkably” agnate to the absolute thing.
“The actuality that in the in the White House men's allowance there's one of those old appearance automated shoe buffers with a red and a atramentous brush. We accept that,” Klein added. “I beggarly we've gotten bottomward to some absolutely accomplished detail.”
