After 9:03 a.m. September 11, 2001: FEMA Starts Locating Government Officials

The “Central Locator System” at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Washington, DC, begins determining the locations of key government officials. Senior government officials were in numerous locations around the country and the world when the terrorist attacks began this morning (see (8:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001). But in response to the attacks, FEMA headquarters begins to “spin into action,” journalist and author Garrett Graff will later write, and the Central Locator System starts “to figure out precisely where each official [is].” [Graff, 2017, pp. 342-343] The Central Locator System is a little-known office of FEMA, which tracks presidential successors—a line of officials who could take over if the US president dies, resigns, or is removed from office. It ensures that key government officials can be located during all emergency and non-emergency conditions. It monitors their whereabouts around the clock and is ready to take them away from their regular lives at a moment’s notice if necessary. [New York Times, 6/29/1982; Federal Emergency Management Agency, 1/2009, pp. 88 ; Politico Magazine, 9/21/2016; Graff, 2017, pp. xvii-xviii]