From Cabinet secretary to doomsday president: What being the designated survivor is like

WASHINGTON — They typically start the day as low-profile Cabinet secretaries. They end it that way, too, God willing.

But when the rest of the government is gathered together for a big event, like President Donald Trump's State of the Union address Tuesday night, a designated survivor is kept away to ensure someone in the line of leadership succession stays alive.

Picking a fail-safe in case of a cataclysmic event that wipes out everyone else dates back to the Cold War. It's been dramatized in novels and an ABC series starring Kiefer Sutherland that aired from 2016 to 2019. When Trump addressed a joint session of Congress last March, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins was chosen as the designated survivor.

The president's pick to sit out this time hasn't yet been announced.

Taking on the role of designated survivor brings extra adrenaline jolts and humbling thoughts about being unwittingly catapulted into the presidency and unthinkable tragedy — though the minute-to-minute details usually don't feature the high drama of fictional portrayals, those who have done it say.

''It focuses your mind. It also enhances your prayer that it doesn't happen to you,'' James Nicholson, who was President George W. Bush's veterans affairs secretary and designated survivor during the 2006 State of the Union, said of possibly becoming president after a cataclysmic event.

‘Sort of sobering'

''The idea of, you're just a random Cabinet official, and then something terrible happens and, all of a sudden, you're president of the United States," said Graff, author of ''Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself — While the Rest of Us Die.''

Until the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, designated survivors had more control over where they went outside Washington. President Bill Clinton's energy secretary, the late Bill Richardson, was picked in 2000 and simply moved up a planned weekend trip to Oxford, Maryland, a waterfront town about 80 miles (130 kilometers) away, so he'd be there during the State of the Union.

When Dan Glickman, Clinton's agriculture secretary, was tapped during the 1997 State of the Union, his hometown of Wichita, Kansas, was too far away, so he chose New York, where his daughter lived.

''I thought it was kind of exciting. But I wasn't hyped up from a dangerous perspective,'' Glickman said. ''I don't even think anybody told me to be careful.''

Alberto Gonzales, Bush's attorney general, was the designated survivor during the 2007 State of the Union. He said White House chief of staff Josh Bolten called a few days before and offered a couple of options for where he could hunker down.

He recalled a series of briefings that may have stretched right into Bush's speech, which he watched from the air.

''It was during that time that it sort of suddenly hit me, if something happened in the Capitol and everyone's killed, that I'd be president,'' Gonzales said. "It's sort of sobering. And you wonder, ‘Would I be up to governing a wounded nation?'''

The concept dates back decades

In ''Raven Rock,'' Graff details how the designated survivor idea was formalized by the Carter and Reagan administrations amid fears that Soviet subs just off the Atlantic coast could fire nuclear missiles and wipe out Washington with barely 10 minutes' warning.

Beginning in April 1980, the White House Military Office tasked the Federal Emergency Management Agency with ensuring succession. An aide was directed to recommend to the president who should skip events when all possible successors were together outside the White House.

The first time that a Cabinet member being kept away from a presidential speech to Congress was publicly divulged was President Ronald Reagan's Education Secretary Terrel Bell in 1981. But Bell wasn't identified until afterward. Today, TV images from the House chamber allow political junkies to spot the missing Cabinet member within minutes.

‘If this awful thing happened, you'd be well fed'

Nicholson said Bush's chief of staff Andy Card had asked him a few weeks before the State of the Union to be the designated survivor. He was a natural fit given that his agency played an important role in continuity of government exercises due to its numerous hospitals and clinics nationwide.

Nicholson flew by helicopter to a destination only divulged once he was in the air and later sat in a command center, where he underwent briefings before watching Bush's speech.

He was served a ''wonderful'' dinner, prepared on-site by personnel from the White House mess, though he said he couldn't recall if it was T-bone steak or prime rib or something similar. ''It made you think that, at least if this awful thing happened, you'd be well fed," he said.

When it was over, Nicholson wasn't asked to fill in future designated survivors like Gonzales on what to expect.

''We don't have a club,'' he laughed. "We should.''

Glickman recalls boarding an Air Force G-3 from Andrews along with Secret Service agents, a military official and a series of advisers not on his usual staff. A three-car motorcade later carried him from LaGuardia Airport to his daughter's apartment near Union Square.

She wanted to invite others to watch the speech with them, but Glickman nixed that. ''This was not a party," he said.

It wasn't all serious, though. Glickman said he was told he didn't need to dress up, so he didn't wear a suit. Instructions not to study up spared him from reading briefing books or memorizing security protocols.