White House Preps Crisis Scenarios for Obama Team

The White House has drawn up more than a dozen contingency plans to help Barack Obama if a crisis erupts early in his presidency, the New York Times reports. The briefings go way beyond what other administrations have prepared and deal with potential threats ranging from a North Korean nuclear explosion to a terrorist attack on overseas US facilities to a cyberattack on US systems.

Transition officials have been invited to crisis exercises and counterterrorism officials plan to hold briefings with their successors to ensure the smoothest handover possible. White House officials say the aim is to be helpful to the new administration, not to tell it what it should do. “It’s a menu of contingencies and potential options,” said a White House spokesman. “It’s not exhaustive, and it’s not exclusive, and it’s not prescriptive.”