Federal government

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Halt! This is federal property! No admittance without proper authorization. (Navarro gate guard)

According to United States Constitution the President may require the Opinion of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices (Article Two, Section 2, Clause 1).

[edit] Before the War

Great Seal of the United States at war bonds advertisment

[edit] Executive branch

The Enclave was covert branch of the legal U.S. government and a shadow government , that was having paranoid dreams for a coup against the real U.S. government. The Enclave members acted as lobbysts for industry sector also.

[edit] Federal executive departments and agencies

(mentioned in Fallout games)

War Department - mentioned in Maxson Log as present in year 2077 - and Defense Department - mentioned by West Tech Research Facility mainframe as present in year 2076 (Department of Defence - according to van Buren screenshot concerning HERMES armor and according to "Faction Profile – the Brotherhood of Steel" ; the Secretary of the Army was mentioned at Tibbets design document as present in 2040 ); its seat was Pentagon ; in real world War Department was subsumed by Department of the Army in 1945, renamed in 1947 into Department of Defense; according to van Buren tech demo plot federal government had limited power with army - it seems Armored Infantry Divisions belonged to commonwealths ,
Department of Water and Power - mentioned in Vault Locations v34.129 holodisc (however: Department of Energy was mentioned in timeline in year 2053 and Atomic Energy Commision was present in year 2241 - in real world created in 1977),
Department of State - foreign affairs present - eg. United Nations membership, Soviet Consulate present in Los Angeles, in real world - Great Seal of the United States keeper,
department or departments responsible for:
- war bonds and Vault bonds,
- law enforcement agencies supervision:
  - Federal Bureau of Investigation - mentioned with its refrigerator only (FREEZER.MSG),
  - Unamerican Activities Force - worked to ferret out communist sympathizers in the American population ,
  - Secret Service (if it was present then) ,
  - BADTFL - its offices were responsible issuing of special permits for Combat Armors civilian use also.

There were independent Environmental Protection Agency present also .

[edit] Possible Cabinet positions in order of presidencial succession

Secretary of State,
Secretary of Treasure,
Secretary of War (Secretary of Defence),
Secretary of Water and Power (Secretary of Energy),

There were also Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as cabinet level administration officer.

[edit] Legislative branch

Library of Congress present - mentioned together with GECK.
Senator Todd Peterson mentioned at Maxson Bunker design document .
February 15 2075 - the House of Representatives and Congress both (sic!) voted unanimously to impeach the President for jaywalking (this information comes from the Sierra Depot GNN Transcript holodisk, which Chris Avellone discards as non-canon, as it was supposedly modified by the Sierra Army Depot soldiers) .

[edit] Judical branch

Federal Courts mentioned at Tibbets design document .

[edit] Afterwar succession

Constitutional foundation for United States presidential line of succession were Article II, Section 1, Section 3 of the 20th Amendment (1933), and the 25th Amendment (1967) - see: wikipedia:United States presidential line of succession.

In March 2077, prepared for a nuclear or biological attack from China, the President and the Enclave retreated to remote sections around the globe and make contingency plans for continuing the war .

One of the few old world organizations to survive the Great War was the Enclave - before the war the shadow government within the legal government of the United States. Members of the Enclave were hardliners who both embraced the idea of a nuclear war and knew that the common man could not survive it. They believed that as long as the “important people” of the United States survived, they could regroup quickly and wipe out communism once and for all. Enclave used Poseidon Energy facilities - protected during the firestorm of 2077.
In 2241 NORAD was offline , there was the large Crater in 2253 .
Status of the Enclave of the USA President position was questioned by Brotherhood of Steel. Their representative in San Francisco (Matthew) referred Dick Richardson as "so-called Presedent" (notice: Brotherhood of Steel origined from deserted US Armed Forces Military Police security squad and their initial order was issued by Cap. Maxson unless otherwise directed, from a proper representative of the War Department; seizing Pentagon building by paladin Owyn Lyons'es detachment in first decades of XXIII century was an irony of fate).
In 2277 there were no U.S. government presence at Pentagon building and on the D.C. area .
The federal government (or whatever branch of federal government was responsible - it was not necessarily the Enclave) may not have ever considered the Vaults as society's best chance for survival - the government may have considered themselves the best candidates for rebuilding the world and already had their asses covered in the event of a nuclear or biological war by relocating to other remote installations across the nation (and elsewhere) that weren't necessarily Vaults. The Enclave certainly didn't seem to be devoting much effort to digging up any other vaults and trying to use the human stock there to rebuild civilization.

Nonetheless, even members of the Enclave probably could not answer the question of who created the Vault experiments and their reasons, as many of the people responsible for the creation of the Vaults died long ago, and many records were lost in the great static of 2077. President Richardson was familiar with the purpose of the Vaults, but he never saw them as more than little test tubes of preserved humans he could mess with

.