re AP Online AP 02/21 20:17 EST V0702 Copyright 1993. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. WEST PALM BEACH, Fla (AP) -- The Federal Emergency Management Agency, responsible for providing aid during natural disasters, spent most of its money over the past decade on a top-secret program to enable the government to survive a nuclear attack, according to a report published Sunday. A six-month investigation by Cox Newspapers concluded that for every dollar FEMA spent on responding to natural disasters, almost $12 was spent on the secret program, which was built around a vast communications network. The network includes a fleet of 300 vehicles in five mobile units scattered from Washington state to Massachusetts and from Colorado to Georgia, according to the report by The Palm Beach Post. A call to a FEMA spokesman for comment Sunday was not immediately returned. National security programs accounted for 78 percent of FEMA's budget from 1982 to 1991, dwarfing the amount spent on natural disasters -- just 6.6 percent of the budget, the report said. Press for more ! AP Online Yet the national security program money appears annually as just a single line in FEMA's budget -- "submitted under a separate package," according to the report, which said a third of FEMA's 2,700 employees work in the project. The report was also critical of FEMA's effort to provide relief after Hurricane Andrew devastated south Florida last fall. For example, it said, the city manager of Homestead, Fla., pleaded for 100 hand-held radios because the town had only one working telephone. Instead, FEMA sent high-tech vans capable of sending encrypted, multi-frequency radio messages to military aircraft halfway around the world. The mobile communications units across the nation include generators capable of powering a three-story airport terminal. Sensitive radio, telephone and satellite gear is stored in custom-built trucks. In Thomasville, Ga., FEMA built a bomb shelter at the Federal Regional Center in 1971 when there was the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack. The agency spends millions of dollars each year maintaining it and other underground facilities. The communications network is part of a government effort whose participants have included former White House aide Oliver North, who was implicated in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. In his 1991 book, "Under Fire," North said the program was known inside the Press for more ! AP Online government simply as "The Project." He said it began during the Carter administration and was expanded during the Reagan years. North said it grew out of the Cold War fear that a Soviet nuclear attack would send out "enormous bursts of electromagnetic energy which would immediately disable our communications equipment." Last page !