Defense and national security

Executive Order 13074: Amendment to Executive Order 12656

President: Bill Clinton

Assigned Defense responsibility for deploying and using military forces to protect and evacuate US citizens and designated others from threatened areas overseas.

Status: In effect. Is Executive Order 13074 still in effect? Yes. Executive Order 13074 remains in effect. See Federal Register record.

What does Executive Order 13074 do?

EO 13074 added a noncombatant evacuation responsibility to the Defense provisions of EO 12656. Subject to presidential direction and joint State–Defense procedures, Defense is responsible for military forces used to protect and evacuate US citizens, nationals and designated others from threatened overseas areas. The 2024 U.S. Code compilation reproduces EO 12656 with EO 13074 among its listed amendments; this does not establish how any particular evacuation was conducted.

Administration position: The order allocates executive-branch responsibility; it does not guarantee evacuation from every crisis or create an individual right to military transport.
SignedFebruary 9, 1998
Parent orderEO 12656
Lead departmentsDefense and State

Before and after

Before the order

EO 12656 assigned emergency-preparedness functions but lacked this express Defense military-force role for noncombatant evacuations.

After the order

Defense received the stated military-force role under presidential direction and joint procedures with State.

Who had to do what

Agency / officeActionTiming / position
Defense SecretaryDeploy and use military forces for authorized evacuationsAs directed
State and DefenseMaintain joint proceduresContinuing framework
PresidentDirect covered operationsCase by case

What happened next

EO 13074 amended EO 12656.

EO 13286 made homeland-security conforming changes to EO 12656.