John Whitley, Editor
LOUISE/SH SASSY
Few Americans--indeed, few Congressional reps--are aware of the existence
of Mount Weather, a mysterious underground military base carved deep
inside a mountain near the sleepy rural town of Bluemont, Virginia, just
46 miles from Washington DC. Mount Weather--also known as the Western
Virginia Office of Controlled Conflict Operations--is buried not just in
hard granite, but in secrecy as well.
In March, 1976, The Progressive Magazine published an astonishing article
entitled "The Mysterious Mountain." The author, Richard Pollock, based his
investigative report on Senate subcommittee hearings and upon "several
off-the-record interviews with officials formerly associated with Mount
Weather." His report, and a 1991 article in Time Magazine entitled
"Doomsday Hideaway", supply a few compelling hints about what is going on
underground.
Ted Gup, writing for Time, describes the base as follows: "Mount Weather
is a virtually self-contained facility. Aboveground, scattered across
manicured lawns, are about a dozen buildings bristling with antennas and
microwave relay systems. An on-site sewage-treatment plant, with a 90,000
gal.-a-day capacity, and two tanks holding 250,000 gal. of water could
last some 200 people more than a month; underground ponds hold additional
water supplies. Not far from the installation's entry gate are a control
tower and a helicopter pad. The mountain's real secrets are not visible at
ground level."
The mountain's "real secrets" are protected by warning signs, 10 foot-high
chain link fences, razor wire, and armed guards. Curious motorists and
hikers on the Appalachian trail are relieved of their sketching pads and
cameras and sent on their way. Security is tight.
The government has owned the site since 1903; it has seen service as an
artillery range, a hobo farm during the Depression, and a National Weather
Bureau Facility. In 1936, the U.S. Bureau of Mines took control and
started digging.
Mount Weather is virtually an underground city, according to former
personnel interviewed by Pollock. Buried deep inside the earth, Mount
Weather was equipped with such amenities as:
--private apartments and dormitories
--streets and sidewalks
--cafeterias and hospitals
--a water purification system, power plant and general office
buildings
--a small lake fed by fresh water from underground springs
--its own mass transit system
--a TV communication system
Mount Weather is the self-sustaining underground command center for the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The facility is the
operational center--the hub--of approximately 100 other Federal Relocation
Centers, most of which are concentrated in Pennsylvania, West Virginia,
Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina. Together this network of
underground facilities constitutes the backbone of America's "Continuity
of Government" program. In the event of nuclear war, declaration of
martial law, or other national emergency, the President, his cabinet and
the rest of the Executive Branch would be "relocated" to Mount Weather.
What Does Congress Know about Mount Weather?
According to the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights hearings in
1975, Congress has almost no knowledge and no oversight --budgetary or
otherwise--on Mount Weather. Retired Air Force General Leslie W. Bray, in
his testimony to the subcommittee, said "I am not at liberty to describe
precisely what is the role and the mission and the capability that we have
at Mount Weather, or at any other precise location."
Apparently, this underground capital of the United States is a secret only
to Congress and the US taxpayers who paid for it. The Russians know about
it, as reported in Time: "Few in the U.S. government will speak of it,
though it is assumed that all along the Soviets have known both its
precise location and its mission (unlike the Congress, since Bray wouldn't
tell); defense experts take it as a given that the site is on the
Kremlin's targeting maps." The Russians attempted to buy real estate right
next door, as a "country estate" for their embassy folks, but that deal
was dead- ended by the State Department.
Mount Weather's "Government-in-Waiting"
Pollock's report, based on his interviews with former officials at Mount
Weather, contains astounding information on the base's personnel. The
underground city contains a parallel government-in-waiting: "High- level
Governmental sources, speaking in the promise of strictest anonymity, told
me [Pollock] that each of the Federal departments represented at Mount
Weather is headed by a single person on whom is conferred the rank of a
Cabinet-level official. Protocol even demands that subordinates address
them as 'Mr. Secretary.' Each of the Mount Weather 'Cabinet members' is
apparently appointed by the White House and serves an indefinite term ...
many through several Administrations.... The facility attempts to
duplicate the vital functions of the Executive branch of the
Administration."
Nine Federal departments are replicated within Mount Weather (Agriculture;
Commerce; Health, Education & Welfare; Housing & Urban Development;
Interior; Labor; State; Transportation; and Treasurey) as well as at least
five Federal agencies (Federal Communications Commission, Selective
Service, Federal Power Commission, Civil Service Commission, and the
Veterans Administration). The Federal Reserve and the U.S. Post Office,
both private corporations, also have offices in Mount Weather.
Pollock writes that the "cabinet members" are "apparently" appointed by
the White House and serve an indefinite term, but that information cannot
be confirmed, raising the further question of who holds the reins on this
"back-up government." Furthermore, appointed Mount Weather officials hold
their positions through several elected administrations, transcending the
time their appointers spend in office. Unlike other presidential nominees,
these apppointments are made without the public advice or consent of the
Senate.
Is there an alternative President and Vice President as well? If so, who
appoints them? Pollock says only this: "As might be expected, there is
also an Office of the Presidency at Mount Weather. The Federal
Preparedness Agency (precursor to FEMA) apparently appoints a special
staff to the Presidential section, which regularly receives top secret
national security estimates and raw data from each of the Federal
departments and agencies. What Do They Do At Mount Weather?
1) Collect Data on American Citizens
The Senate Subcommittee in 1975 learned that the "facility held dossiers
on at least 100,000 Americans. [Senator] John Tunney later alleged that
the Mount Weather computers can obtain millions of pieces of additional
information on the personal lives of American citizens simply by tapping
the data stored at any of the other ninety-six Federal Relocation
Centers."
The subcommittee concluded that Mount Weather's databases "operate with
few, if any, safeguards or guidelines."
2) Store Necessary Information
The Progressive article detailed that "General Bray gave Tunney's
subcommittee a list of the categories of files maintained at Mount
Weather: military installations, government facilities, communications,
transportation, energy and power, agriculture, manufacturing, wholesale
and retail services, manpower, financial, medical and educational
institutions, sanitary facilities, population, housing shelter, and
stockpiles." This massive database fits cleanly into Mount Weather's
ultimate purpose as the command center in the event of a national
emergency.
3) Play War Games
This is the main daily activity of the approximately 240 people who work
at Mount Weather. The games are intended to train the Mount Weather
bureaucracy to managing a wide range of problems associated with both war
and domestic political crises.
Decisions are made in the "Situation Room," the base's nerve center,
located in the core of Mount Weather. The Situation Room is the archetypal
war room, with "charts, maps and whatever visuals may be needed" and
"batteries of communications equipment connecting Mount Weather with the
White House and 'Raven Rock'--the underground Pentagon sixty miles north
of Washington--as well as with almost every US military unit stationed
around the globe," according to the Progressive article. "All internal
communications are conducted by closed-circuit color television ... senior
officers and 'Cabinet members' have two consoles recessed in the walls of
their office."
Descriptions of the war games read a bit like a Ian Fleming novel. Every
year there is a system-wide alert that "includes all military and
civilian-run underground installations." The real, aboveground President
and his Cabinet members are "relocated" to Mount Weather to observe the
simulation. Post-mortems are conducted and the margins for error are
calculated after the games. All the data is studied and documented.
4) Civil Crisis Management
Mount Weather personnel study more than war scenarios. Domestic "crises"
are also tracked and watched, and there have been times when Mount Weather
almost swung into action, as Pollock reported: "Officials who were at
Mount Weather during the 1960s say the complex was actually prepared to
assume certain governmental powers at the time of the 1961 Cuban missile
crisis and the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. The
installation used the tools of its 'Civil Crisis Management' program on a
standby basis during the 1967 and 1968 urban riots and during a number of
national antiwar demonstrations, the sources said."
In its 1974 Annual Report, the Federal Preparedness Agency stated that
"Studies conducted at Mount Weather involve the control and management of
domestic political unrest where there are material shortages (such as food
riots) or in strike situations where the FPA determines that there are
industrial disruptions and other domestic resource crises."
The Mount Weather facility uses a vast array of resources to continually
monitor the American people. According to Daniel J. Cronin, former
assistant director for the FPA, Reconnaissance satellites, local and state
police intelligence reports, and Federal law enforcement agencies are just
a few of the resources available to the FPA [now FEMA] for information
gathering. "We try to monitor situations and get to them before they
become emergencies," Cronin said. "No expense is spared in the monitoring
program."
5) Maintain and Update the "Survivors List"
Using all the data generated by the war games and domestic crisis
scenarios, the facility continually maintains and updates a list of names
and addresses of people deemed to be "vital" to the survival of the
nation, or who can "assist essential and non-interruptible services." In
the 1976 article, the "survivors list" contained 6,500 names, but even
that was deemed to be low. Who Pays for All This, and How Much?
At the same time tens of millions of dollars were being spent on
maintaining and upgrading the complex to protect several hundred
designated officials in the event of nuclear attack, the US government
drastically reduced its emphasis on war preparedness for US citizens. A
1989 FEMA brochure entitled "Are You Prepared?" suggests that citizens
construct makeshift fallout shelters using used furniture, books, and
other common household items.
Officially, Mount Weather (and its budget) does not exist. FEMA refuses to
answer inquiries about the facility; as FEMA spokesman Bob Blair told Time
magazine, "I'll be glad to tell you all about it, but I'd have to kill you
afterward."
We don't know how much Mount Weather has cost over the years, but of
course, American taxpayers bear this burden as well. A Christian Science
Monitor article entitled "Study Reveals US Has Spent $4 Trillion on Nukes
Since '45" reports that "The government devoted at least $12 billion to
civil defense projects to protect the population from nuclear attack. But
billions of dollars more were secretly spent on vast underground complexes
from which civilian and military officials would run the government during
a nuclear war." What is Mount Weather's Ultimate Purpose?
We have seen that Mount Weather contains an unelected, parallel
"government-in-waiting" ready to take control of the United States upon
word from the President or his successor. The facility contains a massive
database of information on U.S. citizens which is operated with no
safeguards or accountability. Ostensibly, this expensive hub of America's
network of sub-terran bases was designed to preserve our form of
government during a nuclear holocaust.
But Mount Weather is not simply a Cold War holdover. Information on
command and control strategies during national emergencies have largely
been withheld from the American public. Executive Order 11051, signed by
President Kennedy on October 2, 1962, states that "national preparedness
must be achieved... as may be required to deal with increases in
international tension with limited war, or with general war including
attack upon the United States."
However, Executive Order 11490, drafted by Gen. George A Lincoln (former
director for the Office of Emergency Preparedness, the FPA's predecessor)
and signed by President Nixon in October 1969, tells a different story. EO
11490, which superceded Kennedy's EO 11051, begins, "Whereas our national
security is dependent upon our ability to assure continuity of government,
at every level, in any national emergency type situation that might
conceivably confront the nation..."
As researcher William Cooper points out, Nixon's order makes no reference
to "war," "imminent attack," or "general war." These quantifiers are
replaced by an extremely vague "national emergency type situation" that
"might conceivably" interfere with the workings of the national power
structure. Furthermore, there is no publicly known Executive Order
outlining the restoration of the Constitution after a national emergency
has ended. Unless the parallel government at Mount Weather does not decide
out of the goodness of its heart to return power to Constitutional
authority, the United States could experience an honest-to-God coup d'etat
posing as a national emergency.
Like the enigmatic Area 51 in Nevada, the Federal government wants to keep
the Mount Weather facility buried in secrecy. Public awareness of this
place and its purpose would raise serious questions about who holds the
reins of power in this country. The Constitution states that those reins
lie in the hands of the people, but the very existence of Mount Weather
indicates an entirely different reality. As long as Mount Weather exists,
these questions will remain. Mount Weather's Russian Twin
By Patricia Neill
Matrix Editor
(PSCP Wanda@aol.com)
On April 16, 1996, the New York Times reported on a mysterious military
base being constructed in Russia: "In a secret project reminiscent of the
chilliest days of the Cold War, Russia is building a mammoth underground
military complex in the Ural Mountains, Western officials and Russian
witnesses say.
Hidden inside Yamantau mountain in the Beloretsk area of the southern
Urals, the project involved the creation of a huge complex, served by a
railroad,a highway, and thousands of workers."
The New York Times article quotes Russian officials describing the
underground compound variously as a mining site, a repository for Russian
treasures, a food storage area, and a bunker for Russia's leaders in case
of nuclear war.
It would seem that the Russian Parliament knows as little about Russian
underground bases as the Congress knows about Mount Weather in the United
States. "The (Russian) Defense Ministry declined to say whether Parliament
has been informed about the details of the project, like its purpose and
cost, saying only that it receives necessary military information,"
according to the New York Times.
"We can't say with confidence what the purpose is, and the Russians are
not very interested in having us go in there," a senior American official
said in Washington. "It is being built on a huge scale and involves a
major investment of resources. The investments are being made at a time
when the Russians are complaining they do not have the resources to do
things pertaining to arms control."
Where's the Money Coming From?
The construction of the vast underground complex in Russia may very well
become a cause of concern to the Clinton Administration. The issue of
ultimate purpose for the complex, whether defensive (as with Mount
Weather) or offensive (such as an underground weapons factory) is not the
only issue Mr. Clinton has to worry about.
The real cause for concern is that the US is currently sending hundreds of
millions of dollars to Russia, supposedly to help that country dismantle
old nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the Russian parliament has been
complaining to Yeltsin that it cannot pay $250 million in back wages owed
to its workers at the same time that it is spending money to comply with
new strategic arms reduction treaties.
Aviation Week and Space Technology reported that "It seems the nearly $30
billion a year spent on intelligence hasn't answered the question of what
the Russians are up to at Yamantau Mountain in the Urals. The huge
underground complex being built there has been the object of U.S. interest
since 1992. 'We don't know exactly what it is,' says Ashton Carter, the
Pentagon's international security mogul. The facility is not operational,
and the Russians have offered 'nonspecific reassurances' that it poses no
threat to the U.S."
U.S. law states that the Administration must certify to Congress that any
money sent to Russia is used to disarm its nuclear weapons. However, is
that the case? If the Russian parliament is complaining of a shortage of
funds for nuclear disarmament, then how can Russia afford to build the
Yamantau complex?
Are the Russians building an underground city akin to Mount Weather with
American taxpayer's money? Could American funds be subsidizing a Russian
weapons factory? Hopefully Congress will get a firm answer to these
questions before authorizing further funding to Russian military projects.
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Interested in learning more about communist influence
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the FBI's proposed domestic terrorism centre, the
TWA800 shootdown, the ATF's "Operation Piedmont" plans
to plant pipe bombs at the Atlanta Olympics and blame
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of US Vice Presidential nominee Jack Kemp, Ross Perot's
Establishment links, etc....and much, much more that the
media will not tell you?
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