TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/120991/1209102.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 17.1 KB | 333 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 26

CIVIL DEFENSE

Doomsday Hideaway


Carved into a Virginia ridge more than three decades ago, a
secret bunker still stands ready to shelter U.S. leaders from
a nuclear attack

By TED GUP/BERRYVILLE


    It may well be that the cold war is over, that the U.S.
and the Soviet Union are dismantling thousands of nuclear
weapons, and that Moscow no longer poses the threat to the West
it once did. But buried deep inside a Virginia mountain, a vast,
top-secret installation -- one of the great artifacts of the
cold war -- remains at the ready. Known as Mount Weather, it is
a Strangelovian relic of yesteryear intended to shelter the
President and other top U.S. officials in case of nuclear war.
The 33-year-old facility is manned by a second generation of
doomsday planners, men and women who are reassessing their
mission and that of the massive bunker they have maintained
through more than three decades of nuclear threat.

    Designed to survive the unthinkable and completed in 1958,
the year after the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite,
Mount Weather stands as a monument to a potential nightmare. 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; defense experts take it as a given that the
site is on the Kremlin's targeting maps. Yet Mount Weather
remains an integral part of the U.S.'s "Continuity of
Government" plan, under which senior officials are to be whisked
away in case of an imminent nuclear strike so that they can set
up a kind of Administration-in-exile, directing every order of
business from retaliation to recovery.

    Mount Weather is operated by the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, which for years has fended off inquiries
about the installation with a firm "no comment." Jokes Bob
Blair, a FEMA spokesman: "I'll be glad to tell you all about it,
but I'd have to kill you afterward." Officially, the Mount
Weather bunker does not exist; it is not mentioned in FEMA's
published budget. "Even I don't know much about it, and I'm head
of FEMA's congressional affairs," says David Cole. "A lot of it
is in the black [secret] program."

    In FEMA's internal telephone directory, Mount Weather is
referred to simply as SF, for Special Facility, and that is what
it is called by all who are assigned there. "I was [at the
agency] for almost two years before I heard the term Mount
Weather," says Julius Becton, who headed FEMA from 1985 to 1989.
The installation has no street address, merely a post-office
box in Berryville, Va., a sleepy hamlet eight miles away.

    Tucked into a heavily wooded mountain ridge straddling
Loudoun and Clarke counties, Mount Weather remains largely
invisible. On Loudoun County's tax map, parcels covering some
434 acres are simply designated "United States of America." Area
residents nod knowingly at mention of the facility. "For years
residents of Loudoun County have quietly smiled to themselves
that if all the other roads in the county were choked with snow
and ice, that one road would be practically dry," says Rob
Montgomery, a county employee. "Care was always taken that
people could get in and out of there."

    On the approach to the facility, along a twisting, narrow
stretch of County Route 601, past Heart Trouble Lane, a flashing
yellow warning light and a 10-m.p.h. speed limit provide the
first hint that something unusual is around the bend. The
compound is surrounded by a 10-ft.-high chain-link fence topped
with six strands of barbed wire. Armed guards patrol the
perimeter. Anyone straying past the entrance is temporarily
relieved of cameras, asked to stay in the car and then shown the
way out. Motorists who take an inordinate interest in the site
are shadowed by security cars and watched through binoculars.
Warning signs forbid the making of sketches or diagrams of the
facility. Strangely enough, the airspace over the site is
unrestricted -- probably because the most sensitive portion of
the installation is underground. A TWA 727 jetliner crashed into
the mountainside in 1974, killing 92 people and drawing unwanted
attention to the site.

    Despite the secrecy surrounding Mount Weather, an extensive
review of county, state and federal documents, as well as
interviews with more than 100 current and former officials,
provides a tantalizing glimpse inside the installation. 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 landing pad. The mountain's
real secrets are not visible at ground level.

    At the turn of the century, the site was a National
Weather Bureau facility where balloons and box kites were sent
up to observe weather conditions. In 1936 it came under the
control of the U.S. Bureau of Mines, which began to dig an
experimental mine into the mountain 250 ft. to 300 ft. below the
surface along an east-west axis. The tunnel, which extended a
scant quarter-mile and measured 7 ft. wide by 6 1/2 ft. high,
provided the opening for what would later be expanded into an
underground complex of offices and living quarters.

    The precise genesis of the Mount Weather project remains
uncertain, but it undoubtedly came in response to the Soviet
Union's 1949 detonation of an atom bomb and the grave concern
that event triggered in the U.S. Bellicose Soviet rhetoric,
McCarthyite hectoring and, soon after, the Korean War persuaded
senior U.S. officials in the early 1950s that provisions would
have to be made to protect the country's leaders against a
possible nuclear attack. Thus the search began for an
impregnable site to which the President and other top officials
could be spirited in case of a war emergency.

    For the Eisenhower Administration, Mount Weather was a
natural choice. It was 48 air miles from Washington in a rural
and largely undeveloped portion of Virginia. The mine already
existed at the site, and the Bureau of Mines had been using
state-of-the-art drilling and bit technology there for years.
The bureau's physicists had conducted extensive tests of high
explosives inside the mountain, setting off as many as 64 sticks
(34 lbs.) of dynamite at a time. Studies of the resultant impact
and shock waves on the rock structure convinced them that the
site would make an ideal superbunker. An April 1953 bureau study
concluded that "the rock in the area . . . is exceptionally hard
and tight." There were few faults or fissures; most of the rock
was epidosite and greenstone, a local name for a Precambrian
basalt that had metamorphosed into an extremely dense formation.

    In 1954 the Bureau of Mines began a massive expansion of
the mine into the most secure shelter and command post
scientific and military minds of the time could imagine. One of
the architects of the project was Paul Russell, who headed the
Bureau of Mines facility and later studied the impact of nuclear
explosions on underground structures. Among the few men still
alive who assisted Russell and others on the project is Gilbert
Fowler, now 80. For three decades, from 1938 to 1969, Fowler
worked at Mount Weather, helping both to dig the original mine
and to complete its transformation into the secret complex.
Crews worked around the clock for three years, blasting and
excavating in a damp but constant temperature of 52 degrees F.
Fowler was foreman of one of the three 40-man shifts. "That was
some rough, tough, dirty work," he recalls. Between 1953 and
1969, Fowler witnessed a marvel of engineering, working first
for the Bureau of Mines and later for the Army Corps of
Engineers. "It was amazing the way they could drive a straight
line through solid rock," he says. Inside the mountain the
tunnel was gradually expanded into a self-sustaining underground
complex.

    Several underground ponds were carved from solid rock --
some of them, according to Fowler's estimates, were 10 ft. deep
and 200 ft. across. One was to be a reservoir for drinking
water; others were used to cool the air pumped through the
complex's massive mainframe computers to prevent them from
overheating. Side tunnels were dug, and more than 20 cavernous
offices were put in, some shored up with concrete. To withstand
the severe exterior shock of a nuclear blast, the roof areas of
the tunnels and rooms were reinforced with 21,000 iron bolts
sunk 8 to 10 ft. into the rock, according to records at the
National Archives.

    Fowler and other current and former Mount Weather
employees describe an eerie complex that could be turned into
the U.S.'s underground capital in an instant. Standby sleeping
quarters were set up to accommodate hundreds of government
officials. Because the country's Emergency Broadcast System
could be obliterated in a nuclear strike, a radio-and-television
studio was included so that the President or other key officials
could address the nation, providing people with emergency
instructions and telling them that at least some units of
government were intact and carrying on. Diesel engines were
installed to generate electricity in an underground utility
plant called the power chamber. Refrigerators were brought in
for food storage. A cafeteria became part of the complex, as
well as a hospital.

    An air shaft was dug from the main tunnel to the top of
the mountain, and pumps and fans were installed for air
circulation. If need be, the entire underground complex could
be sealed. The entrance to the facility, according to Fowler,
could be closed off with a so-called guillotine gate; behind it
is a solid steel door that Fowler estimates is 5 ft. thick, 10
ft. high and nearly 20 ft. across. It rests on wheels and can
be opened and closed electronically. Says former FEMA head
Becton: "The entrance is such that if they were to pop a nuke,
it would withstand whatever they popped."

    Mount Weather is a city unto itself, with a resident
complement of scientists, computer programmers, engineers, fire
fighters, craftsmen and security guards. The government
bureaucracy is well represented by branch chiefs, financial
managers, supply officers, secretaries and stenographers. Mount
Weather's communications facilities are an integral part of the
National Emergency Management System, with a direct link to the
White House Situation Room.

    The job titles of some of the on-site staff reflect the
unique nature of the facility: crypto-equipment operator,
disaster-preparation specialist and attack-warning adviser.
Mount Weather also has a simulation and gaming branch, which
postulates various disaster scenarios. In all, more than 240 men
and women work at the site; some are second-generation
employees, and most are unwilling to utter even a word about the
facility, having been sworn to secrecy. Beyond preparing to cope
with the effects of a nuclear attack, the facility conducts
substantial research into radiological instrumentation and is
a focal point for disaster information. Eight engineers,
technicians and scientists assigned to Mount Weather's
radiological instrumentation test facility work on a variety of
projects, including the development of radiation-measuring
instruments used for both civil defense purposes and peacetime
emergencies. The complex is also home to the National Emergency
Coordination Center, which operates 24 hours a day, monitoring
disasters worldwide, be they earthquakes, tidal waves, nuclear
accidents -- or the ultimate catastrophe: the outbreak of
nuclear war.

    The man who has run Mount Weather since 1968 is Bernard
("Bud") Gallagher. A former Air Force bomber pilot who was shot
down over Denmark and held captive by Germany's dreaded Gestapo
during World War II, Gallagher flew through the mushroom clouds
of 12 nuclear tests in 1952 and 1953 to record radiation
levels. He later went to the White House, serving in the Office
of Emergency Preparedness. Now 69, Gallagher is described as a
superpatriot and a student of such dire scenarios as the
postattack consequences of nuclear, biological and chemical
warfare. Says Becton: "He's a solid citizen, a guy who has
dedicated his entire life to this, and I suspect he won't leave
until he has to be carried out in a box." Gallagher declined to
be interviewed.

    Even though cold war tensions have eased, Washington
planners insist that, along with airborne command centers and
underground military installations, Mount Weather remains an
essential element in national defense. A former National
Security Council staff member says the consensus among people
who think about the unthinkable is that Washington is a
potential target for nuclear attack -- even outside a cold war
framework -- because any foe would be tempted "to decapitate"
the U.S. government by killing its leaders. In recent years FEMA
has shifted the focus from a potential Soviet attack to one by
a Third World nation or even a terrorist group with access to
a crude nuclear device. Other scenarios that might trigger an
evacuation to Mount Weather, according to a former FEMA
official, would be the poisoning of Washington's water supply
or a biological or chemical attack on the U.S.

    Each successive Administration has rehearsed the
evacuation drill, briefing those on the list of designated
officials -- Cabinet Secretaries and heads or seconds-in-command
of key government departments and agencies -- about where they
should assemble to be taken out of harm's way. Most among the
leadership carry special identification cards designating them
as evacuees, and have already been briefed as to where they
would go if there were an emergency, according to Becton. "The
emergency instructions tell them what to do and where to do it."

    William Brock, for example, who was Ronald Reagan's
Secretary of Labor from 1985 to 1987, ranked 11th in the order
of presidential succession and was on the evacuation list. Brock
said he never went anywhere without his special card. During one
exercise, he recalls, he went to the Mall in the center of
Washington and was helicoptered to Mount Weather. Brock said
he took "absolutely nothing" with him.

    FEMA spokesman Marvin Davis, who says the facility is
still needed, concedes that political change in the world may
ultimately redefine the role of Mount Weather. "But public
policy rarely closely follows current events," he says. "It's
too soon. We're less than a few months into the new world. It's
going to take some time before that's fully assessed." Says
Becton: "We are no longer faced with a bolt out of the blue from
Russia, but no one has the assurance that someone else won't pop
up in the next five or 10 years and take on that threatening
role."

    Much has changed since the planners of 1953 mapped out
their scenarios. The nuclear weapons of the 1990s are far more
accurate and more penetrating, and while satellite surveillance
has been enhanced, warning times in case of attack have been
reduced. The helicopter flight time from the White House to
Mount Weather is about 20 minutes, but a missile fired at the
U.S. by a submarine lying just off the coast could strike within
10 to 15 minutes after launch. And there are some
nuclear-weapons experts who say, all planning and testing
notwithstanding, a direct nuclear hit on Mount Weather would
destroy it.

    Mount Weather's greatest vulnerability, however, may lie
not with nuclear weapons but with human nature. The government
officials designated to be evacuated in case of an emergency are
not permitted to take their families with them, and many former
officials say they would find it unimaginable to abandon
husbands, wives or children. The issue has dogged the doomsday
planners from the beginning. "I never took it very seriously,"
says Alexis Johnson, who was Deputy Under Secretary of State
during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. "It was an unrealistic
thing, it seemed to me, that we'd all pick up at the ringing of
a bell and run for the hills, leaving our families behind."

    That raises another troubling question about Mount
Weather's mission. Over the past 33 years, tens of millions of
dollars have been spent on maintaining and upgrading the complex
to protect several hundred designated officials in the event of
nuclear attack. During the same period, the U.S. government has
dramatically reduced its emphasis on war preparedness for
ordinary citizens and currently spends less than 50 cents a head
each year on civil defense. In a 1989 brochure titled Are You
Prepared? FEMA offered the suggestion that citizens could use
"furniture, books and other items commonly found around the
house" to build makeshift fallout shelters. But who would be
left to be governed after the fires had died down and the chosen
few emerged from the mountain?