GUY RAZ, host:
A couple of weeks ago, we called up Bill Arkin. He is an investigative reporter with the Washington Post. He and another Post reporter, Dana Priest, spent two years working on a groundbreaking series of reports - that came out last year -about the government's vast and secret security apparatus.
Anyway, I wanted to know if there was an underground, post-apocalyptic U.S. Capitol - a secret bunker for Congress somewhere. So I asked him.
Mr. BILL ARKIN (Investigative Reporter, The Washington Post): There is.
RAZ: What is it?
Mr. ARKIN: Well, I don't want to say.
RAZ: Fair enough. But for 30 years - between 1961 and 1992 - that secret U.S. Capitol building was behind this giant, reinforced-steel door.
(Soundbite of doors banging)
RAZ: Welcome to Capitol Hill the day after - except this isn't Washington. It's a giant, concrete box nestled into a hillside in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. The story of how it was kept secret for 30 years, and how it even got here, is stranger than any conspiracy theory.
For one thing, it was built as an addition to one of America's most famous luxury resorts, the Greenbrier.
(Soundbite of archived broadcast)
Unidentified Announcer: At White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is the most celebrated of the historic watering places around which much of the history of fashionable Southern society has revolved since the country was young.
RAZ: This is from a 1948 newsreel story on the Greenbrier just after its grand reopening.
Unidentified Announcer: Though Greenbrier's decorative scheme is new, its clientele remains basically much what it has always been: traveled people of means and background, industrialists and bankers and well-known public figures like Clark Clifford, White House confidante and adviser during most of the Truman administration.
RAZ: Bankers, industrialists, government advisers - all hobnobbing at one of the country's most exclusive resorts. And right next door - right next door - a post-apocalyptic bunker to guard America's lawmakers, a place you'd go after a nuclear attack.
Now, to Bob Conte, that all sounded implausible - crazy talk. He's the official historian for the Greenbrier. And when he arrived here in 1978, locals in White Sulfur Springs started badgering him with questions.
Mr. BOB CONTE (Official Historian, Greenbrier): Why is there a 7,000-foot landing strip for a town of 3,000 people? Well, that's so the government could fly their people in here in case of war, and go to the bunker that's under the Greenbrier.
RAZ: But as the historian, as the guy who had to answer questions about the history of this place, you must have been asked about it. People must have asked you: What do you know about this thing?
Mr. CONTE: And I said: No such thing.
RAZ: Now, here's the thing: Bob Conte really didn't know about it. He knew every square inch of the Greenbrier's property. He had access to all the records and documents and historic photographs of presidents and kings and prime ministers drinking mint juleps on the veranda. But only a handful of people in America knew that just a few yards from Bob Conte's own office was a reinforced bunker that could house all 535 members of the House and Senate in the event of nuclear Armageddon.
(Soundbite of door opening)
RAZ: Behind a three-foot-thick, concrete wall is a space about the size of a Wal-Mart - 100,000 square feet. The air-intake system is so intricate - it was meant to filter out radiation - that it creates a vacuum-like effect when you walk in. Wind howls around you, and sucks all the doors shut.
(Soundbite of slamming door)
RAZ: Bob leads us into what would have been the sleeping quarters for those members of Congress who survived the initial blast, and managed to make it to the Greenbrier: a row of metal bunk beds.
(Soundbite of opening door)
Mr. CONTE: So each one of these beds - all they had for private items that you could lock up, small little drawer that's right underneath each of the beds...
(Soundbite of drawer opening)
Mr. CONTE: ...so you could put your personal items in here. And then you had one locker. So that was the extent of what you would have while you were here. And for 30 years, every one of these 1,100 beds was assigned to somebody. It was assigned to a member of Congress...
RAZ: Every bed was assigned to a member of Congress. Now, to understand why - and even how - this bunker was built right under the noses of America's vacationing aristocrats, you have to go back to the mid-1950s, when a whole industry built around the construction of fallout shelters started to take off.
(Soundbite of archived newsreel)
Unidentified Announcer #2: In the wake of disaster, you are about to enter upon probably the most difficult and yet most important period of your life: when to escape the effects of radioactive fallout for perhaps as long as the next two weeks, you will be deprived of all the conveniences of modern life.
RAZ: So this is the late 1950s, and President Dwight Eisenhower starts to worry about how to maintain law and order in America in the aftermath of a nuclear war.
President DWIGHT EISENHOWER: I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense, is new; one which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use. That new language is the language of atomic warfare.
(Soundbite of archived newsreel)
Unidentified Announcer #2: Danger will come not just from blasts or heat or nearby radiation effect, but also from fallout.
(Soundbite of explosion)
RAZ: So in 1958, government workers broke ground on what they called Project Greek Island, and Eisenhower decided the Greenbrier would be a perfect cover. It was just about four hours' drive from Washington. And so hotel workers and guests were told that that giant hole in the ground? Well, that would house a new conference facility. And in fact, it would - or at least, a part of it would.
Mr. CONTE: In the 30 years, thousands of people walked in and out of a secret bunker, not knowing that they were in a secret bunker...
RAZ: Not knowing that - right.
Mr. CONTE: ...which was part of the original design.
RAZ: And they would come in here, and this is - what? Where we are now?
Mr. CONTE: This is the exhibit hall.
RAZ: Okay.
Ms. CONTE: So you'd have the West Virginia Medical Association meeting here. A lot of car companies have met here over the years. So when this was all built, part of the disguise of the bunker was adding this new wing to the Greenbrier, and part of that included conference facilities.
RAZ: Now, what most people thought of as a conference facility was actually a space designed to serve as an office for all 535 members of Congress and some congressional staffers.
Bob Conte leads us down another corridor into a room that was meant to be the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Mr. CONTE: So the overt purpose was another conference facility. The covert purpose was House of Representatives. So there were microphones in that - you know, you see their little desks, they could pull up - and have a little armrest there, little metal attachments there, on the back of the seats. They would attach microphones there...
RAZ: Now, there were a few weird coincidences that Bob Conte noticed over the years, before the bunker's existence was exposed by the Washington Post in 1992. For one thing, there were many, many, many bathrooms - and most of them were facilities for men.
And the other thing he noticed was this mysterious crew of TV technicians. They worked at the hotel, but they didn't work for the hotel. The company they worked for was called Forsyth Associates - except as it turned out, Forsyth Associates was a cover. These were secret government employees, and they had to keep the bunker in a constant state of operational readiness.
Mr. CONTE: So for that 30 years, you had to make sure all the filters were changed; all the pharmaceuticals were up-to-date; all the food was ready to go.
RAZ: And they had to keep a six-month supply of food that was periodically refreshed.
But today, part of the bunker is a tourist attraction; another part is used as a secure data storage facility. And had it not been exposed in 1992, there's a good chance this would still be the secret home of the U.S. Congress. So today, it's somewhere else. And like the last one, just a handful of people know where it is.
And as I mentioned earlier, Washington Post reporter Bill Arkin is one of them -and he's not saying.
Mr. ARKIN: If you're a normal member of Congress, my guess is that you know nothing. You really know nothing.
RAZ: A quick postscript to this story: There's a former software engineer named Larry Hall, and he plans to turn a decommissioned missile base in Kansas into luxury survival condos. And after the recent earthquake in Japan and the nuclear reactor crisis, he's been getting a lot more inquiries.
Larry Hall says his bunker will even protect you from radiation, but it'll cost you. Prices start at $900,000.
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