| | The topic du jour is a secret program put in place during the Eisenhower administration known broadly as Continuity of Government, or 'COG.' I've been holding off on writing about this topic, because I have so much research piled up about it I was afraid a post would quickly become so gargantuan I would never be able to finish it. Thus, I plan to break it into several smaller and hopefully more readable and interesting segments.
I got my final 'push' to start this series this past weekend while visiting with my wife's parents in West Virginia over Independence Day. While watching the local news Saturday evening, a story caught my attention -- it seems the Greenbrier fallout shelter has been renovated and is now open once again for tours. The Greenbrier bunker was one of the facilities that made up the COG program, which I just realized I should probably explain somewhat.
COG got its start practically as soon as the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949. Governmental higher-ups, realizing the vulnerability of Washington, D.C. as a target area, began drawing up plans to relocate in time of emergency. The defense department and some executive offices began work on a facility at Mount Weather, just outside the Washington Metro area in northern Virginia. The judiciary set up digs (pun very much intended) at Raven Rock in Pennsylvania, and work began on a presidential shelter at Camp David. The legislative branch scouted out a location many Senators and Congressmen knew well -- the posh Greenbrier Resort in the hills of West Virginia.
 The Greenbrier has long been a destination resort for heads of state from around the globe, and certainly the power-players in Washington, D.C. were familiar with its amenities and its relatively isolated location. Thus, the architect of the capitol approached CSX (the railroad owned the land and the resort) and the idea for Project Greek Island was born. The plan was compartively simple: the resort would announce an expansion project that would include a new wing attached to the main hotel. This activity would serve as cover for the government's building project.
In a remarkable feat of secrecy, contractors crafted a massive reinforced concrete bunker under the site. The West Virginia Wing, as the hotel expansion was christened, quickly took shape, hiding the unusual excavation project. Construction began in 1958 and was complete by 1961. The fallout shelter (technically, the facility was never meant to serve as a 'bunker' -- though constructed of reinforced concrete, it was not engineered to survive a direct, or even indirect, hit) comprised over 100,000 square feet and could accomodate every member of the legislative branch and their staff.
 Massive blast doors (the one pictured to the right is one of the facility's vehicular entrance doors) were custom-made by the Mosler Safe Company and shipped via rail -- hence the further strategic importance of the cooperation with CSX -- to the site. Though tipping the scales at 25 tons, the doors open with a mere 50 pounds of pressure. During my personal visit to the site, an older gentleman (an employee of the Greenbrier) demonstrated just how easily the door would swing on its hinges. He also demonstrated for our group the deafening (and quite ominous) boom when the door swings back into its frame and the bolt is thrown. (Yes, for those few attentive readers who have yet to glaze over, I went on a tour of the shelter. What else would you expect? And, in a testament to the power of love, the trip was actually a graduation (from undergrad) present from my then-fiance, now long-suffering-yet-still-supportive-despite-my-weird-leisurely-pursuits-wife. But, more on my visit in a later post).
And thus you see how easily I can devolve into mind-numbing specifics. Thus I will cut this post off here, and suffice it to say that if you ever want to see where Congress and the Senate planned to ride out Armageddon, you can do so on a convenient guided tour. Just check out the link below.
For further reading:
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