Hit tip Westcoaster
Guest Post by
It’s after midnight. From this mountaintop perch, he can still see the radioactive remains of what used to be Washington, D.C., illuminating the horizon as he exits the helicopter. The nuclear glow serves as stark proof that the intelligence community failed to foresee and prevent the worst, but at least someone was smart enough to build this mountain bunker in rural Virginia for him and his fellow spies to regroup and survive. He opens the reinforced steel door and begins his descent.
This isn’t paranoid conspiracy fiction. This exact scenario was played out this week.
America’s Preparathon, yesterday’s national pep rally—brought to you by the Department of Homeland Security—tipped me off to this real underground bunker north of Charlottesville, Virginia. The bunker’s purpose is completely secret, though I was easily able to verify that it has been expanded and spiffed up in the years since 9/11 at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. It serves as a compact parable for everything that is wrong with government.
Yesterday’s Preparathon was described by its sponsor FEMA as “a grassroots campaign for action.” Washington’s definition of action is lining up and marching, saluting, and following orders. But there’s a secret definition, written between the lines of the Constitution and public laws: Officialdom evacuating from disorderly and disobedient America before the citizenry catches up or catches on. Countless billions have been spent on this endeavor over the years, a secret orgy of preparedness going on behind the scenes, one that ensures Washington can defend itself, take care of its own, and survive no matter what.
Its called continuity of government, and it’s been refined over the years to anticipate foreign invasion, nuclear war, catastrophic accident, rioting and citizen unrest, an electromagnetic pulse above the capital, a catastrophic failure of critical infrastructure, a malicious hacking of the electrical grid, terrorist attack, hurricanes and earthquakes, an asteroid from space—you name it. The spigot opened after 9/11, gushing tax dollars into this subterranean world of never again, but just in case. If our all-seeing, all-knowing national security establishment fails…well, the White House and the Generals and the Departments large and small all have plans to depart the capital city and recover.
But what about the spies?
And so as it goes in Washington, the self-interested predictors of world events decided after 9/11 that they, too, needed their own continuity operation. That’s right: the very people who will fail to predict the Big One will need somewhere to go and keep writing their reports.
Which brings us to Peters Mountain. This year, for the first time, the office of the Director of National Intelligence announced that it would be participating in the Preparathon with something called the National Intelligence Emergency Management Activity (NIEMA). The DNI merely describes NIEMA as providing “the framework, platforms, and systems to enable the Director of National Intelligence to lead an integrated and resilient [intelligence community] enterprise capable of sustaining the ‘intelligence cycle’ under any crisis or consequence management event, both at our headquarters and at our alternate operating locations” (my emphasis).
But job descriptions, contracting documents, insider resumes, and furtive discussions with Washington sources reveal that this little-known “activity” is a $100-million-a-year disaster playpen. At its 24/7/365 Response Operations Center (at a classified location), watch officers provide what’s referred to as “situational awareness and crisis support” to the nation’s leaders; and when that fails, they evacuate to their classified alternate facility, which sources say is in Albemarle County in central Virginia.
There is really only one candidate—a mysterious facility atop Peters Mountain, roughly 16 miles east of Charlottesville—and it’s undergone a $61 million plus renovation since 2007.
For decades, there’s been speculation about just what Peters Mountain is, this Cold War artifact on the outskirts of Washington, part of a string of “hardened” communications nodes built to survive nuclear war in the 1950s. It’s a favorite of internet conspiracy types, but no one seems to know what it is, other than the fact that the land it’s on is officially owned by AT&T. And if that’s not clear, there’s an AT&T logo newly installed on the top of the mountain itself, a helicopter pad built for this don’t-pay-attention-to-us blank spot on the map.
“I always heard stories about how it was a Nuclear Missile base, or a super communications hub. But the coolest one was the rumor that on 9/12/2001 Anti-Aircraft Artillery went up the mountain and has not come down. There is a big paved road that goes to the top off of Turkey Sag Rd. [sic] which is a gravel road and tractor trailers are always going up the mountain with covered loads. There are all sorts of Gov’t signs about private property and no trespassing. From Gordonsville at night the top of the mountain is lit up like a Christmas Tree with a lot of blue lights which I thought was weird. and you can see vehicles driving around.”
I went down a rabbit’s hole of research trying to confirm that this indeed is an intelligence community bunker, scouring the records of Albemarle County and pulling the planning, construction and tax records for the land parcel, which is indeed described as belonging to AT&T, though it is listed as “vacant residential land” of no value.
The building permits that have been submitted to the county since 2007— B200701545AC dated 07/03/07; B201302542ATWR dated 10/29/13; and B201402314AC dated 11/12/14 — amount to $61,124,583.00 in interior and exterior alterations, including the building of that helicopter pad, a new bunker entrance, “alteration to interior spaces,” and installation of two new satellite dishes.
So this vacant residential land of no value, which has seen tens of millions of dollars in construction activity, is obviously something other than its cover. The county itself, in its useful GIS property viewer, shows the “vacant” residential land clearly houses several buildings.
Google and Bing each have satellite views of the mountain top, showing the same structures and the progress of construction since 2007.
The two large structures on top of the mountain, to the left of the helicopter pad, are assumed to be vent stacks and hardened power and communications antennae. Two satellite dishes added after 9/11 are also now apparent, suggesting autonomous and enduring communications.
Nothing in the federal budget or in the county records suggests any government occupation, and nothing refers to NIEMA or the intelligence community. That again comes from sources who have worked for the DNI and its continuity activity. They describe the national Warning, Alert, and Mobilization System (WAMS) which would alert a select group of civilian executives from across the intelligence community to deploy to the bunker. The alert would come from “The Communicator” Automated Notification System and would take two forms: alerts for everyone and alerts for the “core” participants. Because Washington is notorious for traffic congestion, those so-called core participants, those who have to move away from Washington within minutes of notification, would congregate and board helicopters which would take them away.
We sent a Gawker scout out to look at Peters Mountain Road this morning, to see if indeed there were men with guns and U.S. government insignia warning hikers to stay clear.
“Road closed” to him meant road closed, and he declined to drive further. County maps do not show the road as being closed or restricted in any way (bottom left hand corner, parcel 36-11A SCC). I guess that’s the prerogative of those who live in the shadows.
The bunker is built. It’s regularly exercised. It’s ready to go, joining Mount Weather and Raven Rock and the Olney bunkers that dot the west, north, and east of the capital. As the government —and now the intelligence community—button-up to protect themselves during a disaster, the helicopter pilots and drivers and the guards and the rest of the unchosen (even those who work for the same organizations) are supposed to just stay outside, always a scenario I find difficult to imagine. How would this exactly work, this glorious evacuation of a select few? “Honey I’m off to a secret mountain to survive Armageddon, good luck?”
And as for the local officials and people of Charlottesville, huddled in darkness without electricity, staring up at the blue-lit mountain glowing in the night on generator power? Well, they will just have to wait for the report to be written that it’s all clear, or for the one that says it’s all over, in which case Peters Mountain will be a lonely island, prepared for a future of nothingness. And there’s a report on that too, required to be submitted every 12 hours: It’s called the IC Health and Status report—health and status of the intelligence community, that is.
[Photos: Mike Jacoby; FEMA; Google maps; Bing; Albemarle County records; Phase Zero secret agent]
a cave is a grave,, they wont be in a good spot when the Russians show up and start pumping poison gas into the rathole.
It won’t be Russians. It will probably ex military guys or other spies who realize they have been betrayed.
“Nothing in the federal budget or in the county records suggests any government occupation”
To paraphrase the old Jewish guy in INDEPENDENCE DAY, do you think that a toilet seat cost $20,000, or that a case of paper towels cost $5,000. Our OBM wrote the book on money-laundering. Hundreds of billions of dollars allocated to off-the-books expenditures can be concealed in line items, as any accountant knows. Our owners just count on most of us not having the time or energy to spare from making a living, saving for retirement, or keeping every last spare dime from being stolen by our taxing authorities, to have anything to spare to dig into the numbers.
This might be the new hide out for President Cheney after he bitched about having to hide out in a missile silo during the 9/11 kerfuffle.
I have read that whole shiploads of jerky, corn beef, powdered milk etc get commandeered by government goons who hand the captain a check and tell him to go back for another load for his true customer. Might not be 100% true but if you want those items they are scarce; but there is plenty of canned pork (Spam) at Sams and Cosco. Oops, I better run catch the nightly Fairy News and stupid TV shows to learn about real America.
Spam is just salted pork fat with vinegar and food coloring added to make it palatable, sort of like MSM news.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_bunker_buster
I tipped this story to Admin because these “COG-Continuity of government” plans and sites were championed by Cheney and Rumsfeld from way back in the Ford administration. I joke about Cheney still running things from Raven Rock “Site R”, but when you see how the neo-cons have prospered despite the Iraq/Afghan wars it really makes you wonder.
I only hope if it all goes into the shitter as a result of the Ukraine, Victoria “fuck the EU” Nulandvand the rest of her ilk never make their helicopter.
The Führer had scores of bunkers disseminated all throughout central Europe and look at how well THAT worked out for him. In fact he died inside one. The problem with nuclear warfare is that even though you may momentarily escape the conflagration itself there’s still the CONSEQUENCES to deal with. The specific consequences in this particular instance would involve survival on a toxically barren, socially lawless & overall inhospitable planet. As for the likes of Obama, Bush, Clinton et al, I really don’t think that their ultimate destiny would be to shoot themselves inside their bunkers à la Hitler because such action would require considerably more testicular fortitude than they possess.
What I do inside Obama’s bunker post-nuclear war scenario envision is that very quickly discipline would deteriorate to the point wherein he and Moochelle along with all their surviving accomplices and corporate sponsors get shot in the back of their heads by their own subordinates once the age-old formula of every man for himself kicks in.
Or is that just wishful thinking?
Metal Gear Solid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=5mQGqzUs2l8
You know, for a long time, I’ve had a philosophical problem with the concept of Continuity of Government.
My problem is this: Where are the bunkers for the rest of us?
Why was the decision made to protect the government, but not the rest of us?
The Russians, by comparison, built shelters for everyone. Everyone didn’t rate the same quality of shelter, but there was something for everyone. Even their subway was designed as a shelter. Apartment blocks had big, deep basements. (Eastern European apartment blocks were so heavily built, they’re practically bunkers, themselves. 1930s-era blocks have exterior walls 5+ feet thick!) They’re still building shelters for their people, too.
So all we ever had was advice on how to dig a ditch and pull a door and a pile of dirt over it. They haven’t been putting that old advice out for 20+ years. Now it’s just “get a bag, have a plan” or “watch out for zombies!”
My fundamental question is this-what good is it if our government survives a nuclear attack, but we don’t? Kind of eliminates that pesky notion that power flows up from the people. And who will they purport to be leading when the attack is over? If I’m going to die in a nuclear war, what the fuck do I care if there’s a government left to fire back?
Seems to me, if they let a nuclear attack occur, their leadership is obviously invalidated, so they shouldn’t be protected from their bad decisions. They ought to be just as unprotected as we are, thus forcing them to be really careful about how well they lead us. In fact, the last thing we should be protecting is our leaders. If the enemy kills off our leaders, we’ll be just fine. We might even be better off. If they kill us off, our leaders are no longer leaders. They’re just a bunch of fat, old, obsolete pervs hiding out underground; a monument to useless things.
Again-why would I care if they survive if their leadership is what got us into this mess in the first place? And let’s say we do survive some massive attack or disaster, and our “leaders” finally surface from their underground hidey-holes? What happens then? Because nobody will want to listen to a bunch of bullshit from some Vault Dwelling idiots in tidy uniforms and suits who spent the last few months or years playing Madden underground while we were living Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. That’s not going to work.
Your authority pretty much ends when you run away to hide underground from the results of your “leadership” and leave us behind to shoulder the burden. By the time you pop up, we’ll have moved on and we’ll be following The Lord Humongous or the Duke of New York (he’s A#1!) or General Bethlehem, or whomever. If you run, don’t come back.
I once met a guy who was ordered to one of those command bunkers on 9/11 and was told to get it up and ready to go for the leadership, who were expected to flee DC. He said it was a joke. First, the comms gear was an antique mess. Second, the damp underground wreaks havoc on the stuff. Third, the politicians never evacuated. He said they all stayed in DC to get airtime on the news and give interviews and make statements. He sat in the bunker for a couple days before packing it all up and going home. He said he figures in a real attack, our leaders probably won’t make it to their bunkers. I guess we won’t ever know for sure until it’s too late to care.
As an aside-anyone out there read The Remaining series? It’s a fiction series about a plague that basically turns most of the country into brain damaged cannibals who eat people. If you’re bitten, you turn into one, too. The only remaining authorities are these Coordinators in each state who are kept in a bunker for 30 days after a disaster, then ordered to surface and start leading the survivors. Each Coordinator has 10 bunkers full of recovery supplies and guns to issue to survivors that only they can open. If you like zombies and post-A fiction, you’ll like it.
GilbertS says: Why was the decision made to protect the government, but not the rest of us?
There were the nuclear scares of the cold war that popularized home nuclear bunkers. Eventually, the mutually assured destruction policy alleviated the stress on a threatened people. Continuity of government gives us the comfort that if everybody else dies, we (of course we ourselves won’t die) will still have a government to handle emergency stuff like firefighting and handing out water rations.
If the government fails at this, even Snake Plissken won’t be able to save Cheney’s ass from an angry mob. What, you didn’t know Cheney is our behind the scenes president for life?
The more I come upon articles such as this one (thanks for the find, WC) and the link (thanks T4C) to the “Site 911” piece, the more content I grow with having decamped to a fairly remote region in the southern hemisphere with a part of my posterity (the one with children) living right next door. There are no guarantees, of course (“On the Beach”), but the odds are more favorable for continuity of family; as for political leaders, I’d be rooting for a paraphrase of the infamous sow Nuland’s feelings about the EU. The degree to which power madness has risen, the scale of the waste of taxpayer funds, the hedonistic hubris of the wealthy, the growing barbarism of the young, the steady and unceasing decay of time-honored social norms …
What is it within some of us that has led nearly all of us to this ever-more-threatening state of affairs?
Yeah, but the difference is I have to spend my money to prepare, while they get to spend my money to prepare. It just ain’t right. How many Bond villain mountaintop bunkers do you own?
And they didn’t always think only of themselves. I remember as a kid we had shelter signs on public buildings all over the place. There was at least some attempt before they just gave up and started hiding their preps from us, like that bunker hidden under a resort in WV.
There are many such sites in the spine of the Appalachians, Especially in the arc north and west of DC. It’s my stomping grounds.
I guess you thought all the old Minuteman II sites were only located in the prairie, just like the gubmint told you. I know some that found out differently the hard way.
In the 80’s before you could be branded a terrorist for even going near places, my friends and I would investigate these areas for fun and the challenge. Unusual antennas, helicopter activity at night, odd construction areas, ventilation shafts up in the mountains and things appearing out of place, like large, well maintained farm silos on a mountain with no farm nearby would pique our interests. Interestingly, the best information came from local utility workers.
There is another site like this one noted in the article. It’s located just SW of Whitetail ski resort.
“Hearthstone Mountain” complex. It has the same construction layout with the AT&T helipad
location: 39deg 41′ 98″ N ; 77deg 58′ 12″ W
This was build after my days of physically nosing around sites ended.