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 THE CHAPEL OF LAST RESORT For hundreds of years the Catholic Church has endured criticism over their penchant for multi-million dollar decorating projects. Considering that every major city has at least one awe-inspiring example of Catholic architecture, perhaps the gadflies have a point. In Los Angeles, for example, the downtown Cathedral is undergoing a highly controversial 163-million-dollar reconstruction. It is tempting to make the observation that if the Church held back on a few stained glass windows, Ethiopia could be fed and clothed well into the next century. But to be fair, it must be said that these beautiful structures are at least USED. Parishioners do attend these churches; they admire their opulent surroundings; they worship, they confess and then they generally feel guilty. In short these places are real churches. Such was not the result of the United States government's stab at super secret church construction in the 1950s. Indeed, having recently toured a massive declassified congressional fall-out shelter (complete with "chapel" space), I can assure the Pope that Uncle Sam is the bigger wastrel in terms of cost-to-aesthetic church building. And in terms of cost-to-worship there is no contest whatsoever. The government's underground chapel was NEVER used. The chaplain of the House of Representatives didn't even know of its existence until Speaker Tip O'Neill made a joke about it in 1981 (see addendum). Another comparison ratio is space-to-cost and here again the Catholics come out on top. The square inches allotted to the doomsday church compares roughly with the allotted space given to a stall at the Comdex Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. To put things in proper perspective, it would be something akin to the Vatican shelling out millions to build a rather drab confessional booth in the middle of nowhere. The real story here, though, is the staggering underground infrastructure that supported this Port-a-Chapel for more than twenty-five years. And, more fantastically, what was on top of it. Project X, then Project Casper and finally Project Greek Island were the original codenames for the shelter. Its SOLE intended occupant was always the Congress of the United States and their aides. To mangle the familiar Titanic slogan: WOMEN AND CHILDREN - NOT ADMITTED. There are emergency relocation sites for the other branches of government such as Mount Weather in Northern Virginia and Site R (near Camp David, MD) which still remain operational. In an extraordinary bit of government back scratching the Eisenhower Administration, via the Architect of the Capitol, negotiated to build the structure on the grounds of the Greenbrier Hotel; a five star resort located five hours south of Washington in White Sulphur Springs, W. VA. In exchange for government financing of the Greenbrier's West Virginia Wing addition, the hotel permitted the simultaneous construction of the shelter beneath it. This provided the initial cover story for the digging of the congressional hideaway. Ground was broken in 1957 and the Greenbrier employee newsletter noted the occasion by "informing" staff that "testing" was being conducted for the new wing. Oddly enough, the bunker and the West Virginia Wing of the Greebrier were completed just in time for the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. This remained the only occasion the shelter ever went on full alert. As the Cold War played out over the decades, Project Greek Island was quietly maintained and updated by the Army Signal Corps and sworn-to-secrecy Greenbrier staff. Incredibly, the government employees posed as on-site TV repairmen and had orders to blend in with the townsfolk. No matter how patriotic these government employees were, serving their country by posing as TV repairmen in White Sulphur Springs, W. VA must have been the Cold War equivalent of directing traffic or walking a third shift sentry beat. The bunker managed to outlast the Soviet Union by a margin of about a year. And if it weren't for a May 1992 Washington Post exposé it would probably STILL be up and running. As things turned out, shortly after that article was published Project Greek Island was decommissioned. In 1995 the first tours of the bunker began exclusively for Greenbrier guests. Beginning in 1997 anyone with 25 bucks could get a guided tour twice a week. The tour I took of the "former government relocation facility" is one of the indelible experiences of my life. Sure, I could have spent the money on a fabulous, rational vacation, but I got to see where Newt Gingrich would have slept through Armageddon. You just can't put a price on that. My tour convenes at an abandoned junior high school in the middle of a rather depressed-looking downtown White Sulphur Springs. It is here that the Greenbrier tour bus picks up the common, non-resort guests such as myself. My 30-person group is composed mainly of Friends of Private Ryan and their wives. Generation X is nowhere to be found. Once we've all boarded the bus, our guide Mary, a 50-something West Virginia native, takes the microphone, introduces herself and instructs the driver to start rolling. Along the way, she points out the railroad that was used to transport the 25-ton blast door that we will soon be passing through. In a matter of minutes we are at the grand west entrance to the Incredible, Colossal Congressional Biosphere. Jim, a 38-year veteran of the hotel's janitorial service, opens the vault door - which is mounted on massive, springed hinges. We are cautioned that when the door closes it will make an extremely loud noise. We begin walking down the long tunnel that leads to the shelter's decontamination entrance. Piled high along the walls of the tunnel are freeze-dried food packages. These are leftovers from the government's non-occupation occupation. About half way down the tunnel, the door finally slams shut and it sounds like a cannon going off. My fellow tourists look like they are going to have domino-effect heart attacks. As they used to say in the B-movie prison pictures, now we know it's for real.
(A.) Bob Dornan passing the anti-radiological soap to Strom Thurmond.
The bicameral dormitories are our next stop and they are quite Spartan. Army barracks for people who, for the most part, avoided the draft. No, the Majority party did not automatically get the top bunk. In fact, for much of the shelter's existence, it was somebody's GS 8 job to maintain and update the nameplates on the beds! I ask Mary to repeat this factoid, so I can write it down verbatim. Unfortunately none of the nameplates were left behind for our amusement. Outside the dorms are "lounges" with couches, TVs (cartoons?), exercise bikes and magazine racks. It was some other drone's mission in life to make sure the magazines were current. One level up from the rank and file dorms, are the majority/minority leaders' quarters. Relatively speaking, these "cabins" look like Waldorf suites. Perhaps this explains why only the Speaker toured the facility when it was functional. It was the kind of perk that was strictly for his eyes only. Like college, the cafeteria is located down the hall from the dorms. Mary doesn't comment on the permanently posted sign outside the dining hall listing the hours of service. Though the hours are generous (breakfast 6-8AM, etc.), it would seem our leaders would not have the option of post-apocalyptic midnight snacks.
On our way to the shelter's hospital, Mary asks us to take notice of the numerous digital LED clocks adorning the doorways along the hallway. She notes that these clocks were installed to keep potentially shell-shocked bunkerites oriented. Since I am touring the site in peacetime and STILL feel disoriented, I conclude that the industrial psychologist that recommended the clocks must be the same genius that came up with the cafeteria "window" paintings. The hospital has twelve beds (with a TV above each and every one), a lab, an operating room and, perhaps most disturbingly, an isolation chamber for stir-crazy senators. It is worth noting that, despite the inevitable stigma of being placed there, the isolation room would have certainly been a step up from the dorms.
A huge, 16,000 square foot workspace is located outside the chamber halls and this is our final stop on the tour. The room is completely empty except for the 18 gigantic concrete and steel beams that reinforce the ceiling. This is where congress would have set up shop and started churning out the red tape legislation that would have inevitably resulted from World War III. This is also the site of the House Chaplain's "booth" or "stall." It is difficult to imagine much real work getting done during the end of the world, but one thing is for certain: The chaplain would most likely have had his hands full. What with the No-Atheists-in-Fox Holes theory getting the ultimate test. Mary, who is a patriotic sort, concludes the tour by paying tribute to those Greenbrier employees who managed to keep mum for the thirty years of the shelter's construction and operation. She hails them as "true Americans." Probably so, but Mary fails to point out that had any of these employees gotten loose lips they would have had to have relocated at least a hundred miles to find jobs. The tour bus awaits us at the end of the tunnel beyond the blast door where we disembarked two hours earlier. As Jim gradually wheels the door back open, the group walks somberly towards the daylight. The Private Ryans talk amongst themselves as their wives follow silently behind them. I wonder if these retirees find this place just another living Discovery Channel moment or something more significant. Whichever, this bizarre, near-death-experience of a march from Doomsday Central is a fitting end to this excursion.
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We reach the decon area where - had there ever been a nuclear war - our brave congressmen would have stripped, showered and donned olive green bunkerwear with white sneakers. I momentarily flash on images of:
After "Decon" the physical plant awaits us. This massive area is basically a network of thousand-gallon water tanks, heaters, two-story generators, numerous vents, and pipes. While undeniably impressive, I find this part of the tour rather boring. Scaled down, this could be the basement of my old high school. It is not until we get to the "pathological waste incinerator" that my interest returns. Mary stands next to this ghoulish, retro furnace and stammers out what everyone has already figured out for themselves: This thing was for cremating irradiated lawmakers.
The actual dining space looks like any other government commissary. That is to say, pretty boring. However, according to the Post exposé, there were once paintings of pastoral scenes mounted on the walls to relieve claustrophobic tensions. Not mentioned in the Post story was whether the artwork would do anything for the hunger pangs when the Raman noodles ran out six months into Year Zero.
The single most impressive aspect of this entire operation is its vast communication apparatus. Also the single most useless if you subscribe to the notion that - aside from the stray tribe of mutants - there would be no one left to gab with. In addition to radio studios, phone banks and e-mail, the bunker boasts a fully equipped TV studio complete with Capitol dome backdrop. No doubt there was a similar underground studio in the former Soviet Union with a Kremlin backdrop. And just how were these broadcast signals supposed to reach the survivor (s) of World War III? Well, antennae were supposed to spring through the earth, or molten lava, from concrete silos to transmit them. Whomever the audience, this would have been the liveliest programming in C-SPAN history.
One of the burning questions I have throughout the tour is WHERE THE HELL ARE ALL THE GUNS!?! Every bomb shelter worth its salt has to have firearms and one would expect a multi-million dollar government facility to have really impressive ones. Upon entering the Congressional Record Room, we are treated to a rather modest gun rack with pistols, rifles and riot gear. When, like a third grader I ask if the guns are real, a helpful veteran assures me that they are. Thanks Teach. Mary adds that the room we are standing in was the most sensitive in the entire complex. It was here that the blueprints for the shelter were kept as well as what would have been top secret congressional paperwork. During the Cuban missile crisis crates of records were transferred here.
One of the eeriest scenes inside the bunker, and the one that most closely resembles one's imaginings of an Oliver Stone-like shadow government, is the House Chamber. It looks like a smaller version of the House Floor complete with flags and pictures of the founding fathers hanging behind the podiums. There is enough space here to accommodate every single member of the House (there is also a Senate Chamber next door) as well as a few aides. There are even outlets for microphones at each seat to amplify what surely would have been rancorous partisan bickering over which party started the war.