Published March 26, 20117:05 PM ET
In a groundbreaking series of reports in 2010, Washington Post reporters Bill Arkin and Dana Priest revealed that 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area since September 2001.
Before that building boom, however, another secret bunker lay in wait for the apocalypse, behind a giant reinforced steel door. For 30 years, it was kept secret. Hidden in West Virginia's Greenbrier Resort was a massive bomb shelter stocked with supplies for members of Congress in case of an emergency.
The Greenbrier Resort And Bunker
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, W.Va.
The story of how the bunker 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 Resort in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Bankers, industrialists and government advisers all hobnobbed at the resort, unknowingly right next door to the post-apocalyptic bunker. When the Greenbriar's official historian, Bob Conte, arrived in 1978, locals started badgering him with questions.
"Why is there a 7,000-foot landing strip for a town of 3,000 people?" he recounts to All Things Considered weekend host Guy Raz. Mostly, he told them there was no such thing — not that it was so "the government could fly their people in here in case of war and go to the bunker that's under the Greenbrier."
A Secret Home For The House And Senate
Thing is, Conte didn't really know anything about it. He knew every square inch of the Greenbrier's property. He had access to all the records and documents and historic photos of presidents and kings and prime ministers drinking mint juleps on the veranda.
But just a few yards from Conte's own office was the reinforced bunker that would house every member of the House and Senate in the event of nuclear Armageddon.
Behind 3-foot-thick concrete walls is a space about the size of a WalMart. 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.
The sleeping quarters includes rows of metal bunkbeds.
Beds line the dormitory for members of Congress
Courtesy of The Greenbrier
"All they had for private items that you could lock up were a small drawer, right underneath the beds, you could put your personal items in here," Conte says. "For 30 years, every one of these 1,100 beds was assigned to somebody."...
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