The Ultimate Congressional Hideaway

By Ted Gup
Sunday, May 31, 1992; Page W11
The Washington Post

The year was 1960 and Randy Wickline was building
something so immense and unnerving that he dared not ask
what it was. All the Superior Supply Co. plant manager was
told was that he was to haul concrete -- an endless river of
concrete -- to be poured into the cavernous hole that had been
excavated beside the posh Greenbrier hotel in White Sulphur
Springs, W. Va. He remembers an urgency about the job, his
supervisor hollering "hurry up," even instructing him to push the
legal weight limit on his truckloads, and paying the fines that
resulted. To keep up with the job, Superior Supply had to
purchase two more concrete mixers, and still it was stretched
thin. Over the next 2 1/2 years, Wickline estimates, the
company hauled some 4,000 loads to the site and poured
50,000 tons of concrete into the abyss that scrapers, rippers
and air hammers had carved out of the shale. Cost was never
an issue.

A warren of rooms and corridors took shape where there had
been a hill. The walls were two feet thick and reinforced with
steel. Later, the entire structure was covered with a concrete
roof and buried beneath 20 feet of dirt. At each entrance,
cranes hung humongous steel doors, as if giants were to inhabit
the underground structure. Soon thereafter, Wickline was told,
"sensitive equipment" was moved into the facility. The door
was locked. A guard was posted outside. No one had to tell
Wickline that what he had helped build had something to do
with the atomic bomb. "Nobody came out and said it was a
bomb shelter," he says today, "but you could pretty well look
and see the way they was setting it up there that they wasn't
building it to keep the rain off of them. I mean a fool would
have known. There would have been enough room to get a few
dignitaries in there, but us poor folks would be left standing
outside. It kind of made me think about it -- and hope it never
happens."

For years, the work that Wickline and scores of other local
builders undertook at the Greenbrier fueled speculation, but in
time the memories dimmed and the rumors died. History took
its course, and the generation that was defined by its anxiety
over the Bomb began to see hope for a future free of
mushroom clouds and radiation sickness.

But inside the hill, time stood still.

Now, more than three decades later, interviews with numerous
current and former hotel employees and executives,
contractors and former government officials, along with a
review of private blueprints, drawings and photographs, have
confirmed Randy Wickline's assumption, and more. What he
helped build, it is now clear, was a haven for members of the
U.S. Congress in the event of a nuclear war.

Unlike other government relocation centers, built mainly to
house military and executive branch officials who would
manage a nuclear crisis and its aftermath, the Greenbrier facility
was custom-designed to meet the needs of a
Congress-in-hiding, complete with a chamber for the Senate, a
chamber for the House and a massive hall for joint sessions. Its
discovery offers the first conclusive evidence that Congress as
a whole was even included in government evacuation scenarios
and given a role in postwar America. Today, the installation still
stands at the ready, its operators still working under cover at
the hotel -- a concrete-and-steel monument to the nuclear
nightmare. The secrecy that has surrounded the site has
shielded it both from public scrutiny and official reassessment,
and may have allowed it to outlive the purpose for which it was
conceived.

House Speaker Thomas Foley, one of the very few in
Congress who has been briefed on the Greenbrier facility,
declined to comment for this article. But former speaker
Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill says the evacuation plan always
seemed "far-fetched" to him. "I never mentioned it to anybody,"
O'Neill recalls. "But every time I went down to the Greenbrier
-- and I went there half a dozen times -- I always used to look
at the hill and say, 'Well, that's where we're supposed to live in
the event something happens, and that's where we're going to
do business, maybe under the tennis courts.' "

Situated in a lush and remote valley in the Allegheny Mountains
five hours' drive southwest of Washington, the Greenbrier is
one of the nation's premier resorts, a place that touts itself as a
playground for foreign princes and America's political elite.
Twenty-three men who were or would become U.S.
presidents have stayed there. Dinners are six courses. The
most elaborate are set with 24-karat-gold vermeil and served
by waiters in forest green livery. A fleet of bottle-green stretch
limos idles in front of the columned portico. Spread over 6,500
manicured acres, complete with golf courses, skeet shooting,
spas and a stream stocked with rainbow trout, the Greenbrier
wants to be seen as a resort of distinction and aristocratic
carriage. It is designated a National Historic Landmark -- and
seems among the last places one might expect to find a
Strangelovian bunker.

Though the resort has knowingly hosted both the ultra-sensitive
congressional hideaway and the people who maintain it, there
seems to have been little concern that any of the Greenbrier's
1,600 employees would reveal the facility's existence. Many
have heard rumors about what lies beneath the vast extension
known as the West Virginia Wing, which houses luxury rooms
and a complete medical clinic. Some have direct knowledge of
the installation, but no one will talk openly about it. The
Greenbrier is the only significant private employer in
hardscrabble Greenbrier County, and its workers -- many of
whom are second- and third-generation employees -- don't
have to be reminded of the strictness with which the resort
manages its public image. "Anyone who doesn't work here and
who is of working age, there's a reason they're not here," says
the hotel's president, Ted Kleisner. "Everyone comes to work
for life here. People die. People retire. And a couple of people
get fired each year. That's it."

Even before the facility was built, the Greenbrier and the U.S.
government were no strangers. In the winter of 1941-42, the
hotel served as a U.S. internment facility for Japanese, Italian
and German diplomats. On September 1, 1942, the U.S.
Army commandeered the entire resort -- purchasing it for $3.3
million from its owner, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad --
then converted it into a 2,200-bed military hospital. Gen.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was twice a patient there. (He returned
to celebrate a wedding anniversary in 1945.) After the war, the
rail- road bought the resort back. Other governmental links
followed. In 1949, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson met at
the Greenbrier with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretaries
of the Army, Air Force and Navy for what a history of the
Greenbrier called a "top-secret discussion of postwar military
strategy." In 1956 Eisenhower hosted an international
conference there with the leaders of Canada and Mexico.
Hotel operators at the time answered the phone: "Good
morning, Greenbrier White House." The hotel has three
connecting "Eisenhower Parlors," and Ike's bust is on display in
the North Parlor.

There have also been frequent congressional visits over the
years -- in the 1980s, Democrats from Congress liked to meet
there -- and senior officials from every recent administration
have been to the resort. A 1991 promotional publication
features a photo of Greenbrier President Kleisner welcoming
Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney.

Despite its many government ties, there is a touch of irony in
the Greenbrier's selection as host for a facility built in response
to the Soviet threat. Cyrus Eaton, the man who presided over
the C&O -- now the conglomerate CSX -- enjoyed a cozy
relationship with the Soviet leadership. Dubbed "the Kremlin's
favorite capitalist," he took pride in having received the Lenin
Peace Prize, and in 1954 organized a meeting between U.S.
and Soviet atomic scientists in the hope they would warn their
respective leaders of the perils of the arms race.

"What got me started was the atomic bomb and the realization
that our civilization and theirs could be wiped out overnight," he
once said.

When construction on the facility began in 1959, near the end
of the second Eisenhower administration, the Cold War was at
its height and fear of a Soviet nuclear attack was deeply
embedded both in the psyche of ordinary citizens and in the
thoughts of Pentagon planners. Americans were excavating
back yards for bomb shelters, storing cans of Campbell's soup
on basement shelves and screening "duck-and-cover" films for
schoolchildren. Meanwhile, the government was building a
number of relocation centers on the East Coast. Most were
carved out of mountains and became alternate command posts
for the president and Cabinet, or communications centers (see
box, Page 14). It was the heyday of the doomsday planners.
"Continuity of government," as it came to be called, evolved
into a military subspecialty. Near Berryville, Va., Mount
Weather was hollowed out of solid rock and filled with
state-of-the-art communications equipment, underground
reservoirs and banks of computers. Another such facility was
located at Raven Rock Mountain in Pennsylvania near Fort
Ritchie.

The Greenbrier was different in that it relied more on the
element of secrecy than on any mountain of rock to shield it
from incoming bombs. Yet despite the discretion of the resort
staff, the existence of some kind of hidden government
installation there was widely known. One former government
official says he was told that so many people in the White
Sulphur Springs area knew about the facility that the
government dispatched two men who had not been briefed on
the project to mingle with the locals, posing as hunters, to learn
just how much was known and what was being said.
According to the official, the two returned to Washington a few
days later with so many details about the facility that they had
to be given top-secret clearance.

Hundreds of people suspect that something hush-hush lies
under the Greenbrier's West Virginia Wing. "I've always heard
the rumors that there is some kind of bomb shelter under the
Greenbrier's clinic," says County Assessor Clyde Bowling.
Like many in this small town of 2,800, he remembers being
told that a company called Forsythe Associates operated the
bomb shelter, and that a man named "Fritz" Bugas ran
Forsythe.

For many others, the facility is less a matter of suspicion than a
certainty. "The government does have an installation there, no
question about it," says John Bowling, a former mayor of White
Sulphur Springs. "It's common knowledge here." John Bowling
says he has known for years that the facility is a government
relocation center. His family, long in the hardware business,
sold many of the parts that went into the construction of the
West Virginia Wing. His uncle, Bowling says, had an empty
skating rink where the government stored C-rations before
transferring them to the site. He remembers the concrete walls,
two feet thick. "The depth of the excavation was very, very
impressive," he says. "It was way down there."

At the time the facility was being built, White Sulphur Springs
Police Chief Bernard Morgan recalls, he was told by the head
of Greenbrier security, the late Harry Welsh, that without a
security clearance he would not be allowed inside. Gerald A.
Wylie, a Greenbrier security officer from 1963 until 1980, says
he has been in the facility; unwilling to comment further, he says
only that "it makes you feel safe." Martha Dixon is the widow
of Arnold Dixon, who worked as an engineer at the
Greenbrier. She recalls her husband telling her that he had to
enter the facility periodically to test the generators there. "It
was all supposed to be very secretive," he told her. "It was for
the ones in Washington to come here."

Another former Greenbrier security officer, who asked not to
be identified, says he saw bunk beds, shower rooms, an
internal power plant and numerous offices behind the secured
door leading to the facility. He also recalls seeing a vast number
of crates of C-rations. "You could last a long time in there," he
says. "If war had broken out, we {Greenbrier security} would
have taken charge." An office inside the facility was designated
for the use of security officers, he says.

Not surprisingly, most of the Greenbrier's current and former
managers deny the existence of any hidden facility beneath the
resort. The company line comes from CSX spokesman James
A. Searle Jr. in Richmond: "There's no bomb shelter, no
government facility. I can tell you what I know is the truth and
that is the end of it."

Chuck Ingalsbee was the Greenbrier's general manager from
December 1984 until February 1987. He now runs a
Caribbean resort on the island of Anguilla. Asked about the
existence of a classified government facility under the West
Virginia Wing, he said he would have to "touch base with a
couple of people" before he could answer. "I won't speak to
the issue until I have had a conversation with the right people,"
he said. "It was an official oath I gave." In a subsequent
conversation a week later, Ingalsbee said he had been directed
not to speak about the facility.

Truman Wright, now retired and living in Highland Beach, Fla.,
ran the Greenbrier from 1951 until 1974, spanning the period
in which the facility was constructed. "I did not know for
certain of anything that was going into it," he recalls. "I
purposely did not look into it." Wright acknowledges knowing
there was a government installation there. "I didn't imagine it
was for hotel guests," he says. But while "I was supposed to be
as knowledgeable as anyone . . . anything that took place took
place at a level far higher than mine, for example in the
Terminal Tower Building in Cleveland {then C&O corporate
headquarters}. I don't know what went on. I simply worked
for the railroad."

During the construction of the West Virginia Wing, Wright
recalls, he had a conversation with a contractor about one
cavernous room he was working on. "This is an exhibit hall?"
observed the puzzled contractor. "We've got 110 urinals we
just installed. What in the hell are you going to exhibit?"

Wright says he was kept in the dark about the installation's
funding as well. Told of another source's belief that in return for
allowing the facility to be built at the Greenbrier, the
government helped pay to construct the West Virginia Wing,
Wright says it is plausible but he has no firsthand knowledge of
the new wing's finances.

From the beginning, the Greenbrier relocation center has been
run by Forsythe Associates, an obscure company ostensibly
based in Arlington. Standing at the ready to operate the facility,
whose entrance is only steps away from one of its Greenbrier
offices, Forsythe has a cover that shows a genius for simplicity.
The company's six or seven full-time employees emphatically
deny any involvement with the government. They say that their
job is to repair and service the Greenbrier's nearly 1,000
television sets and provide the hotel with television service.

It is true that Forsythe Associates' employees repair TVs and
deliver cable programming to the hotel's guests. And it may be
true that some of the company's employees know little or
nothing about the classified site. But there have been plenty of
signs that the company is not simply what it appears to be.

The first general manager of Forsythe's Greenbrier operation
was John Londis, now 76 and retired to Boca Raton, Fla.
Londis is a former cryptographic expert with the Army Signal
Corps who had a top-secret security clearance and was
stationed at the Pentagon. He arrived at the Greenbrier in 1960
as work on the installation was getting under way. During the
Cuban missile crisis in 1962, according to one former
government official, Londis made a point of leaving work on
schedule so as not to attract attention, but then returned to the
facility under cover of darkness. In a recent interview, Londis
denied any knowledge of a hidden installation and said his only
work was to provide television service to the hotel.

A series of recent calls to the Forsythe office in Arlington was
greeted with this recording: "You have reached Forsythe
Associates. Currently we are unable to come to the phone.
Please leave your name and number and we will return your
call as soon as possible . . . beep . . . beep . . . beep . . . The
tape is full; please call again." A week later the tape was
replaced, but no calls were ever returned.

Forsythe maintains a complex of antennas, ostensibly used to
deliver cable programs, atop a nearby mountain. A former
government official who visited the site says that one of the
antennas had a tube-like sensor designed to detect the brilliant
light emitted in a nuclear flash. That sensor, he said, would
trigger an alarm within the underground facility. The company
has at least two offices at the Greenbrier, one a maintenance
shop for technicians and supplies, the other an administrative
building in an area seldom frequented by resort guests. The
front door of the administrative office has three separate
locking mechanisms -- a Dayton time-lock on the inside, and,
on the outside, a Yale lock and a magnetic key-card lock.
Inside are the offices of Paul E. "Fritz" Bugas, who replaced
John Londis when he retired in 1976.

Bugas is a short man with a salt-and-pepper beard, a dark
hairpiece, thick glasses and an outgoing personality. A friend
who asked not to be named says that, like Londis, Bugas was
a career officer in the Army Signal Corps with a top-secret
security clearance. His title is eastern regional director of
Forsythe, though Forsythe employees say they know of no
Forsythe business other than that at the Greenbrier. On his
desk, behind his nameplate, is a small American flag with gold
braid. On the bookshelf behind his desk is an eclectic
collection of books including such titles as Robert Scheer's
With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War and
Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History. In a brief phone
conversation Bugas said, "I don't have any qualms about
talking with you." He promised to call back, but never did.

Bugas's assistant is a man named John Nemcik, who says he
worked as an Air Force radio operator and had a top-secret
clearance until he retired in 1958. In 1977, he says, he came to
Forsythe's Greenbrier office after learning of a vacancy. How
he learned of the vacancy he does not remember. Prior to that,
he says, he worked for an Ohio firm from 1975 to 1977.
Asked what he did in the 17 years between military service and
the Ohio position, he says, "I bounced around at odd jobs."

Across the hall from Bugas's office is that of his temporary
secretary, Gladys Childers. The office contains a word
processor, a printer and, in the corner, a high-speed shredder.
Why does a television repair firm need a shredder? "That's to
get rid of Gladys's mistakes," says Nemcik with a laugh.

Details of the desing and construction of the facility, of course,
are scarce. But Randy Wickline, who hauled concrete to the
site, remembers seeing the name "Mosler" on the enormous
doors that were installed at the entrances.

"Mosler" was Mosler Safe Co., an Ohio-based manufacturer
famed for its vaults and safes. In the '50s and early '60s it also
had a flourishing "nuclear products group" that used the
company's expertise to build massive doors for government
relocation centers and bunkers. The company believed its
doors could survive the impact of an atomic bomb blast, or at
least a near miss. A Mosler vault door withstood a nuclear
blast some two-fifths of a mile away at the government's
Nevada Test Site in 1957.

Chuck Oder, still an engineer with Mosler, helped build the
blast-proof doors for the Greenbrier. His project records note
that he received an order for four specially built doors in
February 1960. The entry simply read "Greenbrier Hotel." But
in the project jacket and archives of the company there is a
wealth of information about Mosler's contribution to the
project. Beside the specifications on one set of blueprints is
written: "Greenbrier Hotel: White Sulphur Springs Additional
Facilities."

Two of the four doors ordered were gigantic, built to shield
vehicular entrances. One was designated "GH 1," the other,
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Ted Gup