My in-laws have built a house in the lovely horse country of Northern Virginia just at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The land there is all rolling hills and walls made out of native rock ringing broad acres of open fields. The road to the in-laws' house is small and winding, a narrow turnpike that rolls over single-lane wood bridges. Old wood farmhouses and more ambitious homes faced with more of that native stone, sit far off the twisty road amid the hills. Sprinkled along the turnpike are several wee and very old towns - a general store, a church, and nothing more. For someone like me, from the suburbs, it's a dream. It's gentrified country.
Looking out any of the windows at the rear of my in-laws' house, you will see a small mountain standing ten or fewer miles away. It's a long ridge, and its flanks are dotted by the occasional whitewashed farmhouse, but it's mostly trees. But wait - what's that on the left there? No, farther left. It looks like a collection of buildings too big to be the farm of a country gentleman. And is that a guard tower?
It
is a guard tower. It belongs to part of the government complex on
Mount Weather, so named because the National Weather Bureau had a
weather observatory on the mountain a very long time ago. According to
this website, there was an artillery range located at Mount Weather during WWI, and Calvin Coolidge considered making a summer White House at there. (The weather in the summer in that area is gloriously cool.) Then in 1936, the mountain passed to the Bureau of Mines, which began tunneling into the mountain to see what there was to see. The mountain is made of exceptionally hard Precambrian basalt, the hardest in the east, and that, coupled with concern over the
Russians' 1949 atomic bomb detonation, is why the Eisenhower administration spent years tunneling into the mountain and creating what
this site calls "a kind of doomsday super-bunker."
A Cold War-era underground bunker? It's a conspiracy theorist's dream! Beneath the mountain, it's said that there is a hospital, office buildings (and sidewalks!), a freshwater lake, a TV station, a power station, water purification system, living quarters for those VIPs who get invited inside the mountain to weather a nuclear attack (pun intended), and a crematorium. Stories about Mount Weather's bunker and the nefarious plan to shuffle political VIPs to underground facilities while the rest of us writhe and burn in a radioactive cloud are delicious grist for those inclined to wear tin foil chapeax. Mount Weather has found its way into pop culture (even as far back as the 1960s); heck, it even rated a mention on the X-Files back in the day. And yes, it's gotten some attention from a couple of different factions of the UFO folks. It isn't just left-wing loonies who find the mountain intriguing; even right wingers and the fundies get into the tin foil hat-wearing in Mount Weather speculation.
So how much of the buzz about Mount Weather is crazy conspiracy stuff, and how much of it is real? Well, it does exist. Unlike the Naval Observatory, there are even satellite pictures of it (the long curves in the road leading up to it are theoretically to accomodate big trucks carrying large missiles, which apparently don't manage tight curves). I've driven by it and taken pictures (hastily, as rumor has it that guards will confiscate the cameras of anyone caught snapping pictures; the site is visible from a part of the Appalachian Trail, and it's said that hikers who have been caught sketching the site have had to surrender their sketch pads). On top of the ridge along a narrow but well-maintained road that runs beside and to the Mount Weather facility, acres of land are fenced off and marked as property of the U.S. Government. Through the trees and the fencing, you can catch glimpses of the complex of buildings.
Mount Weather (also known as "High Rock") no doubt is part of the Federal ARC surrounding the nation's capital - underground sites in North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland with contingency facilities for the government buried beneath the mountains. Among these are "Site R" (Raven Rock) in Pennsylvania, which operates as an underground Pentagon; a site in Culpeper, Virginia, set aside for the Federal Reserve; and the well-known Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, which now offers tours of the bunker located beneath the resort. Not all of these sites still operate as government bunkers, though rumor has it that Mount Weather is one of Dick Cheney's favorite undisclosed locations. Some say that on September 11, Cheney was whisked away into the bunker beneath the White House. Others insist that he was at Raven Rock. But he may have spent that day at Mount Weather. Locals in the area report a long caravan of official cars making their way down Route 50 onto Route 601, the small (but well-maintained) road that leads to the Mount Weather facilities, on September 11. (I don't have a cite for that, unfortunately - it's word of mouth from locals to me.) Dennis Hastert is one of the government officials who likely wound up at Mount Weather on September 11.
Mount Weather wasn't really known to anyone but the locals who helped make it what it is - most of whom remain quite closed-mouthed about it, according to a Loudoun Magazine article that, unfortunately, is not available online (but I bought the mag and read the article, which was quite good). As a Continuity of Government site, Mount Weather was shrouded in secrecy for years until a plane crashed into the mountain in 1974 and skidded up the hillside onto Mount Weather property. The wreath commemorating those killed in the crash is still there, tucked in a rocky niche by the side of the road under the trees.
After the initial revelation following the plane crash, Mount Weather was pretty much forgotten by all but the tin foiliest. But the events of September 11 and repeated references to Dick Cheney's undisclosed locations renewed interest in Cold War bunker sites like Mount Weather.
That's all well and good, you say, but besides this tale being somewhat deliciously tin foily (for those of us inclined to enjoy a good conspiracy theory), why should I give a shit about Mount Weather?
Well, it's a main base of operations for FEMA. It's now called the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center (though it's been known by a number of names during its history). When I was out there a couple of months ago, the sign pointing to the facility still said Mount Weather EAC, which stands for "Emergency Assistance Center"). FEMA conducts training at the site in classrooms and using both indoor and outdoor simulation areas.
FEMA doesn't just do training at Mount Weather, though. When Hurricane Floyd was churning toward the East Coast, FEMA disaster relief operations were revving up not just in DC, but also at Mount Weather. It is entirely possible that FEMA's "response" to Hurricane Katrina was generated as much from Mount Weather as from DC. Who knows - maybe some of the people in those Katrina briefing tapes that recently resurfaced were hunkered down underneath Mount Weather. And in February 2006, a Newsweek article said:
One of the more disquieting questions to surface during congressional investigations into Hurricane Katrina concerns Mt. Weather, a huge government bunker under the Blue Ridge Mountains west of Washington, D.C.
...
Known to government officials for many years as FEMA's "classified location," after the cold war ended Mt. Weather went semipublic, even hosting emergency-management seminars. But it also has remained a critical command post; in government jargon, Mt. Weather staffers are on duty 24/7/365.
But according to an e-mail sent by former FEMA chief Michael Brown last Aug. 30, some Mt. Weather personnel were not exactly on the ball on the day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. "I am ready [sic] to blow up IT support at the mountain," Brown told aides Brooks Altshuler and Patrick Rhode. "They can't seem to get me connected ... or even care about getting me connected."
The article goes on with a quote from James Lee Witt saying that the Mount Weather personnel are some of the finest people he's ever worked with, and his saying that Mount Weather is a "'very important' center for government communications in a crisis." A spokesperson for FEMA said, in the article, that the communications issues Brownie experienced were minimal, but given interagency communications SNAFUs during responses to both September 11 and Katrina, it might be worth considering the possibility that the communications problems between Brownie and Mount Weather were large enough to cause problems in FEMA's Katrina response, and to entertain the notion that the FEMA spokesperson quoted in the article was doing a little whitewashing, as administration officials have been known to do.
If that isn't tin foily enough for you, there are plenty of articles that talk about the evils of FEMA. They aren't from mainstream sources, but some of them are worth a read. The last link there relates directly to Katrina and FEMA, and in it, you'll find references to the shadow government, which might actually be FEMA itself:
Many critics believe that FEMA is a "shadow government" that will take over at any time. Because it is given very little media attention and essentially has no congressional accountability, there is very little we know about the official workings of FEMA. One thing is sure, FEMA does more than just provide relief after a natural disaster. Two separate but not necessarily mutually exclusive situations surrounding FEMA provide a better understanding of their power and the threat they may pose to civil liberties during a national emergency.
...
FEMA's role at the facility is allegedly to establish a "back up government" in case of a national disaster. Supposedly there is also an Office of the Presidency at Mount Weather, which is appointed by FEMA and regularly receives top secret national security information from all Federal departments and agencies.
That may strike some as being a little too shiny-hatted, but if you'd told me seven years ago that we'd be talking about a sitting president who insists on holding prisoners with no official prisoner status, black prisons, torturing prisoners, spying on Americans without a warrant... well, I would have said that all sounded as suspect as there being a shadow government hiding beneath a mountain that houses what used to be a Cold War bunker.
From the same article:
The facility, for the most part, was a secret to everyone, including Congress, until a Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights hearing in 1975. During this hearing, some minimal information about the various facilities surfaced, but the specifics of these facilities are still a secret.
Senators were rebuffed in their quest for information about Mount Weather. For example, testifying before the Senate Subcommittee, Air Force General Leslie W. Bray said, "I am not at liberty to describe precisely what is the role and the mission and the capability that we have at Mount Weather, or at any other precise location." Douglas Lea, subcommittee staff director, made these comments: "I don't understand what they are trying to hide out there. Mount Weather is just closed up to us. I don't believe there's been any effective Congressional control over the system." To this day, Congress still has no oversight, budgetary or otherwise, on the Mount Weather facility.
Well, you know, that sounds familiar. Congress without oversight? Hmmmm. Shall I pass you a roll of Reynolds so you can begin fashioning your own hat?
Someone posted on Randi Rhodes' message board with a quote from a conspiracy theory book with the following quote about FEMA:
"I believe the plan to suspend the Constitution is directly tied to the underground facility called Mount Weather and to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Mount Weather is so shrouded in secrecy that 99.9% of Americans have never heard of it. FEMA, however, is another story. Remember Hurricane Hugo? Remember the federal agency (FEMA) that was sent to handle the emergency and was thrown out by the citizens because of gross incompetence? FEMA was incompetent, because "emergency management" is just a guise for its real purpose, which is to take over local, state and federal government in case of a national emergency. The only way FEMA could do such a thing is if the Constitution were suspended and martial law were declared. Therefore its very existence is proof positive that a plan to suspend the Constitution does in fact exist."
You know, in the mid-nineties, it didn't occur to me to think that a president might try to subvert (or suspend) the Constitution, or might try to stay in power beyond his term. But these days, notions like that don't seem quite as out there as they used to, thanks to the way Bush has conducted himself since he came into office.
Of course, some of the sites connecting Mount Weather with the looming monster that is FEMA talk about the concentration camps that FEMA is building to intern people in the event of a... disaster or... emergency or... martial law or... fill in the blank. A number of the sites claiming that political dissidents will be locked up into FEMA/DHS-run camps aren't particularly trustworty sources. Then again, the detention camps line of thought has found its way to dKos. Also here and here and here. And some posit that martial law might not be far away. Especially if the avian flu thing happens in a big way.
And, though I hate myself a little bit for wearing the foil hat here, given Bush's disdain for dissent and whistleblowers and his hatred of having to acknowledge the reality-based world outside his bubble, it wouldn't entirely surprise me if those stories about Halliburton building detention centers were true. And it wouldn't entirely surprise me if Bush tried to stick dissenters - Quakers and more volatile liberal types (like me) alike - into these places. After all, this is the man who goes out of his way to make certain that "enemy combatants" qualify neither as prisoners of war (subject to Geneva Conventions rules) or detainees of the American criminal system (subject to the Fifth Amendment).
Maybe the fact that the sources of such theories generally aren't given much credibility has as much to do with the failures of the traditional media in doing its job as it does with the fact that we - and Congress - simply do not know what the ultra-secretive Bush administration is up most of the time. I don't necessarily think that all the conspiracy theory sites should be dismissed without a second glance (though I try to steer clear of the anti-Freemason crowd and the UFO folk and similar); we call them loony, but I try to remember that, to the right wingers, we're all loonies, and our prescience about what would happen with the Iraq war is still ignored by the right wing as being crackpottery.
But let's leave off FEMA - as timely a subject as it is these days - and how it relates to Mount Weather. Hey, how 'bout we talk about that whole Ignoring the Constitution thing Bush does so well. In the course of my link-harvesting for this diary, I ran across a fascinating site called Political Friendster. And you know what? Mount Weather is hooked up with several politicians and other entities and entries. One is former California senator John Varick Tunney, who in 1975, according to this article,
charged that Mount Weather held dossiers on 100,000 or more Americans. A sophisticated computer system gives the installation access to detailed information on the lives of virtually every American citizen, Tunney claimed. Mount Weather personnel stonewalled question after question in two Senate hearings.
"I don't understand what they're trying to hide out there,," Douglas Lea, staff director of the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, said. "Mount Weather is just closed up to us." Tunney complained that Mount Weather was "out of control."
And this was in the 1970s, long before the fact of Bush's warrantless wiretapping was the awful reality that it is. Before lack of Congressional oversight was openly a daily and ongoing problem. Before Bush and Company began running amok. If Mount Weather and its ilk were out of control in the '70s, what kind of a monster might it be now, under this monstrous administration?
As it turns out, the Bush Terrorist Surveillance Program is also conncected to Mount Weather on Political Friendster. Whaddaya reckon some of us have dossiers stored under the mountain there? We know the administration runs secret spying programs against its own citizens; we know the administration keeps lists - like the No-Fly list; we know the administration has a zillion and one secrets. There are any number of diaries here at dKos about the domestic spying program and more domestic spying that we didn't know about when we found out about the first domestic spying program. It's not just your garden-variety warrantless wiretapping, either. There's also datamining, like TIA. Where are they storing all this information they're collecting? Entirely possible you've got records stashed under Mount Weather. Or me. All of us. If not under Mount Weather, maybe under some other mountain in the Federal ARC. Anteon maintains the FEMA information management system at Mount Weather; do they have a secret contract to manage databases containing information about Americans, a kind of "black database" not unlike the "black prisons" in Eastern Europe?
There are several reasons I wrote this diary (and it's taken me the better part of two days to pull all the links and write it up). The first is that so many things in the Bush administration seem linked - the FEMA fuckups, DHS folding FEMA into its ... cape? The NSA warrantless wiretapping and however many other spying and datamining operations the administration is running. Those things all seem related, and I find myself wondering if the warrantless spying is part of the reason that the traditional media isn't making more hay of the news coming out of this administration, given what they did with Clinton's blowjob. Are the 'journalists" being blackmailed? (Or are they just inserting themselves into the news the way Judy Miller did?) Is the spying related to why so many of our elected officials are rolling over for Bush? Have they been spied on and blackmailed?
Even if the media and politicians haven't been compromised by the spying, it still has so much bearing on so many other things that have been shown to be wrong with this criminal administration. The spying is related to John Bolton and the UN, which in turn is related to Plamegate and getting us into the Iraq debacle. At any rate, so much of what we know about the Bush administration - what we know to be factual - is related and interconnected.
I find it fascinating that so much of it could possibly be traced back to a place practically in my back yard - and almost literally in my in-laws' back yard - in the quiet pastoral horse country and rolling hills of Northern Virginia, where you expect to see nothing but old farm houses and the big new houses of the wealthy exurbanites (and other rich folks who are moving into the area).
And I'll admit that despite the fact that conspiracy theories are not terribly well-received at dKos, I find them interesting. At least, I find the kinda sorta plausible conspiracy theories interesting. It's part of my staying open-minded (though I certainly understand why others might not find conspiracy theories interesting, or why they might not want to give any credence to anything that seems remotely tin foily).
To my way of thinking, there are so many things that Bush and his cronies have already done - that we already know about - that would have fallen into tin foil territory just a handful of years ago. That Bush and his buds could have gotten away with so many blatantly criminal acts and still, the drumbeat for impeachment (much less indictment) is still too faint to be a reality. That's tin foil for ya, that these guys could get away with so much right in front of the entire American public, and nobody cares. What isn't tin foil to me is that they've done so much bad - horrifyingly bad - stuff that there isn't much I wouldn't put past these guys. There isn't much they could do that would surprise me at this point. Even tin foily things that theoretically only the "fringe" would accept as possible. I'm no hard core conspiracy theorist, and I don't go out of my way (usually) to look for conspiracy dots to connect, but I do find these theories interesting and I don't find all of them to be completely far-fetched.
And finally, I wrote this diary because I loves me some Cold War spy drama. I love the fact that there is a mountain twenty miles from where I live where there is a secret government complex - my very own Area 51 around which I can build my own personal mythology - and an underground city in the basalt in the mountain behind my in-laws' house. There's just something kinda sexy - in a dorky kind of way - about big underground bunkers dug into mountains and other spyish locations.
So there you have it. Mount Weather. A lot of tin foil, a dash of reason and genuine facts, and a heaping helping of speculation about how the mysterious Mount Weather stretching along behind my in-laws' lovely house might be relevant even to those of us who don't wear our tin foil hats the whole day long.