Inside America's Secret Cold War Bunker (S2) | Secrets Declassified with David Duchovny

[00:00:01]for the rich and famous that boasts over 700 guest rooms, exclusive restaurants, an 18-hole golf course, and a secret underground bunker primed for Armageddon.

[00:00:12]♪ ♪ [Hakeem] Nuclear anxiety is peaking in the 1950s, and the U.S. president is concerned about the safety of the government in the case of nuclear attack.

[00:00:28][Duchovny] Top of Eisenhower's list of people who need to survive Armageddon?

[00:00:31]Members of Congress.

[00:00:33]This means finding a location for a bunker that can house 1,000 government officials and is discreet enough to keep it hidden from the public.

[00:00:42]The answer? A five-star hotel.

[00:00:45][Hakeem] The Greenbrier is a luxury resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

[00:00:50]This place is a slice of old-school luxury, where the rich and powerful come to do business and relax.

[00:00:57]You can find presidents or celebrities sipping drinks at the bar.

[00:01:01][Duchovny] It sounds like the perfect place to see out World War III.

[00:01:05]- It's far enough from Washington D.C.

[00:01:06]that hopefully it could escape the effects of a direct nuclear attack on the capital city, but also close enough that people would be able to escape to it in time.

[00:01:14][Duchovny] It's shielded by mountains for extra protection.

[00:01:18]- Perhaps what swings it-- literally-- is the hotel's golfing facilities.

[00:01:23]Eisenhower is a regular on the Greenbrier course.

[00:01:27]♪ ♪ [Duchovny] The government discreetly approaches the hotel for their assistance, and the management at the Greenbrier are happy to oblige.

[00:01:38]The only problem is keeping it a secret.

[00:01:41]- An immense construction project on the grounds of the Greenbrier is sure to get the VIP guests gossiping.

[00:01:48]So the bunker needs a cover story.

[00:01:50][Duchovny] The Greenbrier gets a brand-new extension, the West Virginia Wing.

[00:01:55]Underneath, a vast doomsday bunker unlike any other begins to take shape.

[00:02:01][Hakeem] The bunker underneath the Greenbrier Hotel hosts 153 rooms spread out over 112,000 square feet.

[00:02:10]There are two chambers for the House and the Senate, and there's this vast hall for joint sessions.

[00:02:15]It's essentially a giant underground capital for the government to continue functioning in the event of a nuclear war.

[00:02:22]- Beyond these chambers are the facilities you'd expect in a top-of-the-range government survival bunker-- high pressure shower to rinse off nuclear fallout, over 1,000 beds for congressmen and women, a hospital, a cafeteria, and a small arsenal of handguns.

[00:02:39][Duchovny] Perhaps the most impressive features are two enormous blast doors to seal Congress inside.

[00:02:46]- Each door is 19 inches thick, weighs 28 tons, and they're strong enough to withstand a nuclear blast from only 2,000 feet away.

[00:02:57]- If a bomb drops on the eighth hole of the golf course, anyone behind the blast doors will be okay.

[00:03:03]- And these doors are hidden behind a false wall in the exhibition hall, just inches away from where guests are mingling.

[00:03:11]- For 30 years, the false wall stands firm and the bunker remains hidden from view, until 1992, when rumors finally begin to leak out.

[00:03:23][Jesse] Ted Gup is an investigative reporter for "The Washington Post," and an anonymous source tips him off that the Greenbrier Resort might not be all that it seems.

[00:03:36][Duchovny] Gup speaks to former employees who confirm that something mysterious is lurking beneath the West Virginia Wing.

[00:03:43]But for a genuine scoop, Gup needs hard evidence.

[00:03:47]- So he decides to go stay at the Greenbrier himself to see if he can get that final bit of proof.

[00:03:54][O'Keefe] When Gup meets the manager, he goes straight to the point.

[00:03:59]He asks, is there a government nuclear fallout shelter under the hotel?

[00:04:03]Well, the manager immediately denies this.

[00:04:05]♪ ♪ [Duchovny] Gup doesn't get the answers he's hoping for, but he's determined not to leave the Greenbrier without his story.

[00:04:16]- Gup visits the office of a maintenance company called Forsythe Associates, who are supposedly in charge of maintaining the Greenbrier TVs.

[00:04:24]When he gets to the offices, he sees something strange.

[00:04:28][Hakeem] He sees a wall covered with books on nuclear war and Armageddon.

[00:04:34]You don't need that if you're building TV antennas.

[00:04:37]- When he digs deeper, he finds out that many of the people who work at Forsythe Associates are former U.S. military cryptographers and radio specialists.

[00:04:46]- Turns out Forsythe Associates is just a front company.

[00:04:50]Their real job is maintaining the communications - Today, the bunker is a tourist attraction.

[00:04:56]For about $50, you can go tour the halls where the American government might have been reborn after Armageddon.

[00:05:04]♪ ♪ - The Cold War gave rise to an abundance of hidden bases, outposts carved into some of the most extreme environments on Earth.

[00:05:14]But one U.S. operation beneath Greenland's ice hides something far more dangerous: a nuclear launch site buried for nearly three decades.

[00:05:24][dramatic music] [Martin] It's 1956, and the U.S. Department of Defense releases a documentary about this groundbreaking polar research station in Greenland, 800 miles south of the North Pole.

[00:05:39][Announcer] The United States Army has established an unprecedented nuclear-powered Arctic Research Center.

[00:05:45][Jack] In the Arctic, you have to contend with sometimes minus-20 to minus-40 conditions.

[00:05:51]It's just an incredibly difficult environment to operate in.

[00:05:55][Duchovny] An army colonel named John Kerkering is tasked with constructing a polar city.

[00:06:02]It's housed in huge, covered tunnels with dormitories, a hospital, even a chapel and a barber shop.

[00:06:11][Martin] The documentary presents the polar research station as being well ahead of its time, primarily because of the fact that it is powered entirely by the world's first portable nuclear reactor.

[00:06:22][Hakeem] The name of the base is Camp Century.

[00:06:25]It's an ambitious project.

[00:06:28]They put a nuclear reactor in one of the most brutal and difficult environments on Earth.

[00:06:34]♪ ♪ As wild as that is, that's not even the craziest thing about this.

[00:06:40]♪ ♪ [Duchovny] Although only a few people know it, Camp Century is just a cover story.

[00:06:47]♪ ♪ The real plan here is to construct an immense nuclear launch site deep under the snow.

[00:06:57]Its name: Project Iceworm.

[00:06:59]♪ ♪ [Todd] When Project Iceworm was envisioned, there were a lot of legitimate fears that we were on the precipice of nuclear war.

[00:07:11]- In the 1950s, the threat of nuclear war couldn't be more serious.

[00:07:15]Iceworm will give the West an opportunity to survive it all.

[00:07:20]- Their idea is to have hundreds of nuclear warheads all prepped, all ready to go in the tunnels under the ice.

[00:07:31]A full-on nuclear arsenal.

[00:07:33]- If the Russians initiated a nuclear first strike on America, there would be the secondary base in Greenland that could fire retaliatory counterattacks into Russia.

[00:07:45]♪ ♪ [Duchovny] The Camp Century cover story is so convincing it fools the Russians.

[00:07:53][Jack] They did actually do experiments there and work on science, but it was basically a test bed to see what else we could do under the Arctic ice.

[00:08:03]- In the end, the real challenge to the success of Project Iceworm doesn't come from being discovered, but from the landscape itself.

[00:08:12][Martin] The Greenland ice cap is so dynamic, you just can't maintain a permanent structure underneath the ice.

[00:08:20][Jack] The base was being sandwiched between the ice walls as they constricted, because every year, the ice moves another 6 feet.

[00:08:27][Martin] You've got 600 nuclear warheads and a nuclear reactor.

[00:08:32]You cannot put them in shifting ice.

[00:08:35][Duchovny] And so Camp Century is abandoned in 1967.

[00:08:40]- They end up pulling the plug on the entire thing, and they just walk away.

[00:08:45]- I think the line is, we'll just open the door and let it snow.

[00:08:49]And they thought it would be permanently entombed in this ice and be safe in that way.

[00:08:53]♪ ♪ - Although the nuclear reactor at Camp Century was removed, the material that was left behind is still dangerous to the environment.

[00:09:02][Duchovny] The truth stays buried until 1996, when newly declassified documents reveal the shocking truth about Camp Century, that this Arctic research base was no mere science lab but a front for a nuclear launch site hidden beneath the ice.

[00:09:19]♪ ♪