Crew of the USS Tom Clancy, I originally published a version of this piece in County Highway. It is presented here in a slightly different form, with pictures. Hope you Enjoy! -Matt Project XHide the secret in plain sight. This was Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn’s philosophy in the late 1950s when they built their 112,544 square foot Congressional doomsday bunker 720 feet underground in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, concealed by a posh Gilded Age resort called the Greenbrier. • • The Bunker under construction in 1960The bunker’s construction and operation was covered by a series of code names: Project X, Project Caspar and Project Greek Island. Even before the bunker, the Greenbrier was and is a haven and a refuge for wealthy and powerful society types; the place where General George Catlett Marshall had his 60th Birthday Party, where President Dwight David Eisenhower liked to Golf, where the Chairman of General Motors could have a chat with a DuPont, a Rockefeller and a Mellon at the same time. It’s an American Icon with a long history; it counts twenty-eight Presidents as visitors and guests. There’s a famous photo in the grand old house that overlooks the hotel, Robert E. Lee (https://civilwartalk.com/threads/lee-and-his-generals-photograph.147413/) on vacation with the Ottoman Ambassador Blacque Bey and a squad of former Civil War Generals as he issued his single post-war political statement, the “White Sulphur Springs Manifesto” of 1868. The Manifesto said the questions of the Civil War were decided by that war. The southern population would now “faithfully obey the Constitution and laws of the United States, treat the Negro populations with kindness and humanity and fulfill every duty incumbent on peaceful citizens, loyal to the Constitution of their country.’‘ • • Left to right standing: General James Conner, General Martin Witherspoon Gary, General John B. Magruder, General Robert D. Lilley, General P. G. T. Beauregard, General Alexander Lawton, General Henry A. Wise, General Joseph Lancaster Brent Left to right seated: Blacque Bey (Turkish Minister to the United States), General Robert E. Lee, Philanthropist George Peabody, Philanthropist William Wilson Corcoran, James Lyons (Virginia)I needed to check the place out in person. A former spy I knew told me that American Intelligence learned CIA counterintelligence officer/KGB Mole Aldrich Ames was a traitor while debriefing a defector in a Greenbrier property; the defector didn’t know the identity of Ames, but did know he’d flown to South America lately; just a matter of scouring flight records after that, narrowing down the list. Besides the once secret Doomsday bunker (that may still be operational but nevertheless is open for tours) the whole fenced in complex boasts a trap shooting, tennis, fly fishing, golf, outdoor adventures, indoor bowling, and multiple fine dining options, the Italian food is particularly good. There’s a Baden-Baden Style Spa, a Monte Carlo style casino and a whole floor that’s like a shopping mall. One can buy Dorothy Draper decorating books or Ralph Lauren clothing at an outlet, or swag for their canine companion at BabyDog Boutique. This store is named after the Governor of West Virginia’s constant companion, an elderly English bulldog—currently confined to a wheelchair following a successful ACL Surgery in February—named BabyDog. • • Jim Justice and BabyDogDid I mention that the Governor of West Virginia lives just down the street and his daughter now runs the Greenbrier? That’s right; a Doomsday Bunker owned by Jim Justice, the Governor of West Virginia and coach of the local girl’s high school basketball team. Justice also owns 50,000 acres of prime grain land in the Eastern United States, as well as the deeds to at least 70 mines. This includes, of course, the ones he sold to the Russians in 2009 for $568 million and bought back in 2015 for $5 million after a drop in coal prices. He’s had a little trouble with the feds over taxes and mine safety; at one point the US Marshals seized his helicopter for non-payment of taxes.
I guess if anything goes down he gets a space in the bunker now too. • • I think of Dr. Strangelove’s Dialogue with President Merkin Muffley and General Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick’s nuclear paranoia film. The President expresses concerns about picking who lives by going underground or dies by remaining on the surface, Dr. Strangelove provides a solution in between biting his leather gloved hand right hand that, as if possessed by a mind of its own, desperately tries to rise, whole arm stiff from shoulder to tip of the middle finger at 45 degrees. Suppressing his sieg heil salute, the Doctor continues to counsel his Fuhrer…er, President. “It could easily be accomplished with a computer. And a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross section of necessary skills. Of course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition. Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years.” This gets everyone in the war room’s attention; even the Soviet Ambassador agrees it’s a fine system before the room devolves into shouting over the mine shaft gap.

There was a rose-bound swastika design, subtle as far as swastikas go, in the center of the elevator I took to my Gable room the day before the State of the Union. Just woven right there into the carpet. I showed pictures to everyone I saw for a couple weeks after that. $379 seemed a bit expensive for a single night at a hotel, but the good people at County Highway were footing the bill, not me. I imagine that’s how the Congress people thought about it for their retreats, as well none of them were paying the bill. • • Those swastikas weren’t just in the elevator, by the way, and they weren’t a pre-war design feature. At the time of the Greenbrier’s conversion into a safe space for congressionals and their hangers on in the event of a disaster, it was was re-decorated by the darling of Tuxedo Park, Dorothy Draper. • •
The Greenbrier was once owned by the CSX Railroad Corporation; they helped build the bunker in the years after World War II. During that War, the Greenbrier was first a detention site—a gilded prison—for Axis diplomats, guarded by Border Patrol Agents but still served by butlers. Then, according to the their website, The Greenbrier served a greater purpose as a hospital for over 24,000 soldiers in need of surgical and rehabilitative care. In the war’s aftermath, The Greenbrier underwent a remarkable transformation under Dorothy Draper’s guidance, and our resort’s distinctive décor was established. Her bold artistic vision breathed life into the resort, infusing color, oversized patterns, and a rich sense of history into every detail. If you were a super-rich person in the 1950’s, you lived in Dorothy Draper; it was at the Carlyle, down in Winter Park, Florida at the Vice President’s residence, even rooms in the White House. What’s it look like, this Dorothy Draper style? Bold patterns, aggressive color combinations, flowers and geometric designs. I would think twice before doing hallucinogens at the Greenbrier; the combination of Federal Style and Giant Floral Prints, checkerboard floors, bold pinks and greens, the place is trippy enough; a Vegas version of Versailles in West Virginia. I want you now, to picture a hypothetical scene, how it would’ve gone down: it could be in 1962, it could be in 1992, that choice is up to you. Members of Congress, notified of some impending disaster, quickly make their way with their most attractive staff to Union Station in Washington DC if they’re in session or the nearest FBI office if they’re on a junket. They’re put on a train guarded by Capitol Police with machine guns who answer only to the Speaker of the House, and that train begins a journey south to safety. The legislator’s CSX train would pass Thomas Jefferson’s home on Monticello and the University of Virginia’s grounds in Charlottesville until finally they reach safety ten miles from the Virginia border at the posh Greenbrier Hotel. There, they’re ushered past thick steel blast doors from the Mosler Corporation by shotgun wielding irregulars employed as contractors by the hotel but paid by an obscure part of the federal government and led to their assigned bunk beds in a vast disaster dormitory. The blast doors are concealed behind a false wall in front of the conference center with massive hinges on the outside; the false panel in front means it’s hidden in plain sight to anyone who attended a business meeting at the Greenbrier. • •
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