The first rule of Site R is: You do not talk about Site R. Or, as the security guidance about the Pentagon’s nuclear war bunker (AKA Raven Rock Mountain Complex, or RRMC), states: “Avoid conversations about RRMC with unauthorized personnel.” The other two rules of Site R are: “Do not confirm or deny information about RRMC to reporters or radio stations,” and “Do not post RRMC information on Internet web pages.”

We might suggest a fourth rule: do not send information about RRMC to reporters working on a travelogue about nuclear weapons.

In our book released this week, A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry, we start off in the American southwest and travel all the way to Iran in search of a better understanding of nuclear weapons and warfare. In an itinerary that includes underground missile alert facilities, uranium plants and remote Pacific outposts, we try to answer the question: What is the current nuclear strategy, and does it make any sense?

Nuclear bunkers, a Cold War holdover, embody many of the contradictions in today’s nuclear policy. First built as a way to shield top leaders from atomic fallout, they quickly became obsolete with the advent of thermonuclear weapons and precise, long-range missiles. Some, like the congressional bunker at the opulent Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, have closed their doors; others, like Cheyenne Mountain, have teetered on the brink of shutdown.

But our interest in Site R was piqued by an announcement that was posted in 2006 on the website of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the Pentagon’s nonproliferation agency:

Raven Rock Military Complex The Hardened Facilities Managers Conference, co-sponsored by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Raven Rock Military Complex*, will focus on priority issues of both countering enemy underground facilities (UGF) and protecting friendly underground facilities. Managers of U.S. operated UGF's will provide overviews of their corresponding complexes. In addition technical and vulnerability issues will be discussed and site tours will be provided.

If Site R is so gosh-darn secret, why did they post this notice, and more importantly, how did we get our grubby little mitts on documents relating to this conference, including an an informational overview, a “Welcome Package", an agenda, security guidance for attendees, and a schedule of shuttles to Site R (which we are not posting)? Cunning subterfuge? A Deep Throat inside the mountain? A Freedom of Information Act request?

Sadly, we just asked for them. We e-mailed the contact person for the conference, provided our affiliation, and asked for the conference materials. We did say “please."

All of the information was unclassified, and it provides for us at least a small window into what goes on underground at Site R.

Within a few days, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency had scrubbed the conference posting from their website, and we were informed that the event most certainly was not open to the press. Somewhere inside the halls of DTRA, we suspect someone was being reprimanded.

For all the secrecy surrounding Site R, the mountain facility suffers from the obvious flaw of just about every bunker out there: Its existence isn’t secret, and in the era of Google Earth, it really can’t be kept secret. And if it’s not a secret, what good is it? A modern thermonuclear warhead would destroy it in an instant. In fact, Site R was almost mothballed prior to September 11. As we learned from our travels, bunkers are typically obsolete the day they open their doors, but they live off the inertia of bureaucracy.

The terrorist attacks of 2001 gave new purpose to the Cold War bunker in Pennsylvania, known as the "underground Pentagon," first as the alleged undisclosed location of Vice President Dick Cheney, and then as a base for revitalized “continuity of government” operations.

Are bunkers good for combating terrorism? Probably not. As the nation learned on September 11, what you want in the event of a terrorist attack is information: immediate, accurate and unfiltered. Site R, where government workers are stripped of their personal cell phones and PDAs, is arguably the worst place to be. When you walk into a government office these days, the big board equivalent is not a classified feed, but a flat screen playing CNN.

And what exactly would a bunker provide the government in the event of terrorism, other than a temporary safe haven for bureaucrats? As Hurricane Katrina demonstrated, the weakest link in disaster response is not shielding government officials — they appear to do quite well — but protecting the most vulnerable members of the population. The bunker mania, then, is not a rational response to current threats, but part of the renewed obsession with "continuity of government," a holdover from Cold War-era days.

So, what do bunker managers do at meetings like this? Judging from the conference agenda, they look for things to worry about: pandemics; electromagnetic pulse weapons; and biological attacks. But as one item on the agenda hinted — “Tunnel Collapse Briefing” — possibly the most dangerous threat to life in the bunker is the bunker itself.

Site R is one of those places that exists somewhere between the worlds of secrecy and lunacy: we’re told the government bureaucrats ordered to go there generally regard it as a colossal waste of time; it’s of questionable utility in any realistic scenario, and like all bunkers, it presents more disadvantages than advantages when it comes to coordinating disaster response. We're also told the largest tenant at Site R is DTRA, an obscure agency that – though certainly involved in important work and home to many dedicated scientists – is, even by its own employees, regarded as a dysfunctional bureaucracy (On the other hand, when not in hidden in a bunker, DTRA does important nonproliferation work).

Secrecy does not protect the occupants of the bunker from nuclear weapons, from terrorists, or from foreign enemies, it only protects them from the public. That’s why the instructions on the security guidelines strike us as both absurd and arrogant: “The more the public knows about this facility, the more our adversaries do, and the more vulnerable we become.”

Site R is not secret, but details of what's inside are hidden from view. The agenda provides some hints about what's there: a presidential weather support facility (presumably for Air Force One) and construction related to electromagnetic pulse protection. But perhaps the most eye-catching item on the agenda is a “Gorilla Rock Update” provided by miners, suggesting that there is new construction going on inside the mountain.

That should come as little surprise. As we write in our book, “a permanent government bureaucracy would always find a reason for digging. Standing by the tightly guarded entrance to the mountain complex, the true purpose of which is obscured from the public it is designed to protect, we couldn't help but think that perhaps the only thing Site R protected was its own existence.”

\– Sharon Weinberger and Nathan Hodge

* Although the conference announcement referred to "Raven Rock Military Complex," DTRA later told us the official name is the "Raven Rock Mountain Complex." Both names are used in official documents, though "Mountain" is the dominant usage.

[Image: Nathan Hodge]