John Washington III Asks What the Government Built to Protect the People While It Built Bunkers for Its Leaders

John Washington III is questioning the protection the federal government built for itself during the Cold War against the protection it offered the American people. John Washington III wrote that the government "invested millions of dollars constructing underground facilities designed to protect government leadership and preserve military operations in the event of a nuclear attack," and John Washington III asked: "What did our government build to give the American people that same level of protection?"

John Washington III laid out the leadership facilities as he presented them. The Greenbrier bunker in West Virginia, designed to shelter members of Congress, cost approximately $14 million, he wrote. Raven Rock Mountain Complex in Pennsylvania had reportedly cost $35 million by April 1954, and the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado cost approximately $142 million to construct during the 1960s. Mount Weather in Virginia became another major federal emergency facility, although John Washington III noted its complete historical construction cost is not readily established in the public records reviewed.

Against those figures, John Washington III set what was done for ordinary Americans. The federal government established a public fallout shelter program, identified existing buildings that could provide protection, and distributed emergency supplies, he wrote. A Government Accountability Office report documented approximately $122 million in food and emergency supplies purchased for public fallout shelters in the early 1960s, and the government also funded some shelter construction and improvements — but much of the public program depended on buildings that already existed rather than dedicated underground facilities comparable to those serving government leadership.

"And that is where my concern begins," John Washington III wrote. His argument, as he framed it, is that a government that recognized the danger of nuclear war strongly enough to build specialized underground facilities for its leadership never built the same level of protection for the people themselves.