There is some evidence ["Luton/Hemel Hempstead Evening Post Echo" newspaper] that strongly suggests this facility was used as a CIA weapons dump. This weapons dump held Soviet Bloc small arms (AK 47s, RPGs, etc.) for a special combined CIA/MI6 Cold War operation, code named Operation GLADIO. The specific duties of Op. GLADIO operatives was "behind the lines" resistance activities. The concept was that IF Western Europe was invaded by the Warsaw Pact, that such units could disrupt the invaders "lines of communications and supplies". Duncan Campbell, in his title War Plan UK &amp; The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier, refers to this base facility by its CIA radio call-sign of "X-Ray Zero Niner". Today, a number of the strengthened (although NOT armoured) ammo block houses still stand on the industrial estate. The scrap yard near the far end of the estate retains the two earth concrete revetment walls, that allowed truck access to the block house doors. It also gives some scale of the removed earth bund revetment beams carefully constructed around ALL the block houses (prior to their demolition for industrial units). The presence of the base was exposed shortly after the events from The Great Train Robbery took place nearby, when a BBC current affairs programme, a few weeks after the Great Train Robbery, exposed the base to the world.