Here lies Mount Weather, also known as the Western Virginia Office of Controlled Conflict Operations. Aboveground, scattered across manicured lawns, are about a dozen buildings bristling with antennas and microwave relay systems. Not far from the installation's entry gate are a control tower and a helicopter pad. The mountain's real secrets are not visible at ground level. Curious motorists and hikers on the Appalachian trail are relieved of their sketching pads and cameras and sent on their way.
Security is tight.
In 1936, the U.S. Bureau of Mines took control and started digging. Mount Weather is virtually an underground city, according to former personnel interviewed by Pollock. The facility is the operational center of approximately 100 other Federal Relocation Centers, most of which are concentrated in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina. According to the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights hearings in 1975, Congress has almost no knowledge and no oversight, budgetary or otherwise, on Mount Weather. Apparently, this underground capital of the United States is a secret only to Congress and the US taxpayers who paid for it.