Raven Rock Quotes

“A specific new fear—that a whole city could just disappear in an instant—permeated the American consciousness in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Writer E. B. White captured that new fear in New York: “The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of a plane no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy,” he wrote. “All dwellers in cities must live with the stubborn fact of annihilation.” •”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“President Nixon and Kissinger were joined for the promotion ceremony by CIA director Richard Helms and Defense Secretary Laird; all the men were in a good mood, even Nixon was smiling and laughing. They’d just pulled off one of the great nuclear scares of the Cold War—and only the Soviets had noticed, just as intended. Over the months ahead, though, it became clear the feint had done little either to move forward peace talks in Vietnam or alter the U.S. balance with the Soviet Union. The government never received a single inquiry from an allied nation, nor did any reporter ever ask about it; the feints would remain secret until the 1980s. •”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“Among other items, the directive—the full details of which are still classified—called for wider COOP planning within government and transferred responsibility for COG planning from the NSC directorate that oversaw nuclear war planning, run by Bob Bell, to the directorate that oversaw nuclear terrorism, run by Richard Clarke. President”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“While no known record exists of the first entreaty to the Greenbrier, resort historian Robert Conte believes it came during the property’s 1956 North American summit, which brought Eisenhower together with the leaders of Canada and Mexico. While historic details are sketchy, Eisenhower appears to have met privately with railway president Walter Tuohy during the three-day summit to discuss the bunker. Then, the day after Eisenhower departed, the congressional leadership wrote him an opaque letter on March 28, 1956: “This is to introduce Mr. J. George Stewart, Architect of the Capitol, who is calling upon you on matters of vital importance to the Congress of the United States.”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“to be recorded as they were under normal circumstances. Just beyond the public areas lay a sprawling multifloor substructure of 153 classified rooms, including a massive power plant, medical clinic, dentist’s office, a 400-seat cafeteria, laundry facilities, three 25,000-gallon water tanks, and three 14,000-gallon fuel tanks, as well as a two-story communication facility for incoming and outgoing messages.”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“House Speaker Tip O’Neill, one of the few briefed on the evacuation procedures, recalled, “I kind of lost interest in it when they told me my wife would not be going with me. I said, ‘Jesus, you don’t think I’m going to run away and leave my wife? That’s the craziest thing I ever heard of.’ ” Thus, an expansion during George White’s tenure as the Capitol Architect created space for another 500 bunk beds and ensured room for at least 1,400 dependents in a pressurized area adjacent to the main bunker.”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“OUTPOST MISSION, the presidential helicopter search-and-rescue team in Pennsylvania, was also disbanded in 1970, as atomic weaponry progressed to the point where there was little chance of digging the president out of the White House rubble after an attack. On”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“Around 9:30 a.m., Secret Service agent Jimmy Scott told Cheney he needed to evacuate. Without giving the vice president a moment to consider, Scott and other agents hustled him out. “He put his hand on my shoulder and grabbed me by the back of my belt and propelled me out the door,” Cheney recalled. In a moment of reflex, and not wanting to be left without reading material wherever he was going, Cheney grabbed a copy of The Economist off his table on the way out.”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“literally rocketing into the sky at a seemingly impossible steep pitch as it activated for the first and only time in its history a classified system the presidential plane possessed to speed emergency launches. “There are only two 747s in the world that can take off like that—and they’re both called Air Force One,” a flight steward said, leaning over to one of the passengers. On the ground, the local Sarasota police who had been on escort duty watched in awe. “I’ve never seen a plane take off like that,” Officer Kevin Dowd recalled. “From where we were looking at it, it looked like it was going almost straight up.”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“crews, added to the unfolding chaos around Washington. It’s possible—perhaps even likely, given a study of the morning’s timeline—that reports of the Doomsday plane over the capital are what triggered concerns to evacuate the White House and activate COG procedures. NEACP’s takeoff just six minutes after American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon injected confusion”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“The security offered inside a bank safe even became fodder for a 1959 episode of The Twilight Zone, in which mild-mannered, bookish bank clerk Henry Bemis, who locked himself inside the bank’s safe each day to read during his lunch break, emerged from the vault one day to find the world devastated by nuclear bombs. IV”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“Kennedy, who had campaigned strongly on the “Missile Gap” issue, soon discovered as president that the Soviet Union didn’t have the 500 missiles feared—it didn’t even have one percent of that total. It had exactly four intercontinental missiles. For”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“September 11, 2001, and the subsequent anthrax attack on the U.S. Congress restarted a focus on COG and COOP planning that continues to this day. Today, this secret world still exists, just beneath the surface of our country. In many ways, it’s actually more expansive, powerful, and capable today than it ever was during the twentieth century. Today,”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“During his first week on the job, McNamara sat down with the Pentagon’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG), which had just completed an intensive study, known as WSEG Report #50, that found that a Soviet surprise attack on only five locations—the White House, the Pentagon, Camp David, Raven Rock, and Mount Weather—would likely destroy all of the nation’s command structure. Even simply hitting the first two would likely wipe out the military command structure, since Raven Rock and Mount Weather weren’t normally manned with senior personnel. “Both the Presidential and the SecDef-JCS levels of command are presently subject to operational incapacitation by the same events,” the report explained. Hitting all the nation’s major military commands and leadership sites would involve attacking just fourteen installations—a”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“The system left the Navy captain, Air Force major, or whoever happened to be on duty answering the phone in the Pentagon’s Joint War Room to choose the presidential successor. “A judgment [would] be made by the senior officer on duty in the JWR as to when he has in fact received a communication from the senior non-incapacitated member of the list,” the report explained. “The possibility exists that the man to wield Presidential authority in dire emergency might in fact be selected by a single field grade military officer.” Moreover,”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“Ever since the Truman administration, official U.S. war plans assumed that the Soviets would begin a nuclear exchange by exploding smuggled nuclear weapons inside their Washington, D.C., embassy and their U.N. mission in New York—thus ensuring that the opening salvo came without any warning whatsoever. In the early 1950s, the FBI had searched frantically for a nuclear weapon that a Brazilian informant told them had already been smuggled into one of the Soviet-bloc U.N. consulates in New York. They never found it—but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist. Several”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“In that war, the United States had created military forces so enormous as to defy description, yet now, when the nation’s greatest leader in that war lay dead, and a simple ceremony was about to acknowledge the presence of his successor in the nation’s greatest office, only two uniforms were present.” No one else noticed the military’s absence, but Truman thought it a remarkable testament to American democracy that no one asked the country’s powerful military leaders whom they supported as their next leader. “The very fact that no thought was given to it demonstrates convincingly how firmly the concept of supremacy of the civil authority is accepted in our land,” Truman observed.”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“Kennedy paused, fork between plate and mouth, and told Sidey, “You know, they have an atom bomb on the third floor of the embassy.” Sidey brushed off the remark, “Sure, why not?” No, really, Kennedy replied. The president told Sidey that U.S. intelligence believed the Soviets had smuggled atomic bomb components into Washington using diplomatic pouches and assembled it in the embassy’s attic. “If things get too bad and war is inevitable,” he said, “they will set it off and that’s the end of the White House and the rest of the city.” Sidey laughed, still not believing such a fantastic rumor. Kennedy replied, “That’s what I’m told. Do you know something that I don’t?” •”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“ID issue would bedevil countless FEMA officials in the days ahead—the agency’s barebones IDs, which lacked many standard government markings like an authorizing signature or specific statute citations, were repeatedly barred by skeptical security personnel. Once”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“On March 1, 1982, Reagan observed the IVY LEAGUE military exercise—the largest military command post exercise that the United States had run since 1956. It was the first time since Eisenhower that a commander-in-chief personally participated in such an exercise. Like Ike, Reagan wasn’t allowed to speak. As an official explained, “No president should ever disclose his hand, even in a war game.”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“After initial annoyance about the surprise drills, the Pentagon quickly saw value in the president’s interest. “It is the first time in years that they have a president who takes his role as Commander-in-Chief seriously,” a White House aide bragged. “They’re ecstatic.” Amid Vietnam, Watergate, and a relatively calm period of the Cold War in general, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford had shown little interest in the emergency procedures, which for the most part had continued to chug along far off the White House’s radar. Carter’s administration, on the other hand, ran the only full-scale activation of the Greenbrier congressional relocation facility—on cue, the Forsythe Associates team hauled hundreds of desks out of their warehouse on the resort grounds and—while the conference facilities were closed to the public—set up the exhibit hall as if Congress had successfully relocated there. Outside the small Forsythe Associates crew, none of the resort guests or staffers noticed. •”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“Hundreds more staff could join the ship in an emergency. (One young Navy ROTC officer, Bob Woodward, who went on to be a prizewinning investigative journalist behind Watergate, began his naval career aboard the Wright as one of the two officers necessary to move or handle the nuclear launch codes.)”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“At the Pentagon, for instance, in the NMCC’s secure Emergency Actions room, military officials could find anyone in the Constitution’s line of succession by checking the screen of a dedicated Zenith Z-150 Central Locator System computer. The CLS computers are protected by a special NSA protocol known as TEMPEST that shields them from electromagnetic snooping. II”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“In what commanders and technicians realized in hindsight was a bad decision, the test messages were identical to the real alert messages that’d be used in an attack, but simply used zeroes to indicate the number of missiles in the air. The real totals would be filled in during an attack. The faulty computer chip began inserting the numeral 2 in place of zeroes—hence the quickly escalating alert from 2 missiles to 220 to 2,200 Soviet ICBMs. It had been a disaster just waiting to happen. The government’s after-action report reported dryly, “Now, that message is in a different format which just indicates the status of the communications system rather than the any indication of numbers of missiles.” The Pentagon’s classified talking points tried to put lipstick on the pig, celebrating that “The human safeguards which are a central part of our system worked as designed.” •”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“the weeks following the war’s end, Truman announced a redesign of the presidential flag—the first since the Wilson years. Chief among the changes was the shifting of the eagle’s head away from the arrows of war instead toward the olive branch of peace, reflecting the nation’s desire for a universal peace.”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“On December 12, 1958, the Greenbrier announced the construction of its new West Virginia Wing, with 22,000 square feet of public meeting space. Another 90,000 square feet were behind the walls for the classified congressional hideout. The hidden facility, surrounded by reinforced concrete walls between three and five feet thick, extended 720 feet into the adjacent mountain—a factor that created the odd sensation that from the resort lobby, one would take an elevator up to enter the bunker. It was not designed to withstand a direct attack, but would protect against nearby blasts and be sealed tight from fallout. When the off-the-books ghost project officially got under way in the spring of 1959, it was known by an appropriate code name: CASPER. Locals”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“In 1994, the FBI discovered its agent Robert Hanssen—a longtime spy for the Soviet Union—had on August 7, 1989, placed in a dead drop in Eakin Community Park in Fairfax, Virginia, five rolls of film that depicted a highly restricted classified analysis of government COG procedures, perhaps the biggest intelligence coup for the Soviet Union of his lengthy spying career. By the time Hanssen was arrested in 1994, most of those COG secrets were obsolete anyway. X”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“Humphrey had even visited the CASPER facility on multiple occasions under the cover of darkness during vacations at the Greenbrier. In 1970, after his time as vice president, Humphrey was reelected to the Senate from Minnesota, where, as a junior senator, he was no longer privy to the evacuation plans. Even though he knew that the Greenbrier existed—a fact that put him in an extreme tiny minority inside Congress—no one ever explained to him what he was supposed to do in an emergency as a senator. As he said during the Nixon years, “You know, that has struck me as odd.” •”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“inside forget they were hiding in an underground bunker. Under normal circumstances, personnel approaching the PEOC would arrive at its locked vault door, located on the White House’s basement “level ZP,” and use a telephone to ask the duty officer inside for permission to enter.”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

“McNamara’s Lincoln Continental had idled at the curb outside Kennedy’s house, its high-tech radio car phone keeping an open line to the Ford offices in Washington, which, in turn, had a long-distance line open to McNamara’s wife in Ann Arbor to relay the news of the job offer.”
― Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die