Washington Asks What the Government Built for the People, Citing the Bunkers Built for Its Leaders

Presidential candidate John Washington III posed a pointed question in a written statement on Sunday. "The government built underground bunkers to protect its leaders," he wrote. "What did it build for the people?"

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

Against that, he 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. 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, he wrote, depended on buildings that already existed rather than on dedicated underground facilities comparable to those serving government leadership. That contrast, he wrote, is where his concern begins: if the government recognized the danger of nuclear war strongly enough to build specialized underground facilities for its leadership, why was a comparable level of protection never built for the public?