By UM. RA.

There are few Americans who know about the existence of Mount Weather, a mysterious American military base in the bowels of a mountain near the sleepy rural town of Bluemont, West Virginia, 46 miles from Washingotn, D.C.

The mysterious mountain, as Richard Pollock called it, in an article in 1976 in The Progressive magazine, based on a Senate Commission audit, and on a few statements by government functionaries who had worked at Mount Weather, is a sort of hidden Atlantis, under residential lawns and meadows, equipped with private apartments, streets,sidewalks, restaurants, a hospital, water purifications system, energy generators, a natural small lake fed by springs, close circuit TV transport and evacuation systems in case of emergency.

It is the underground base of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the central agency for hundreds of Federal Relocations Centers, located in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. It is the main element of the program known as "continuity of government" in case of nuclear war, martial law or any other national emergency. The U.S. President and the government would be "relocated" at Mount Weather in the event of such an emergency.

According to the 1975 audits, the U.S. congress did not know anything about the existence of this underground base but the Russians had put Mount Weather on the Kremlin maps of strategic objectives.

Pollock revealed the existence of a "shadow government" ready to take charge. Cloned for the job are the Cabinets positions, the Department of State, the Federal Reserve, five of the most important Federal Agencies, the Post Office and a few strategic organizations. The base employees keep data on their citizens. There are 100,000 dossiers on people. There is also a 'survivors list' of those whose survival is considered vital for the nation's future.

Decisions are made in the "Situation Room" in direct communication with the White House and with "Raven Rock", the underground Pentagon 60 miles from Washington, and the major military units around the world.

They also keep track of activists and dissidents, pacifist demonstrators and the like.

Translated by Gabi Christov