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The Fed’s
very own Cold War bunker
by Robert Burke
Related
Story:
- The Richmond Fed
During
the height of the Cold War, when the U.S. and Soviet
Union were on a constant footing for nuclear combat,
the Richmond Fed had its very own underground bunker.
If
the Big One were to come, workers at the Richmond Fed
might have time to say good-bye to their families and
race to a spot near Culpeper 70 miles away. There, burrowed
deep in a hillside, was a three-story 140,000-square-foot
steel and concrete-lined shelter. It contained offices
and communications systems, with room for 540 people
and a 30-day supply of food and water.
Shielded
from nuclear bomb blasts and radiation, the Fed workers
were to husband a big horde of cash — several billion
in currency would be fed later into what was left of
the U.S. economy. In peacetime the shelter was where
Fed officials maintained the seven giant mainframe computers
that handled millions of electronic fund transfers for
all the Fed’s 12 regional districts. Known as the
“Culpeper Switch,” it also backed up the data
of all banks east of the Mississippi River.
The
war scenario changed in 1992 after the Soviet Union
fell apart. Twenty-three years after opening the bunker,
Fed officials decided they no longer needed it. Computer
operations were scattered to three sites and the regional
banks were allowed to set up their own, secret currency
storage sites. The 41-acre bunker property went on the
market, and was bought in 1998 for the Library of Congress,
which plans to open a National Audio-Visual Conservation
Center there in 2005. The self-contained, low humidity
environment of the bunker is apparently perfect for
storing old movies and records.
Today
the Culpeper bunker has faded into history. Many of
the 100 or so employees who worked there retired when
it closed instead of transferring to Richmond. Terrorism
is the main threat in the post-Sept. 11 environment,
and the Fed’s operations are still a target, making
Fed officials tight-lipped about how they would handle
an attack today. “That type of shelter is just
not needed,” says Richmond Fed spokeswoman Lisa
Oliva. “It really speaks to the history and paranoia
of that era.”
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to Virginia Business - February 2003
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