Paul Bugas, who directed operations at a secret doomsday bunker, hidden beneath an opulent resort in West Virginia and intended to shelter members of Congress in the event of a Cold War-era nuclear attack, died on July 1 in Richmond, Va. He was 96.
His death, at an assisted living facility, was confirmed by his daughter Nancy Del Presto.
In 1971, after serving in the military for 20 years, Mr. Bugas (pronounced BYOO-gus), known as Fritz, arrived at the Greenbrier Resort, nestled in the Allegheny Mountains in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., under the guise of being the regional manager of a company with the anodyne name Forsythe Associates.
He did, in fact, work part time as a technician for the shell company, providing cables, television sets and other electronics to the sprawling resort, where presidents, members of Congress and foreign dignitaries were regularly among the well-heeled guests. But Mr. Bugas’s primary (if furtive) role was as the superintendent of an enormous bunker with the code name Project Greek Island, built to keep Congress functioning in the aftermath of nuclear war.
The shelter, roughly the size of an average Walmart store, was constructed between the late 1950s and 1962, the year of the Cuban missile crisis, the 13-day standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union over the presence of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles 90 miles off the coast of Florida.
The bunker, set more than 700 feet into a hillside beneath the Greenbrier, was secured by blast doors, the largest of which weighed 28 tons; its reinforced concrete walls were two to three feet thick. It contained 1,100 beds stacked in rows of bunks; separate meeting halls for all 435 members of the House and 100 members of the Senate; a room that could serve as a joint chamber; and a cafeteria that could feed 400 at a time.
There was also a radio, television and communications center, along with a medical center that included a dental office and an operating room. One storage room held riot-control weapons. There was an incinerator that could serve as a crematory. There were also diesel and steam-powered generators, as well as water, air-conditioning and filtration systems, all designed to sustain the operation for 40 to 45 days.
Fear of a nuclear attack by the Soviets was rampant at the time. Residential and community fallout shelters were being hastily built, and schoolchildren were taught to shield themselves from nuclear annihilation by hiding under their desks.
For 30 years, the bunker remained a secret. While it was under construction, the Greenbrier was adding a wing, and that served as cover for the shelter beneath. Part of the two-level bunker hid in plain sight as an exhibition hall used for medical and automotive conferences.
The cover was blown on May 31, 1992, when Ted Gup, a reporter for The Washington Post, revealed the fallout shelter’s existence in an article headlined “The Ultimate Congressional Hideaway.” The bunker was soon declassified, and in 1995 it was converted into a Cold War museum, complete with guided tours.
Mr. Bugas told PBS in 1999 that he was devastated by The Post’s revelation. “We felt a disservice had been done,” he said. “I’m not talking to us personally, but to our country’s security. We felt very strongly about what we had been doing.”
In his reporting at the time and in an interview for this obituary, Mr. Gup suggested that the bunker had outlived its purpose. The Greenbrier Resort is a four- to five-hour drive or an hourlong flight from Washington, he noted, while nuclear-tipped missiles could take less than 15 minutes to reach a target.
And in any case, he said, wrangling members of Congress on short notice would be like “herding quail.” If the Soviets got wind of a sudden mass exodus of lawmakers from the Capitol in anticipation of nuclear Armageddon, he said, they most likely would have launched a pre-emptive strike.
But by 1992, the threat had receded. Five months before the article was published, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The Cold War was over.
The Post held the article, Mr. Gup said, until editors were convinced that publishing it would not harm national security. He said he respected the work that Mr. Bugas and his colleagues had done in a career that was predicated on the existential question of “what if?”
If Mr. Bugas had responded to his interview requests and made a compelling case that the shelter was responsive to an imminent threat facing the United States and that publication could compromise national security, Mr. Gup added, the article “would never have seen the light of day.”
Mr. Bugas might have agreed to an interview, his son Tim said, but he had been injured in an automobile accident and was hospitalized around that time.
When a conversation between the bunker superintendent and the reporter occurred later, Mr. Gup said that Mr. Bugas seemed to consider him naïve or misguided rather than treasonous.
“He was a gentleman,” said Mr. Gup, now a visiting professor on issues of social change at Swarthmore College. “I felt bad for him. He had devoted his life to this. I’m sure he felt the rug had been pulled from under him.”
For more than 20 years, Mr. Bugas had shown up to work at Greenbrier, along with 12 to 15 other government employees, wearing clothing that helped him blend in with the other resort employees. There was communications equipment that had to be maintained; a six-month supply of food that had to be replenished; and filters designed to remove nuclear, biological and chemical contaminants that had to be kept updated. Secrecy was paramount.
There were rumors around town that the facility — for which some 50,000 tons of concrete were poured during construction — was meant to shelter President Dwight D. Eisenhower or his successors during a nuclear war. And some locals wondered why a city with fewer than 3,000 residents needed a 7,000-foot runway where a commercial airliner could land.
Truman Wright, who ran the Greenbrier Resort from 1951 to 1974 and said he purposely did not inquire about the construction of the bunker, told Mr. Gup in 1992 that he once spoke with a contractor who was curious about the purpose of one particularly vast room.
“This is an exhibition hall?” the contractor asked. “We’ve got 110 urinals we just installed. What in the hell are you going to exhibit?”
Mr. Bugas’s children also heard the rumors. But Tim Bugas said his father’s involvement in the White Sulphur Springs community, helping to spearhead the building of a public library and coaching sports teams, made it seem almost inconceivable that he could have been involved in an undercover project of national consequence.
“We called him the TV repair guy,” he said.
Paul Edward Bugas was born on May 5, 1929, in Wamsutter, a tiny town in southern Wyoming, where his parents, Andrew Paul Bugas and Nellie (Ladamus) Bugas, owned a hotel along the Union Pacific Railroad line.
While attending Regis College (now Regis University) in Denver, he met Rosemary McDonough. They were married for 71 years, until she died in 2022, and had seven children.
In addition to Ms. Del Presto, Mr. Bugas is survived by another daughter, Suzanne Malecky; five sons, Paul Jr., Dan, Tim, Pete and Gerry; 21 grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren.
Shortly after Mr. Bugas graduated in 1951 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, he joined the Army. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and received the Legion of Merit award for his service, which included postings in Panama, Thailand and Vietnam.
Mr. Bugas served in military intelligence, which gave him the necessary security clearance to become director of the Greenbrier bunker, as well as the training to keep a secret. When the bunker was declassified, Mr. Bugas helped give guided tours. Having the opportunity to explain the work he had long had to conceal may have been cathartic, his son Paul said in an interview.
“Being a consummate Army man, his orders were to preserve an element of democracy if the big one fell,” he said. “And that’s exactly what he did.”
Jeré Longman is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk who writes the occasional sports-related story.
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