All language subtitles for Mysteries.Unearthed.with.Danny.Trejo.S01E04.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH_track3_[eng].1

[tense music]

- Mysteries can be
buried anywhere.

Under the earth.

[volcano booms]
[engine whirring]

Beneath the sea.

Or even right
under our own feet.

And when we stumble upon them,

sometimes what we find
can change history.

Tonight, military secrets from
a highly classified message

hidden in a chimney.

- The message is revealing
German positions in Normandy

prior to the D-Day assault.

- To one of the Nazi's
most potent weapons

lurking in the deep.

- It was an incredible German
invention of World War II

which allowed them to
send encrypted messages.

- To a Cold War hotspot
buried under the ice.

- The US assumes its secrets
will be buried deeply

underneath the ice,

but these researchers
upset all that.

- Join us now, because
nothing stays hidden forever.

[mysterious music]

Let's say you're part of a
team working out in the forest.

You're cutting down trees on
what feels like a normal day.

Then, you accidentally
find something incredible.

- One of the team
members, Kit Rodger,

is wading through dense foliage.

The team's getting ready
for a large scale operation.

[saw whirring]
[tree cracking]

- Just as they're
about to begin,

Kit Rodger spots
something on the ground

that definitely is not a tree.

- He looks down, he
sees an iron door.

- Curious, he
pries the door open

and sees a small
shaft leading down.

He decides to investigate

and what he finds
is a buried bunker.

- The chamber's about 23
feet long, 10 feet wide.

There's some broken
timber bed frames,

but really nothing else
survives inside the structure.

At the far end, though,
there's an escape hatch.

- He thinks he's found
something special

that's long been rumored to
have been hidden in this area.

One of the famous
Churchill bunkers.

- [Narrator] The Churchill
bunkers were built

as part of a secret operation

during some of the darkest
days of World War II.

[alarm blaring]

- Beginning in September 1940,

England had been subjected

to a protracted strategic
bombing campaign.

[explosions booming]

- Basically, the Germans,
for eight months,

are raining fire
down on England,

intense bombings of places
like Coventry and London.

This attack is
known as the Blitz.

- Fearing that the
Germans might conduct

an invasion of some kind,

British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill

creates a clandestine
organization

that he calls the
Auxiliary Units.

- [Narrator] Unofficially,
they're known

as Churchill's Secret Army.

- This isn't some
sort of an elite unit.

These men are
farmers and miners.

But they bring one critical
advantage to the scenario,

and that is an intimate
familiarity with the land.

- The main purpose
of these units

is to act as a resistance force

in case the Germans do invade.

- [Narrator] This is an army
designed to fight to the death

as a last resort.

Essentially, it's
a suicide mission.

- To give this force a chance
against an invading army,

they need the
element of surprise.

- So, all across
Britain, an estimated

500 of these Churchill
bunkers were constructed

in order to house this army.

- Their locations are secret

and their entrances
are disguised

so they can't be
seen from the air.

- Fortunately, Churchill's
last-ditch army

is never called into service,
and that's because of the fact

that the Nazis do not
invade the United Kingdom.

- [Narrator] A few years later,

when World War II
comes to a close,

Churchill's Secret
Army is disbanded

and the bunkers are abandoned.

- The locations of these bunkers
have never been confirmed,

and to date, just about 200
of them have been found.

- Investigators are sent out

to examine the
underground position

and compare it against other
known Churchill bunkers.

And what they discover
is it is a perfect match.

This is indeed a
Churchill bunker.

- The location of this
newly discovered bunker

still remains a
secret to this day.

- But who knows? If
you're out and about

wandering around the
English countryside,

you might stumble
across one of the ones

that has yet to be discovered.

- Not every military secret
is buried underground.

Sometimes, they hide
in plain sight.

- It's 1977 and Peter Johnson
is walking along Martin Bay

at the tip of the
Canadian province

of Newfoundland and Labrador.

- The terrain here,
it's cold, it's vast.

The site is so remote

that fewer than 600
people visit it each year.

Johnson is there to
conduct an investigation

about the native people
that once lived there.

- The nearest town
is 100 miles away

and it's just a small outpost
of about 1,100 people.

Out here, you're more
likely to meet a polar bear

than another human.

- [Narrator] As he crosses
a rocky edge of earth,

he sees something
strange in the distance.

- And what he sees looks
like a series of drums

with a flagpole in the middle.

There's nothing else like that

out in the middle of
this barren wasteland.

- It's clearly been
abandoned for some time,

which only adds to the mystery.

He dismisses it as some sort
of old Canadian weather station

and just jots it down in
his notes as "Martin Bay 7"

and then just moves on.

- [Narrator] But that's
not the end of the story.

Four years later, a
German researcher,

Franz Selinger, makes
a surprising discovery

about this mysterious
weather station.

- As Selinger is going
through the research files,

he finds one that
is labeled "Kurt."

When he opens the file,

it consists of a series of
photographs that depict a U-boat

and then also some
equipment installed

in this snow-covered
Arctic environment.

- He notices that the
U-boat is not configured

like other U-boats,

in that it's missing its
quadruple anti-aircraft gun,

which he finds interesting.

So he decides to look into
the German U-boat logs

and eventually comes
across the log for U-537.

- [Narrator] Selinger discovers
something extraordinary.

A secret mission

to set up a weather
station in Newfoundland.

But why would the Nazis
go through the trouble

of setting up a station here,

thousands of miles
from the front lines?

- Having the ability to forecast
weather with high accuracy

can provide a strategic
advantage in combat.

- Because the weather in North
America basically determines

what the weather's gonna be
like in Europe a few days later,

if you know what the
weather's gonna be like

and your enemy doesn't,
you have an advantage.

So this weather station can be
the difference for the Nazis

between victory and defeat.

- [Narrator] Before
Selinger's find,

historians believed
that the Nazis

had never set foot in Canada.

- It was well known, of course,

that German U-boats operated
on the Atlantic coast

and the coast of
the Gulf of Mexico,

but it's believed that's
as close as they ever got.

The captain of U-537 selects
Martin Bay specifically

because it's a sparsely
populated part of Labrador,

and they select the time period

because when they sail
into this remote bay

and install the weather station,

within two weeks, the
entire bay will freeze up

and then nobody can get to it.

- The setup team
loads their equipment

onto these small
rubber dinghies,

brings them to shore,

sets up the structure, tests it.

They quickly get
back on the U-boat,

submerge, and head out to sea.

- [Narrator] Although the Nazis
complete the mission undetected,

not everything goes
according to plan.

- The ironic thing is that the
Germans could send a U-boat

thousands of miles
from home base

to set up a state-of-the-art
weather facility in Canada

only to have it work
for about three weeks

due to the fact that
the elements in Canada

degraded the station so badly

that it couldn't transmit
useful data anymore.

- [Narrator] In 1981, Canadian
officials send a historian

to relocate and
preserve the site.

- And he finds that the
weather station is still there.

It looks weathered,
part of it is damaged,

it looks like maybe
animals have gotten to it,

but it is still there.

- The weather station today

can be found at the Canadian
War Museum in Ottawa.

- And that weather station
provides proof that Nazi Germany

conducted an armed and uniformed
landing in North America

during the Second World War.

It also begs the question,

what else might be out
there from World War II,

in some remote
part of the globe,

just waiting to be discovered?

- X-rays are supposed to
reveal what's going on

inside our bodies.

But in the 1940s,

they accidentally exposed
something classified.

- The Kodak Company,

headquartered in
Rochester, New York,

is probably best
known for making film.

You know, back when those
were used in cameras

before everything went digital.

- But Kodak doesn't just
make film for cameras,

they also make everything
necessary for X-ray imaging

in a medical capacity.

- Around July of 1945, however,

they're starting to
get a lot of complaints

from some of their customers

regarding their X-ray film.

- It turns out the complaints
are all remarkably similar.

The images come out foggy with
black dots all over the film.

- These complaints
come as a surprise

to the scientists at Kodak

because they take
incredibly good care

in preparing the film
before it's shipped out.

This is because they know it's
extremely sensitive to light.

- [Narrator] Everything involved

with prepping and shipping the
film is handled carefully,

but with so many
unhappy customers,

Kodak assigns a scientist named
Julian Webb to investigate.

- Webb's investigation reveals

that the contamination
was in the packaging,

not in the film,

and that the packaging came
from a plant in Indiana.

But more surprising
and disturbing

is that the contamination
itself is radioactive.

- It's a shocking discovery.

But what he also finds out

is that there are problems
from another plant

that's making this film,

but this one is all
the way over in Iowa.

- So, over the next few weeks,

Webb and his team examine
both plants and realize

there's nothing that could
account for these issues.

- [Narrator] Then,
on August 6th,

Webb gets a clue about what
could be causing the problem.

[explosion booms]

When the US drops a
nuclear bomb on Hiroshima.

- In the weeks following

the dropping of the
atomic bombs on Japan,

it eventually
emerges that the US,

on the 16th of July, 1945,

had carried out,
in great secrecy,

the first atom bomb
test in New Mexico.

- It's the culmination
of what's called

the Manhattan Project,

a years-long top secret attempt
to build an atomic bomb.

At the time, the government
tried to cover it up

by saying it was
just a detonation

of conventional explosives.

Nobody really questions it.

I mean, there's a war going
on, this is World War II.

- Julian Webb begins
to connect the dots.

He realizes while the government
could control the spin,

they couldn't control the spread
of the radioactive isotopes

from the explosion.

And wind scattered these
radioactive particles

far and wide, eventually
landing in the river water

that supplied both the
Indiana and Iowa factories.

- Webb has discovered something

that perhaps the government
doesn't even know

or doesn't want to know,

that these radioactive particles
can spread incredibly far.

- As a result, Kodak puts Geiger
counters at its facilities

to monitor radiation levels

in the production
of their films.

[alarm blaring]

- In 1951, the counters go wild

because of a test in
the Nevada desert.

Claiming to be losing
money from product loss,

they threaten to sue
the US government.

- [Narrator] The
government doesn't want

this information made public,

so they make a secret
deal with Kodak.

- They agree to give them a
heads up about any future tests

so they can protect
their product,

and the public is
none the wiser.

- If Rochester, New York
seems like a surprising place

to discover nuclear secrets,

what about Greenland?

- In 1995, a group of
Danish researchers

are at the US National
Archives in Washington.

What they're looking for
are records of flights

made over Greenland
during the Cold War.

- While looking
through the files,

they find one curiously titled,

"Europe: January to May, 1962."

So they open it up.

- This folder has nothing
to do with flight times

or air cargo.

It, in fact, leads not to
the air, but below the ice.

- [Narrator] They discover files

describing something
called Project Iceworm,

and it's a doozy.

A daring, covert operation

that seems straight out
of a Cold War spy novel.

- In 1959, Northern
Greenland is buzzing

with a construction project

unlike anything ever
attempted before.

- Just 800 miles
from the North Pole,

the US Army Corps of Engineers

is building what is known
as the city under the ice.

- [Narrator] It's
called Camp Century

and it's being used to
conduct scientific research.

- Camp Century has
just about everything

that you could expect to find
in an American small town.

The main tunnel
is 1,000 feet long

and it's called Main Street.

It has a chapel, a hospital,
and even a movie theater.

- It's basically all powered

by the world's first
mobile atomic generator,

the PM-2A, A for Arctic.

The camp captures the
nation's imagination

and the attention of major
newspapers, magazines,

and of course television,

including the most trusted man
in America, Walter Cronkite.

- And he brings this film
crew and they highlight

all of the scientific
experiments that are going on

and all the wondrous
research that they're doing

under the ice pack.

- [Narrator] What
Cronkite doesn't know

is that Camp Century is a
cover for a Cold War project

with much higher stakes.

Creating a secret US nuclear
base close to Russia.

- And part of this plan

is to build 2,500
miles worth of tunnels

so we can base new
intercontinental,

ballistic missiles
there in Greenland.

- And the US military is
planning to build a railway

connecting these hundreds
of miles of tunnels

so that 600
nuclear-tipped missiles

can be moved between
2,100 launch sites

under the Arctic ice.

- On paper, this plan
looks like a winner.

By keeping the missiles both
under the ice and mobile,

you keep the enemy guessing.

The idea is to be able to move

the missiles around
strategically

to stay one step ahead.

So it's kind of like a game
of nuclear whack-a-mole.

- Each one of these missiles

that the US plans to
base in the Arctic

will carry a warhead
150 times more potent

than the atom bombs dropped
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

- Putting the missiles
in this location

allows you to target up to 800
miles into the Soviet Union,

thereby hitting most of
their industrial capacity

and the military targets
that are around them.

- The project is so top secret

that even Denmark, who
oversees Greenland,

they don't know about it.

- [Narrator] There's just
one surprising problem.

- Greenland's ice sheet is
in fact constantly moving.

It rolls and heaves
just like the sea,

but at a very slow pace.

The shifting ice wreaks
havoc on Camp Century.

Tunnels collapse, and
there's a five-foot sag

in the ceiling of the
nuclear reactor room.

- Eventually, the US military
faces the inevitable.

You can't beat Mother Nature.

- So, in 1966, the US gives up,

it packs up, and it
abandons Camp Century.

- The US assumes its secrets
will be buried deeply

underneath the ice.

But these Danish
researchers upset all that,

leading to another wild
Cold War discovery.

- Imagine you're a diver
cleaning up lost fishing nets

when your sonar goes off.

What you discover next isn't
what you were expecting.

- Off the coast of Germany,
in the Bay of Gelting,

the World Wildlife Fund
drops a diver into the water

to retrieve a missing net.

As he gets closer,

he notices that
the net is hooked

onto this odd-looking dark rock

with these white specs on it.

- Upon closer inspection,

he realizes that the white
specs are actually characters

on what appears to
be an old typewriter.

Since an old typewriter
is really out of place

on the seafloor, he
decides to pull it up.

- Once they get the
object out of the water

and they take a
close look at it,

they realize this actually
isn't a typewriter at all.

- [Narrator] This
strange discovery

is a Nazi M3 Enigma
cipher machine.

- The Enigma machine was an
incredible German invention

of World War II

which allowed them to
send encrypted messages

between their various
political, military,

and naval headquarters.

- [Narrator] The Germans think
their system is unbreakable.

- There were at least 159
trillion possible solutions

to the codes the Enigma
machines created.

- What's more, the code
key changes every 24 hours.

The Allies tried to
crack the Enigma system

time and time again,
only to fail.

- [Narrator] But
Britain's leaders know

breaking the code is critical,

so they recruit
a top secret team

to work at Bletchley Park,

Britain's code-breaking center.

- In 1941, they break through

and figure out how
to crack Enigma.

- This is a complete game
changer for the Allies

because it allows them to
read German communications

in real time.

- It's believed that cracking
German naval Enigma alone

ended the Second World
War one year earlier

than it would've
ended otherwise.

- [Narrator] How did
this crucial piece

of the Nazi war machine

wind up at the bottom of a bay?

- By the spring of 1945, the
Allies had the upper hand

against the faltering
German forces.

The end of the war in
Europe is in sight.

- Shortly before the German
surrender in May 1945,

the German high command orders

Operation Regenbogen,
Operation Rainbow,

by which they ordered both the
U-boats and surface vessels

to scuttle themselves, sink
themselves deliberately.

[explosion booms]

So they could not be seized
by the Allies after the war.

- In Gelting Bay alone,

around 50 U-boats are
sent to the bottom,

many of them carrying
Enigma machines.

- [Narrator] While
over 40,000 Enigmas

were made during the war,

less than 300 remain,

so the diver's find is
potentially worth serious money.

- Enigma machines
have sold at auction

from between 50,000 to $500,000.

- [Narrator] But instead
of selling the machine,

the divers donate it.

- The divers turn over the
Enigma to researchers.

Today, if you go to the Museum
of Archeology in Schleswig,

you can see the
machine on display.

And it's kind of cool because
it also serves as a reminder

of the brain power that it
took to defeat the Nazis.

- Discovering a top secret
Nazi code machine underwater

is definitely unusual.

So is what this next guy
finds inside his fireplace

40 years after World War II.

- In Surrey, England, in 1982,

David Martin is doing
a home renovation

when he discovers a bird
skeleton in his chimney.

- As Martin removes it,

he notices a tiny red canister
attached to its leg bone.

- Inside is a handwritten
coded message

with the words "Pigeon
Service" written at the top.

It was a tiny piece of paper
with 27 separate coded messages

consisting of a very complex
series of letters and numbers.

- [Narrator] But
how did this pigeon

end up in Martin's chimney?

- This is a carrier pigeon

that was part of an elite
avian communication service

during World War II.

- Pigeons were used
to carry messages

between England and
mainland Europe.

They were more reliable than
secret radio transmissions

and they didn't put
human lives at risk.

- The reason why
pigeons are reliable

is because they're born

with these incredible
homing instincts.

- Military training was
used to teach baby pigeons

how to more accurately home

and navigate over
greater distances,

from up to 1,000 miles away.

- They were so effective

the Germans even
developed a squad of hawks

to take pigeons out

and even stationed troops
along the coast with guns

to fire at pigeons
as they flew by.

- [Narrator] Martin's
pigeon is one of 250,000

who served during World War II.

- Martin immediately reaches
out to British authorities

to report his find.

- But this is in 1982

and the British are fighting
a war against the Argentinians

down in the Falklands,

so they have more pressing
needs at this time.

- [Narrator] It's not until
2012 that Canadian researchers

are finally able to
crack the secret code

this pigeon was
attempting to deliver.

- According to them,

it was sent in 1944 by a
sergeant, William Stott.

He's a paratrooper, dropped
into Normandy before D-Day.

- What they think the
message actually says

is revealing German
positions there in Normandy

prior to the D-Day assault.

- The pigeon was probably
on route to Bletchley Park.

It's just a few miles
from Martin's house

and reportedly had
a pigeon roost,

which would be home base

for the Pigeon Service
in the United Kingdom.

- [Narrator] So how did
this secret pigeon agent

wind up in a chimney?

- What they surmised is the
pigeon was either shot or ill

and he finds his way
into Martin's chimney

and that's where he
ultimately passes,

dying in the line of duty.

- Over the years,

the Dickin Medal, Britain's
highest award for animal valor,

was awarded to 32 war pigeons.

They even have a war
memorial in London

that includes pigeons,

and that memorial has the
greatest epitaph I've ever seen,

and it says, simply,
"They had no choice."

- We've all stumbled across

an accidental find
right in front of us,

but imagine making an
incredible discovery

250 miles above the Earth.

[mysterious music]

- Mike Hopkins is an
American astronaut

on the International
Space Station,

and from that vantage point,

he's got this spectacular
view of the Earth.

- Suddenly, his
crystal clear view

is obscured by what looks
like an ominous cloud

forming in the Earth's
atmosphere over Russia.

So Hopkins grabs his camera
and takes a photo of it,

then posts it on social media.

- [Narrator] The
internet quickly erupts

as people everywhere
try to figure out

what the strange cloud is.

- The place where
the cloud showed up

was an area known
as Kapustin Yar.

- This top secret military
base is built in the 1940s.

It's 600 miles south of Moscow

and its construction is
done under Soviet decree,

under the rule of Joseph Stalin.

Kapustin Yar becomes the
research and development center

for Soviet technology
during the Cold War.

There are even nuclear
tests at the site.

- [Narrator] But Kapustin
Yar may be hiding

more than Russian
military secrets.

Some say it's the site of
mysterious UFO activity in 1948.

- As the story goes,
MIG pilots observe

a cigar-shaped
unidentified flying object

and engage it in a dog fight,

and the result is that
both aircraft go down.

The wreckage is then
taken to Kapustin Yar.

- Interestingly enough, it's
been called Russia's Area 51

and not without good reason.

- [Narrator] People wonder,
could Mike Hopkins' photo

be evidence of another
UFO over Kapustin Yar?

- Turns out Mike Hopkins
wasn't the only one

to snap a picture of
this strange cloud.

Another astronaut,
Italian Luca Parmitano,

also took one and he
posted a day later.

From his angle, it seems to
show a vapor trail of a missile.

- [Narrator] As these
photos go viral,

an independent website based
in Geneva takes notice.

- The Swiss track
Russian nuclear activity,

so they keep a close
eye on Kapustin Yar,

and they discover
that on that day,

the Russians carried out
a confidential test launch

of a Topol SS-25 missile.

[missile booms]

- [Narrator] As global
curiosity grows,

the Russians finally
release a statement.

They say the rocket was used

to test new combat
payloads for missiles.

- Hopkins didn't
capture alien activity,

but what he did document was
a top secret missile launch

from one of the most
top secret facilities

in all of the
Russian Federation.

- The Russians aren't the only
ones with nuclear secrets.

Consider what an earthquake
reveals in China.

- In May 2008,

[earthquake booming]

a 7.9 magnitude earthquake

rocks the Sichuan area of China.

The earthquake
kills 90,000 people

and captures the
attention of the world.

- Rescue crews
aren't the only ones

racing to the disaster site,

so are radiation experts.

- And so when photographs
show concrete tunnels

cutting through the
collapsed mountainside,

it raises a few questions.

- [Narrator] What are Chinese
radiation experts investigating

near strange, manmade tunnels?

A Georgetown professor
named Philip Karber

wants to find out.

- He's not just a professor,

he's a former Pentagon official

and he works as a
security consultant

for government agencies
and private corporations.

- He's determined
to get to the bottom

of what's happening below
the surface in China,

so he turns to his
Georgetown students.

- [Narrator] Over the
next three years,

Karber and his team dig deeper,

researching the tunnels and
the Chinese nuclear program.

- Karber knows
that, historically,

first under Mao in
the nineteen sixties

and then under Deng
Xiaoping in the 1980s,

the Chinese tried to leverage

their relatively small
nuclear missile force

by hiding it underground
and in tunnels.

- [Narrator] Could these
photos be evidence

that Chinese are expanding
their nuclear capabilities?

Karber and his students
are eager to find out,

but investigating
underground tunnels

from 7,500 miles
away is challenging.

- Karber and his students
can't just go to China

and look for these tunnels,

so they have to get
creative in their tactics

and where they can
find the information.

- Karber turns his home

basically into a poor man's
version of the Pentagon.

He purchases computers
and flat screen monitors

and basically turns his house
into a research facility.

His basement doubles
as sleeping quarters

for these students who are
burning the midnight oil.

- Karber returns to
open source material,

looking at basically commercial
satellite image of China

and television reports

to try to pick out
any details they can

that might be relevant.

- Karber and his team
are scrutinizing images

as closely as possible.

They identify a vehicle
similar to a missile train.

They also see what
they think might be

masked passenger cars,

known to transport
long range missiles.

- [Narrator] Putting
the clues together,

Karber and his students suspect

that these mountains are used
to hide an alarming secret.

- Karber's team thinks that the
Chinese have 3,000 warheads.

That's like more than 10
times the normal estimates.

That puts them in a league
with the United States.

Suddenly thanks to
Karber's research,

China has to be
reassessed as a threat.

- [Narrator] The report from
Karber and his students

rocks Washington.

- Word of the findings spreads

through the halls of
power in the Pentagon

and eventually there are calls

for a congressional
investigation.

This ignites heated debate

amongst intelligence
and security experts.

- [Narrator] For years,
many officials remain

skeptical of Karber's report,

but over a decade later,

the US government seems
to support his findings.

- In 2023, the Pentagon reports

that China has thousands of
these underground facilities

and are building
more every year.

They're a key element
of China's defense

and they enable them to
hide military equipment

that they don't want to
be seen by prying eyes.

And they're all revealed

with the help of a
natural disaster.

- Sometimes a big discovery
is just a phone call away.

Take one call
during the Cold War

that turned up an
incredible secret.

[thunder booms]

- It's April 22nd, 1956,

and a team of workers
are looking for

an underground phone
cable in East Berlin.

- It's been pouring
rain for days,

the ground is
completely saturated,

and the phone lines
have gone down.

- It's thought that this may be

because of a short and a
wire that's underground,

and so a team of
workers are dispatched

to start digging
for the faulty wire.

- So it's two in the morning

and these guys are out
there with their shovels,

and they're digging
and they're digging,

and they're hoping
to find cables

so they can fix the problem,

but they find something else.

[pickaxe clinks]

- [Narrator] They hit concrete
that isn't supposed to be there.

- The workers can't
help but be curious,

so they crack open a small
hole and they look inside.

- To their amazement, they
found an underground room

full of high tech equipment.

The workers notify
their superiors

and when they investigate,
they find that there's a tunnel

connecting communist East Berlin

to American, British and
French controlled West Berlin.

- [Narrator] What the
men have discovered

is a joint CIA and British
Intelligence project

called Operation Gold.

- Operation Gold began
about two years earlier

when American and British
forces wanted to figure out

a way to eavesdrop
on conversations

that were happening
in East Berlin.

The British and the Americans
build this large warehouse

on their side of Berlin,

but to use the language of
the intelligence community,

it's a cardboard
cutout; it's a cover.

This warehouse was
actually built to hide

the entrance of a secret tunnel

that granted them access

to those East German
and Soviet cables.

- This tunnel is a
quarter mile long

and it's filled with the latest
communications technology.

What they're able to do is
end up in communist territory

just below telegraph
and telephone wires,

which allows the Allies

to tap into East
German communications.

- By the time that the
covert plan is uncovered,

the CIA has already amassed

40,000 hours of
recorded conversations

and they have compiled
1,750 intelligence reports

based on those tapes.

- This is a windfall of
Soviet secrets for the West,

covers everything
from group movements,

to the names and
identities of key players

in the atomic and
intelligence programs,

to the location of military
bases throughout Europe.

- [Narrator] It all comes
to a crashing halt

when these workers
find the tunnel

and the Soviets waste no time

turning the discovery
into a propaganda bonanza.

- So in finding this,

the Soviet Union
can frame themselves

as victims of
American espionage.

They bring the press in and
they show them this tunnel,

and they show them all the
communication equipment

that the Americans
have put in here

to eavesdrop on
Soviet communications.

And this story makes
headlines around the globe.

- [Narrator] Five years later,

this story takes
an unexpected turn.

- In 1961, the British arrest

one of their own intelligence
agents, George Blake.

As it turns out, he
was a double agent

who was feeding
intelligence information

to the Soviets for years.

- While in custody, Blake
confesses to having shared

secrets about Operation
Gold with the Soviets

years before the
tunnel was built.

- [Narrator] So if the Soviets
knew about the tunnel,

why didn't they say
something sooner?

- The Soviets realized that if

they were to expose the tunnel,

they would lose their
double agent Blake

because the leak
would immediately

be traced back to him.

- He's providing the
Communists and the Soviet Union

a treasure trove of classified
and top secret information.

And so if they
watch what they say,

they're not gonna tip their hand

because they know that the
Americans are listening.

- [Narrator] But in 1956,

the Soviets decide to use
their find as leverage.

- Now, Khrushchev,

who's premier of the
Soviet Union at this time,

has plans to visit the West

and he has this information
in his back pocket,

and he plans to use it

to make a big splash
in the Western press.

- So the Soviets come up with
this story about the bad cable

to justify sending out a team

to begin digging and thereby
discover the secret tunnel.

This cover story doesn't just
preserve Blake's identity,

it also gives Khrushchev
exactly what he wanted,

something to hold
over the West's head.

- [Narrator] In other words,
this accidental find

is not so accidental after all.

- There never was any issue
with the telephone wires.

The Soviets sent these
unsuspecting workers out

knowing full well what it
was that they would find.

- The discovery was
just a cover story

in this Cold War chess match

that pitted the East
against the West.

- Back before smartphones, we
had to hand write directions

to get to where we wanted to go.

That leads one man to
some place surprising.

- Journalist Garrett
Graff is at his desk

and he's starting his day,

but then something
strange happens.

One of his coworkers puts

a US intelligence agency
badge on his desk.

- The colleague had
found the badge

lying in a parking garage

and he thinks that Graff,

since he knows people
in that sphere,

might be able to return
it to his rightful owner.

- Graff examines the badge

and notices on the
back, the words,

"long-term evacuation
directions"

followed by driving directions.

He's instantly intrigued,

not so much by who
the badge belongs to,

but where these
directions might lead.

- Graff ends up driving
130 miles to West Virginia,

but the directions don't
lead him to a military base

or a government facility,

but instead to the
side of a mountain.

There's a chain link fence and
behind that, concrete doors.

It's like something straight
out of the movie "War Games."

- What Graff realizes is

the directions that were
in the back of this badge

has taken him to a
top secret US bunker.

- [Narrator] Graff knows
that government bunkers

were built in the 1950s and '60s

to protect important
officials during the Cold War.

But strangely, this bunker
appears to be much newer.

- Eager to learn more,

Graff buries himself in
recently declassified documents,

conducts interviews with people

who have been inside
these bunkers,

and visits military
facilities around the country.

- Eventually, he discovers

the kind of crown jewel
of those shelters,

a base known as Raven Rock.

- Constructed in the 1950s,

Raven Rock is nestled
in the mountains

of Pennsylvania's
southern border.

It's referred to as the
underground Pentagon

because in the event
of a nuclear attack,

the Pentagon would
transfer to Raven Rock.

- These continuity
of operations plans

do involve taking senior
US government officials

out of Washington

and taking them to
classified areas

where they would
continue to ensure that

the process of government of
the United States continues.

I'm very confident
that this is true

because back when I was
secretary of the Air Force,

I was one of those people.

- This is an entire city

entombed underneath a
quarter mile of granite.

So it runs 24/7,
365 days a year.

It has police and
fire departments,

it has a chapel, a
dentist, a cafeteria,

it's a complete city.

- When it opens, it's about
the size of a city block

and it can house up to 1,400
people for a full month.

- [Narrator] By the start
of the 21st century,

these bunkers and plans to
survive a nuclear attack

seem to be nothing more
than Cold War leftovers,

until September 11th, 2001.

- The terrorist attacks

put the safety of
government officials

back in the spotlight.

- Graff discovered that in
the aftermath of the attacks,

important government officials,

supposedly including Vice
President Dick Cheney,

were taken there for safety.

- Although I am not at liberty

to discuss classified
information,

I can assure you that
the United States has

a very robust plan for
continuity of operations.

- And what Graff finds
out is that Raven Rock

undergoes a number of
significant renovations.

In 2001, the complex
included 59 buildings.

- By 2013, the facility
expands to 66 buildings.

So in the event of an emergency,

it can serve as a safe house
for over 3,000 people.

- Who would've thought
that something as simple

as a lost government ID badge

would pull back the curtain
on some of America's

most closely guarded
secret spaces?

[mysterious music]

- You don't have to be a spy

to uncover a big
military secret,

but what you do discover
could be a game changer.

I'm Danny Trejo,

thanks for watching
Mysteries Unearthed.