Roscoe Bartlett: “Mr. Speaker, we have here a satellite photograph of a section of the Euro mountains in Russia called Yamantau Mountain.…”

“Mr. Speaker, we have here a satellite photograph of a section of the Euro mountains in Russia called Yamantau Mountain. Here is Yamantau Mountain. Just south of Yamantau Mountain are two cities, two closed cities, by the way; and they house about 60,000 people that do nothing but work on Yamantau Mountain. Now, Yamantau Mountain is the largest, deepest, nuclear secure facility in the world. The Soviets and now the Russians have spent about $6 billion on Yamantau Mountain. We have had two defectors from Yamantau Mountain; and with what they have told us, we know roughly what is down there. It is enormous, about the size of inside our Beltway with railroad tracks running in opposite directions and enormous rooms carved out of the rock. Again, it is the most nuclear secure facility in the world. The Russians will not tell us why they are doing it. They have just ramped up activity there. They have built accoutrements there that they do not have in their other cities, tennis courts and so forth. They cannot pay their military. They cannot afford $200 million for the service module of the space station, but this is important enough to them that they keep pouring millions and millions and millions of dollars into it, $6 billion currently. Its only use is either during or postnuclear war. Now, I ask my colleagues, why would Russia do this?”