US Building $100-Million Underground Bunker at Secret Israeli Missile Base

antiwar.com
December 3, 2012

Walter Pincus reported in The Washington Post a few days ago that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has put out a request for proposals, seeking contractors with top-secret clearances to develop a $100-million underground military facility for the Israeli army. Here’s the project description:
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to supervise construction of a five-story underground facility for an Israel Defense Forces complex, oddly named “Site 911,” at an Israeli Air Force base near Tel Aviv.
Expected to take more than two years to build, at a cost of up to $100 million, the facility is to have classrooms on Level 1, an auditorium on Level 3, a laboratory, shock-resistant doors, protection from nonionizing radiation and very tight security. Clearances will be required for all construction workers, guards will be at the fence and barriers will separate it from the rest of the base.

The article also notes that in the past the Corps has built facilities for Israel’s nuclear missiles. So it should come as no surprise that a highly placed Israeli source tells me that the site for this project is the top-secret Israeli missile base Sdot Micha, located near Beit Shemesh (about 15 miles from Jerusalem). That’s where the country’s ICBM (nuclear-armed Jerichos) fleet is housed. The site is so hush-hush that a 2010 article about it in Yediot had passages censored from it that came directly from the widely accessible Global Security website. Censors are often not known for subtlety or even common sense.

The U.S.-built underground site is to be nuclear-hardened so that it can withstand a WMD attack from an Israeli enemy. This would allow Israel’s missile command-and-control system to continue operating despite a potential massive and devastating attack. According to this source, the IDF already has a nuke-proof command center under the Kirya, its Tel Aviv headquarters.
Since we know that Israel and the U.S. both spy on each other, I find it extraordinary that Israel would trust the U.S. to build one of its most sensitive military facilities. In fact, I know personally that the FBI bugged the Washington, D.C. Israeli embassy over a period of years. The Mossad has for decades operated here. Why doesn’t Israel fear the U.S. would do the same with these facilities?
One answer may be that the project is financed under the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program, meaning our government is financing the project gratis to the Israeli taxpayer. For Israel, economy trumps self-reliance.
One has to ask: which enemy is Israel defending against in building this complex? Since the project will take two years to complete, that would be around the time a number of analysts believe that Iran could have nuclear capability should it choose to create a weapon.

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http://theintelhub.com/2012/12/03/us-building-100-million-underground-bunker-at-secret-israeli-missile-base/