16. Eisenhower gave the British Prime Minister a tour of the underground facilities in 1959
When Prime Minister Harold MacMillan visited Camp David with President Eisenhower he was given a personal tour of the underground shelter by the president. Impressed, MacMillan confided to his diary, “It holds fifty of the President’s staff in one place and one hundred and fifty Defence (sic) staff in another. The fortress is underneath the innocent-looking huts in which we lived, hewn out of the rock. It cost 10 million dollars”. MacMillan noted that the underground facility was intended to serve as a “Presidential Command Post in the event of atomic war”.
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev visited Camp David later that same year, though his visit did not include a tour of the facility beneath the ground upon which he stood. Instead, several steps were taken to conceal its existence from Khrushchev and the staff which accompanied him. A large deck was constructed over the site (which later was covered by the swimming pool installed by Richard Nixon) and a false water tower was built to hide a communications tower which serviced the underground site. The underground facility was the reason Nixon’s pool was built above ground, and the area around it was terraced to hide the fact from prying eyes.
