Ted Gup (born September 14, 1950) is the Eugene Lang Visiting Professor on Issues of Social Change at Swarthmore College. An author, journalist and professor, he is known for his work on government secrecy, free speech and journalistic ethics. He is the author of three books, includingThe Book of Honor: Covert Lives and Classified Deaths at the CIA, which told the stories of previously unnamedCIA officers killed in the line of duty. His work has appeared in Slate, The Guardian, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Smithsonian, The New York Times, The Nation, NPR, GQ, and numerous other venues.
Gup has been a prolific writer regardingdoomsday scenarios and facilities to provide forcontinuity of government and the preservation of important assets of civilization,[1] including theMount Weather facility,[2] as well as intelligence issues.
In the 1992Washington Post Magazine article "The Ultimate Congressional Hideaway,"[3] Gup was the first to reveal publicly[4] the existence ofProject Greek Island, a large underground bunker atWest Virginia's famedGreenbrier Resort to house theCongress of the United States in case of a nuclear attack onWashington, D.C., a revelation still considered controversial two decades after its publication.[5] Those opposed to the revelation note that the exposure rendered the $14,000,000 ($123,382,792 by current standards) taxpayer-funded bunker useless and led to its decommissioning. Gup defended the story in a 2009 interview with Cleveland'sPlain Dealer, arguing that the Greenbrier bunker was obsolete in 1992. "We sat on the story for a couple of months making sure it wouldn't harm national security," Gup said. "The bunker mentality that preserved that place was itself a threat to national security. It's exactly why you want an active press."[5]
For his book,Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life, published byDoubleday he received the 2007 Orwell Award. In this book he contended that the political culture was defined by a misguided desire for secrecy and was undermining the transparency of democratic institutions.
