Though the agreement is now out in the open, the exact operations of Diego Garcia are still pretty murky. And the Chagossians who inhabited the islands? They were kicked off to make way for the Americans and their secretive facility. And while other nearby nations like Mauritius gained independence from the British Empire, the agreement basically meant that the Chagos Islands are still under the thumb of colonial British powers. agreed to lease the atoll from the British to create a base, but the arrangement was kept strictly secret. The base in question, Diego Garcia, exists in part because of a unique agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom. That atoll, according to CNN, is actually part of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. Now, according to NORAD, Cheyenne Mountain is a backup command and training center, though many wonder if such an extensive and heavily shielded facility is really being allowed to sit more or less dormant in a tumultuous world. It needs to be, given that the base once housed operations for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and other monitoring and defense networks. Though reporters are occasionally invited inside for a limited tour of the facilities, much of what goes on inside Cheyenne Mountain Complex is still shrouded in secrecy. The shielding provided by the granite does much of the work, along with earthquake-resistant architecture inside and plenty of shielding for all of the electronics. The complex is buried deep into the side of the namesake mountain and, with its complex of tunnels and life support systems, provided a pretty attractive bunker in the event of a nearby nuclear attack. According to Wired, the true heyday of Cheyenne Mountain came shortly after its completion in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War. Given the history of the place, it's understandable why so much of the facility's operations have been kept quiet over the years. Now, as Popular Mechanics reports, Fort Detrick is home to a state-of-the-art facility meant to contain all of that potentially deadly research material. The program, which often sounds like science fiction more than fact, remains mysterious today in large part because many of the program documents were destroyed in the 1970s. Politico reports that it was also the central base for the CIA program known as MKUltra, a project in which sometimes unwitting test subjects were given LSD and other mind-altering drugs in an attempt to develop mind-control tactics. The program was retired in 1969 and replaced by a bioweapons defense program, still active today (via PBS). It was, at the time, kept top secret as scientists created bioweapons using agents and pathogens including anthrax, botulism, and tularemia. Army determined that Fort Detrick, a mere 50 miles or so from Washington, D.C., would be the place where the military should begin developing and testing biological weapons. According to Politico, that's when the U.S.

Top secret government facilities