The Cold War produced no shortage of secrets, but on the seventh episode of The Secret Squirrel Files, we dive into the unexplained disappearance of a promising West Point cadet and a classified plan to build an underground nuclear missile city beneath Greenland’s ice.
The first story centers on Richard Cox, the only West Point cadet known to have vanished without a trace. A week after an unsettling encounter with a mysterious former Army acquaintance known only as “George,” Richard Cox signed out of West Point to meet him once more. He never returned. He told classmates he would return later that evening—but he never did. Despite extensive searches involving the Army and FBI, investigators found no body, no crime scene, and no definitive evidence explaining what happened. Over the decades, theories have ranged from murder and voluntary disappearance to recruitment into covert intelligence operations or even Soviet involvement, but none have ever been substantiated.
The episode’s second story explores Project Iceworm, one of the most ambitious military concepts ever proposed. During the late 1950s, the U.S. Army secretly envisioned building an underground network capable of housing hundreds of mobile nuclear missiles beneath Greenland’s ice sheet. Camp Century, publicly presented as a scientific research station, served as the project’s testing ground. Engineers successfully built an underground city complete with living quarters, laboratories, and a portable nuclear reactor. However, they underestimated one critical factor: glaciers move. As shifting ice twisted tunnels and warped infrastructure, the project became impossible to sustain and was quietly abandoned.
Although these stories differ dramatically, both capture the uncertainty that defined the Cold War. One asks what happened to a man who seemingly disappeared into history, while the other reveals just how far governments were willing to go to gain a strategic advantage. Decades later, both remain enduring reminders that some of history’s biggest secrets never receive definitive answers.
