Washtub Gold

Government Gold and Murder on the Last Frontier


“Washtub Gold” is a fictional novel based on ‘Operation Washtub’, an actual Cold War plan which was activated in Alaska in the 1950’s. The goal was the training of selected residents of the Territory of Alaska for intelligence and resistance operations if the Territory were occupied by Russian troops. In 1952, newly commissioned army lieutenant Ben Hunnicutt is diverted from orders to Korea and sent to Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage to work with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, recruiting, training, and supplying these stay-behind-agents. Ben visits prospective agents in small towns and seaports, recruiting and becoming friends with commercial fishermen, bush pilots, homesteaders, and guides. He becomes enamored of Alaska, and vows to someday return and see more of this vast and beautiful Territory.

Fifteen years later, Ben returns to the new state of Alaska as a retired Major. Attempting to locate some of his old friends from Operation Washtub, he finds a suspicious number of them have disappeared or died in odd accidents. The caches of raw gold with which they were provided as payment, and to finance their spying activities, have also vanished. Since project Washtub has long been shut down, he solicits the local office of the FBI to locate former stay-behind-agents so he can investigate further.

He is paired with FBI agent Elise Nichole, one of the very few female agents in the Bureau at that time, and one whose struggle for equality has resulted in a mistrust of men. Ben, a lifelong bachelor, is smitten by Liz, the lovely but unapproachable agent. Their strained relationship varies from luke-warm to cold as they work their way through the puzzles of the case. The sudden and unexpected revelation of the killer’s identity places them both in immediate jeopardy.

The story takes Ben onto Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, through Cooper Landing, Seward and through abandoned World War Two fortifications along Resurrection Bay. The final confrontation involves a trip by Ben and Liz to the odd, isolated town of Whittier, via the Alaska Railroad


About the Author


Don Neal, author of the Ben Hunnicutt novels, was reared in Suffolk and in Surry County, in southern Virginia. He dropped out of the College of William and Mary and enlisted in the Army after the Chinese entered the Korean War in late 1950. His subsequent 28 years of service included nearly the entire Cold War, taking him to Japan, Germany, Korea and Alaska. He has served in the Infantry, Artillery, Armor and Air Defense branches, his last ten years being with the Nike Hercules Air Defense missile units which protected Anchorage and Fairbanks during the Cold War. He first arrived in Alaska in 1968, courtesy of the United States Army, and he and his family have resided in Anchorage for the 50 years since. His hobbies have included military history and the research and study of antique and historical firearms, with an occasional foray into drag racing.

His novels reflect Alaska as a Territory, and then as a new state, before it was transformed by the discovery of oil and the building of the vital trans-Alaska oil pipeline.


Key Words: Alaska, Gold, Air Force, Spy, Government, Russia, FBI, Military, USSR, Soviets, Missiles, Cold War


keywords: Alaska, Cold War, Stay Behind Agents, Kenai, Glacier, Gold, Bush Pilot, Gilliland, Cooper, Whittier