In suburbs across the nation, the intelligence
community goes about its anonymous business. Its work isn’t seen, but its
impact is surely felt.
The brick warehouse is not just a warehouse.
Drive through the gate and around back, and there, hidden away, is someone's
personal security detail: a fleet of black SUVs that have been armored up to
withstand explosions and gunfire.
Along the main street, the signs in the median
aren't advertising homes for sale; they're inviting employees with top-secret
security clearances to a job fair at Cafe Joe, which is anything but a
typical lunch spot.
The new gunmetal-colored office building is
really a kind of hotel where businesses can rent eavesdrop-proof rooms.
Even the manhole cover between two low-slung
buildings is not just a manhole cover. Surrounded by concrete cylinders, it
is an access point to a government cable. "TS/SCI," whispers an
official, the abbreviations for "top secret" and "sensitive
compartmented information" - and that means few people are allowed to
know what information the cable transmits.
All of these places exist just outside
Washington in what amounts to the capital of an alternative geography of the
United States, one defined by the concentration of top-secret government
organizations and the companies that do work for them. This Fort Meade
cluster is the largest of a dozen such clusters across the United States that
are the nerve centers of Top Secret America and its 854,000 workers.
Other locations include Dulles-Chantilly,
Denver-Aurora and Tampa. All of them are under-the-radar versions of
traditional military towns: economically dependent on the federal budget and
culturally defined by their unique work.
The difference, of course, is that the
military is not a secret culture. In the clusters of Top Secret America, a
company lanyard attached to a digital smart card is often the only clue to a
job location. Work is not discussed. Neither are deployments. Debate about
the role of intelligence in protecting the country occurs only when something
goes wrong and the government investigates, or when an unauthorized
disclosure of classified information turns into news.
The existence of these clusters is so little
known that most people don't realize when they're nearing the epicenter of
Fort Meade's, even when the GPS on their car dashboard suddenly begins giving
incorrect directions, trapping the driver in a series of U-turns, because the
government is jamming all nearby signals.
Once this happens, it means that ground zero -
the National Security Agency - is close by. But it's not easy to tell where.
Trees, walls and a sloping landscape obscure the NSA's presence from most
vantage points, and concrete barriers, fortified guard posts and warning
signs stop those without authorization from entering the grounds of the
largest intelligence agency in the United States.
Beyond all those obstacles loom huge buildings
with row after row of opaque, blast-resistant windows, and behind those are
an estimated 30,000 people, many of them reading, listening to and analyzing
an endless flood of intercepted conversations 24 hours a day, seven days a
week.
From the road, it's impossible to tell how
large the NSA has become, even though its buildings occupy 6.3 million square
feet - about the size of the Pentagon - and are surrounded by 112 acres of
parking spaces. As massive as that might seem, documents indicate that the
NSA is only going to get bigger: 10,000 more workers over the next 15 years;
$2 billion to pay for just the first phase of expansion; an overall increase
in size that will bring its building space throughout the Fort Meade cluster
to nearly 14 million square feet.
The NSA headquarters sits on the Fort Meade
Army base, which hosts 80 government tenants in all, including several large
intelligence organizations.
Together, they inject $10 billion from
paychecks and contracts into the region's economy every year - a figure that
helps explain the rest of the Fort Meade cluster, which fans out about 10
miles in every direction.
----
Just beyond the NSA perimeter, the companies
that thrive off the agency and other nearby intelligence organizations begin.
In some parts of the cluster, they occupy entire neighborhoods. In others,
they make up mile-long business parks connected to the NSA campus by a
private roadway guarded by forbidding yellow "Warning" signs.
The largest of these is the National Business
Park - 285 tucked-away acres of wide, angular glass towers that go on for
blocks. The occupants of these buildings are contractors, and in their more
publicly known locations, they purposely understate their presence. But in
the National Business Park, a place where only other contractors would have
reason to go, their office signs are huge, glowing at night in bright red,
yellow and blue: Booz Allen Hamilton, L-3 Communications, CSC, Northrop
Grumman, General Dynamics, SAIC.
More than 250 companies - 13 percent of all the
firms in Top Secret America - have a presence in the Fort Meade cluster. Some
have multiple offices, such as Northrop Grumman, which has 19, and SAIC,
which has 11. In all, there are 681 locations in the Fort Meade cluster where
businesses conduct top-secret work.
Inside the locations are employees who must
submit to strict, intrusive rules. They take lie-detector tests routinely,
sign nondisclosure forms and file lengthy reports whenever they travel
overseas. They are coached on how to deal with nosy neighbors and curious
friends. Some are trained to assume false identities.
If they drink too much, borrow too much money
or socialize with citizens from certain countries, they can lose their
security clearances, and a clearance is the passport to a job for life at the
NSA and its sister intelligence organizations.
The role of private contractors
As Top Secret America has grown, the
government has become more dependent on contractors with matching security
clearances.
Launch Photo Gallery »
Chances are they excel at math: To do what it
does, the NSA relies on the largest number of mathematicians in the world. It
needs linguists and technology experts, as well as cryptologists, known as
"crippies." Many know themselves as ISTJ, which stands for
"Introverted with Sensing, Thinking and Judging," a basket of
personality traits identified on the Myers-Briggs personality test and
prevalent in the Fort Meade cluster.
The old joke: "How can you tell the
extrovert at NSA? He's the one looking at someone else's shoes."
"These are some of the most brilliant
people in the world," said Ken Ulman, executive of Howard County, one of
six counties in NSA's geographic sphere of influence. "They demand good
schools and a high quality of life."
The schools, indeed, are among the best, and
some are adopting a curriculum this fall that will teach students as young as
10 what kind of lifestyle it takes to get a security clearance and what kind
of behavior would disqualify them.
Outside one school is the jarring sight of
yellow school buses lined up across from a building where personnel from the
"Five Eye" allies - the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia
and New Zealand - share top-secret information about the entire world.
The buses deliver children to neighborhoods that
are among the wealthiest in the country; affluence is another attribute of
Top Secret America. Six of the 10 richest counties in the United States,
according to Census Bureau data, are in these clusters.
Loudoun County, ranked as the wealthiest
county in the country, helps supply the workforce of the nearby National
Reconnaissance Office headquarters, which manages spy satellites. Fairfax
County, the second-wealthiest, is home to the NRO, the CIA and the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence. Arlington County, ranked ninth, hosts
the Pentagon and major intelligence agencies. Montgomery County, ranked 10th,
is home to the National Geospatial-Intellig ence Agency. And Howard County,
ranked third, is home to 8,000 NSA employees.
"If this were a Chrysler plant, we'd be
talking Chrysler in the bowling alley, Chrysler in the council meetings,
Chrysler, Chrysler, Chrysler," said Kent Menser, a Defense Department
employee helping Howard County adjust to the growth of nearby Fort Meade.
"People who are not in the workforce of NSA don't fully appreciate the
impact of it on their lives."
----
The impact of the NSA and other secretive
organizations in this cluster is not just monetary. It shades even the flow
of traffic one particular day as a white van pulls out of a parking lot and
into midday traffic.
That white van is followed by five others just
like it.
Inside each one, two government agents in
training at the secretive Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy are trying
not to get lost as they careen around local roads practicing "discreet
surveillance" - in this case, following a teacher in the role of a spy.
The real job of these agents from the Army, U.S. Customs and other government
agencies is to identify foreign spies and terrorists targeting their
organizations, to locate the spies within and to gather evidence to take
action against them.
But on this day, they are trainees connected
to one another by radios and specially labeled street maps. Some 4,000 federal
and military agents attend counterintelligence classes in the Fort Meade
cluster every year, moving, as these agents are, past unsuspecting residents
going about their business.
The agent riding shotgun in one white van
holds the maps on her lap as she frantically moves yellow stickies around,
trying to keep tabs on the other vans and the suspect, or "rabbit,"
as he is called.
Other agents gun their engines and race 60
mph, trying to keep up with the rabbit while alerting one another to the
presence of local police, who don't know that the vans weaving in and out of
traffic are driven by federal agents.
Suddenly, the rabbit moves a full block ahead
of the closest van, passes through a yellow light, then drives out of sight
as the agents get stuck at a red light.
Green light.
"Go!" an agent yells in vain through
the windshield as the light changes an of the NSA's
workforce is active-du "Move! Move! Move!"
"We lost him," her partner groans as
they do their best to catch up.
Finally, the agents end their surveillance on
foot at a Borders bookstore in Columbia where the rabbit has reappeared. Six
men in polo shirts and various shades of khaki pants scan the magazine racks
and slowly walk the aisles.
Their instructor cringes. "The hardest
part is the demeanor," he confides, watching as the agents follow the
rabbit in the store, filled with women in shifts and children in flip-flops.
"Some of them just can't relax enough to get the demeanor right. . . .
They should be acting like they're browsing, but they are looking over the
top of a book and never move."
Throughout the cluster are examples of how the
hidden world and the public one intersect. A Quiznos sandwich shop in the
cluster has the familiarity of any other restaurant in the national chain,
except for the line that begins forming at 11 a.m. Those waiting wear the
Oakley sunglasses favored by people who have worked in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Their shoes are boots, the color of desert sand. Forty percent of the NSA's
workforce is active-duty military, and this Quiznos is not far away from one
of their work sites.
Bill Brown, left, and Jerome James tend to
James's property in suburban Maryland, which abuts a secure building. (Photo
by Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post) | Launch Photo Gallery »
In another part of the cluster, Jerome James,
one of its residents, is talking about the building that has sprung up just
beyond his back yard. "It used to be all farmland, then they just
started digging one day," he says. "I don't know what they do up
there, but it doesn't bother me. I don't worry about it."
The building, sealed off behind fencing and
Jersey barriers, is larger than a football field. It has no identifying sign.
It does have an address, but Google Maps doesn't recognize it. Type it in,
and another address is displayed, every time. "6700," it says.
No street name.
Just 6700.
----
Inside such a building might be Justin Walsh,
who spends hours each day on a ladder, peering into the false ceilings of the
largest companies in Top Secret America. Walsh is a Defense Department
industrial security specialist, and every cluster has a version of him,
whether it's Fort Meade; or the underground maze of buildings at Crystal City
in Arlington, near the Pentagon; or the high-tech business parks around the
National Aerospace Intelligence Center in Dayton, Ohio.
When he's not on his ladder, Walsh is
tinkering with a copy machine to make sure it cannot reproduce the secrets
stored in its memory. He's testing the degausser, a giant magnet that erases
data from classified hard drives. He's dissecting the alarm system, its
fiber-optic cable and the encryption it uses to send signals to the control
room.
The government regulates everything in Top
Secret America: the gauge of steel in a fence, the grade of paper bag to haul
away classified documents, the thickness of walls and the height of raised
soundproof floors.
In the Washington area, there are 4,000
corporate offices that handle classified information, 25 percent more than
last year, according to Walsh's supervisor, and on any given day Walsh's team
has 220 buildings in its inspection pipeline. All existing buildings have
things that need to be checked, and the new buildings have to be gone over
from top to bottom before the NSA will allow their occupants to even connect
to the agency via telephone.
Soon, there will be one more in the Fort Meade
cluster: a new, four-story building, going up near a quiet gated community of
upscale townhouses, that its builder boasts can withstand a car bomb. Dennis
Lane says his engineers have drilled more bolts into each steel beam than is
the norm to make the structure less likely to buckle were the unthinkable to
happen.
Lane, senior vice president of Ryan Commercial
real estate, has become something of a snoop himself when it comes to the
NSA. At 55, he has lived and worked in its shadow all his life and has
schooled himself on its growing presence in his community. He collects
business intelligence using his own network of informants, executives like
himself hoping to making a killing off an organization many of his neighbors
don't know a thing about.
He notices when the NSA or a different
secretive government organization leases another building, hires more
contractors and expands its outreach to the local business community. He's
been following construction projects, job migrations, corporate moves. He
knows that local planners are estimating that 10,000 more jobs will come with
an expanded NSA and an additional 52,000 from other intelligence units moving
to the Fort Meade post.
Lane was up on all the gossip months before it
the terrorist attacks has grown into an unwieldy
enterprise spread over 10,000 U.S. locations.
Launch Photo Gallery »
Undercover agents come in :p>
Lane knows this because he has witnessed the
post-9/11 growth of the NSA, which now ingests 1.7 billion pieces of
intercepted communications every 24 hours: e-mails, bulletin board postings,
instant messages, IP addresses, phone numbers, telephone calls and cellphone
conversations.
In her own way, Jeani Burns has witnessed
this, too.
Burns, a businesswoman in the Fort Meade
cluster, is having a drink one night after work and gesturing toward some men
standing in another part of the bar.
"I can spot them," she says. The
suit. The haircut. The demeanor. "They have a haunted look, like they're
afraid someone is going to ask them something about themselves."
An alternative geography
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the top-secret world
created to respond to the terrorist attacks has grown into an unwieldy
enterprise spread over 10,000 U.S. locations.
Launch Photo Gallery »
Undercover agents come in here, too, she
whispers, to watch the same people, "to make sure no one is saying too
much."
Burns would know - she's been living with one
of those secretive men for 20 years. He used to work at the NSA. Now he's one
of its contractors. He's been to war. She doesn't know where. He does
something important. She doesn't know what.
She says she fell for him two decades ago and
has had a life of adjustments ever since. When they go out with other people,
she says, she calls ahead with cautions: "Don't ask him stuffinside the NSA, the mathematicians, the
linguists, the techies and the crippies are flowing in and out. The ones
leaving descend in elevators to the first floor. Each is carrying a plastic
bar-coded box. Inside is a door key that rattles as they walk. To those who
work here, it's the sound of a shift change.
As employees just starting their shifts push
the turnstiles forward, those who are leaving push their identity badges into
the mouth of the key machine. A door opens. They drop their key box in, then
go out through the turnstiles. They drive out slowly through the barriers and
gates protecting the NSA, passing a steady stream of cars headed in. It's
almost ional Business Park, office lights
remain on here and there. The 140-room Marriott Courtyard is sold out, as
usual, with guests such as the man checking in who says only that he's
"with the military."
Anti-Deception Technologies
From avatars and lasers to thermal cameras and
fidget meters, this multimedia gallery takes a look at some of the latest
technologies being developed by the government and private companies to
thwart terrorists. Launch Gallery »
And inside the NSA, the mathematicians, the
linguists, the techies and the crippies are flowing in and out. The ones
leaving descend in elevators to the first floor. Each is carrying a plastic
bar-coded box. Inside is a door key that rattles as they walk. To those who
work here, it's the sound of a shift change.
As employees just starting their shifts push
the turnstiles forward, those who are leaving push their identity badges into
the mouth of the key machine. A door opens. They drop their key box in, then
go out through the turnstiles. They drive out slowly through the barriers and
gates protecting the NSA, passing a steady stream of cars headed in. It's
almost midnight in the Fort Meade cluster, the capital of Top Secret America,
a sleepless place growing larger every day.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to
this story.
Correction: Jerome James was initially named
incorrectly in this story as Jerome Jones
http://www.freedomfightersforamerica.com/top_secret_america
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