Has the Navy Been Tunneling Under Washington Since 2001? by Charles Packer

Tourist's view

Commuter's view

By now, this activity is overdue for some attention because it should have ended by 2009, at least according to the Post. Its reporter was able to extract from a Navy spokesman the expected duration of the activity: about four years.

As a Washington resident and newly retired, I've had enough time to hang around the site on weekdays to record patterns of activity. On Sundays I've clambered up the railroad embankment next to the compound to photograph recent construction. I've also compiled aerial views from Google Earth online archives.

These are my conclusions about the project:

Its purpose is to build a tunnel between the White House and the Pentagon so that they can be connected with state-of-the-art fiber optic cable for secure, high-bandwidth communications.

It actually began in 2001 across the Potomac River on the grounds of the Pentagon.

It's probably not classified, but the government is mum about it for the same reasons it won't comment yet on the new underground command center at the White House.

It may actually be an unsung (for now) marvel of civil engineering.

Front door

Click here for link to interactive map

































A sequence of images from the Google Earth archives shows that in April 2004 the site was under construction. By the end of February 2005 it had been completed and would remain substantially unchanged until 2013. During all this time, then, what's been going on there? The 2009 visitor cited earlier concluded that it was tunneling of some sort. He concluded that the excavation was being done from within the large, hangar-like building and that the tailings were being trucked away from the site altogether.

Smoking gun?

The site is located midway between the White House and the Pentagon. Its centrality was mentioned in the Post article. In 2010-2011 a new underground room was under construction in a corner of the front lawn of the White House. In an era when the commander-in-chief can, in principle, direct a war remotely and in real-time, the need for high-bandwidth communications is obvious. And in an era when, as we have learned recently, the government can secretly tap into communication networks worldwide, it seems plausible that national security might dictate that that same government might want to have its own key locations connected by its very own wires.

Drain pipes?

A tunnel of any kind in this area would be below the water table. It would also have to be bored through loose sediments, since bedrock is far below the surface. Water would have to be pumped continuously from the bore and conveyed to where it would be practical to dispose of it. These pipes, then, are further evidence that tunneling is, or has been, under way.

At this writing, a concrete structure is being built up in the excavation and has reached above the level of the pipes. Unfortunately I missed being there to observe what happened when it approached the level of the pipes, so I don't know whether they were encased in concrete or removed and replaced by concrete channels.

Phase 1?

Footnotes

Last modified: December 29, 2013



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