We did a drive-by this afternoon of the National Reconnaissance Office HQ in Chantilly, VA, to see what corporations who operate its technology were in the neighborhood. Across the street was Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and a gaggle of same-faced untitled buildings. Down Conference Dr was the FBI's CALEA Implementation Office in a NYNEX marked structure next to the building under consideration for Homeland Security HQ if the Naval Station in NW Washington proves undesirably downclass.
NRO is a robin's egg blue collection of spanking new buildings, and nowhere in the neighborhood are any antennas and aerials and the usual detritus of high tech snooping like the NRO has at Buckley and Moffett AFBs in California. And only NRO had guardhouses, barbed fences, sensors galore and no tresspassing signs. At its back about ten yards from a busy boulevard there were a few empty wooden shacks, looking as if the fiercly-protected front was only for photo psyops. Like NYNEX runs the CALEA op, Lockheed Martin and Boeing reportedly run the vast antenna farms in California and world-wide, with tens of thousands of workers, all presumably pig-shit happy about gearing up the market for the war on terrorism, once called the government dole when dole meant starvation riot avoidance not swell townhouses, long lunches, fancy SUVs and mirrored facades. It's creepy to go by these money pits when there's nobody around. Curving boulevards, lush landscape, chain hotels for industry displays, mucho space and clean air far from Tim's welfare terrorists in DC. Sure, the whole shebang is under a Dulles flight path, so there's hope for evolution in action. It's a fair assumption that NSA leaked its UN bugging memo to advertise brazen biz op to the vendors who sell it equipment, software and out-sourcing. It's a fair assumption that suppliers of the Echelon four are pissed about being cut out of the SIGINT gold rush by piggish US manufacturers, and may have snagged the NSA memo as it passed through a contract hub or packet forwarder. Lockheed is said to run the classified internets and to enhance profits out-sources in foreign lands. Happily, greedy HQs always fuck the field offices, and field operatives retaliate against chickenshit HQ. If you think you're protected against venality by the constitution and benevolent caretakers, you need to eyeball your 1040 and the other side of the tracks, ie, dont watch Iraq and North Korea. Best, visit the greater DC area and skip the yokel monuments serving as mini-me WTCs.
