The Black World Has Black Fiber; Cut It and Black SUVs Show Up Within Minutes

May 31st, 2009

You have to read to the end of the article to find out that the incident happened in 2000.

Via: Washington Post:

This part happens all the time: A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of Tysons Corner a few years ago hit a fiber optic cable no one knew was there.

This part doesn’t: Within moments, three black sport-utility vehicles drove up, a half-dozen men in suits jumped out and one said, “You just hit our line.”

Whose line, you may ask? The guys in suits didn’t say, recalled Aaron Georgelas, whose company, the Georgelas Group, was developing the Greensboro Corporate Center on Spring Hill Road. But Georgelas assumed that he was dealing with the federal government and that the cable in question was “black” wire — a secure communications line used for some of the nation’s most secretive intelligence-gathering operations.

“The construction manager was shocked,” Georgelas recalled. “He had never seen a line get cut and people show up within seconds. Usually you’ve got to figure out whose line it is. To garner that kind of response that quickly was amazing.”

Black wire is one of the looming perils of the massive construction that has come to Tysons, where miles and miles of secure lines are thought to serve such nearby agencies as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Counterterrorism Center and, a few miles away in McLean, the Central Intelligence Agency. After decades spent cutting through red tape to begin work on a Metrorail extension and the widening of the Capital Beltway, crews are now stirring up tons of dirt where the black lines are located.

“Yeah, we heard about the black SUVs,” said Paul Goguen, the engineer in charge of relocating electric, gas, water, sewer, cable, telephone and other communications lines to make way for Metro through Tysons. “We were warned that if they were hit, the company responsible would show up before you even had a chance to make a phone call.”

So far, so good, Goguen added. But the peril remains for a project that will spend $150 million moving more than 75 miles of conduit along the three-mile stretch of routes 123 and 7 that run through Tysons.

Georgelas, the developer whose company was overseeing the work in 2000 when the Chevrolet Suburbans drove up to the Greensboro Corporate Center, said he figured that the government was involved when an AT&T crew arrived the same day to fix the line, rather than waiting days. His opinion didn’t change when AT&T tried to bill his company for the work but immediately backed down when his company balked.

“These lines are not cheap to move,” Georgelas said. “They said, ‘You owe us $300,000.’ We said, ‘Are you nuts?’ ”

The charges just disappeared.

2 Responses to “The Black World Has Black Fiber; Cut It and Black SUVs Show Up Within Minutes”

  1. JWSmythe says:

    That’s not very surprising. The hard part would be to figure out which agency got pissed off.

    A few highlights of a tour of the area would be…

    NSA, CIA, FBI, ACOE (Army Corps of Engineers), and a bunch of DOD contractors share a building at 12020 Sunset Hills Rd, Reston VA.

    The NCTC (National Counterterrorism Center) is at 1500 Tyson Mclean Drive, Tysons Corner, VA.

    Dulles is only a few miles West of Tyson’s corner. For all we know, it could have been a line back to part of the ISL system or a radar station.

    Equinix is at 21715 Filigree Ct Ashburn, VA.

    Equinix has underground cables going to anyone who wants a connection. There are also several microwave antennas providing links in the direction of Tysons Corner. It has standard Equinix security. Double man trap. Well, three, if you consider the inner lobby area. Only authorized access permitted. Cameras every 10 feet throughout the entire facility. No cameras. No weapons.

    I liked the “no weapons” clause. I was there, and it was cold. I was wearing a long black coat. Through the bulletproof glass, the guard asked “Are you sure you don’t have any weapons?” I told him I had nothing. He asked again, and I opened my coat to show that I didn’t have shoulder or hip holsters. He asked again, and I took off my jacket and turned around, so he could see I didn’t have a back holster.

    I’ve been in two of the Equinix builings in that complex. Lots of stuff. Lots of stuff with no identifying marks to the ownership. Lots of really really expensive stuff. Is it Verizon, or AT&T, or some rich webhost, or a gov’t agency. No way to tell without a map.

    If you ever go to an Equinix facility, pay careful attention when they guide you through to the space you are authorized for. It’s REAL easy to get lost. They’ll watch you on the cameras carefully, so they know what you aren’t seeing. 🙂 Very rarely will they guide you out. That is, until you get to the mantraps. Pretty much, if you get into something that you weren’t suppose to (say try to get into a 3-letter agency space), you wouldn’t have a prayer of getting out before nice men in black SUV’s were having a very serious talk to you.

    I haven’t been to the other mentioned facilities, so I can’t comment on them. I do know it’s pretty in that area, but there are also plenty of spooky folks (like, the kind that wear suits and drive black SUV’s) 🙂

    I don’t mention the other internet/telecom facilities in the area, because the others I’d seen there are nothing in comparison to the scale (size or security) of Equinix. But, this isn’t an ad for Equinix. If I had to put new equipment up, I’d put it in many other places first. 🙂

  2. pookie says:

    Yeah, that’s where MITRE is, at the corner of Greensboro Dr and Spring Hill Rd.

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