es International Airport. In reading the stories it becomes clear that no one in any elected position of government, including the President of the United States, was aware of this installation’s existence. When President Clinton was briefed on the situation, he directed the very agencies involved (CIA and Department of Defense) to investigate themselves. This implies that there is no longer any elected official in charge of our military industrial complex.

The headline of the first story, appearing on page 23, “Huge Spy Office Sneaks up on Senators,” seems to be making light of the whole affair, as if it were some frat boys playing a prank on a college campus. In the third story the CIA basically says, “It’s no big deal. We already told you. We just didn’t tell you everything.” Sometimes, I can’t help believing that at some point in our past, the military industrial complex became self-aware, like Frankenstein’s monster. It’s alive and it knows it’s the most powerful thing on earth. Why should it have to tell anyone anything?

For decades it was a crime just to utter the name of the agency whose new headquarters were uncovered. Not until 1992 was this ghostly group publicly acknowledged by our government, thereby allowing the American public to finally speak the shadowy syllables: “National Reconnaissance Office.” In a tight-lipped press release, the NRO responded to the startling revelations. “The building (actually a four-building complex) is intended to support the NRO mission of meeting U.S. government space-borne intelligence reconnaissance needs…No other information about the NRO or this project has been declassified.”

Former director for the White House Office of Management and Budget, Leon E. Panetta, says he had no idea that the four office towers belonged to the government. In fact, Panetta, who is known for his mastery of the federal budget, said he was amazed that so large a facility could be funded in such secrecy. Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) said the disclosure was “a good example of what happens when the government does business in the dark…68 acres, a million square feet, and nobody knows about it.” At this point I would like to interject that we’re not talking about losing track of some warehouse full of surplus army boots. What they found was nothing less than the new consolidated headquarters for all U.S. space-borne reconnaissance.

The structure – roughly the size of the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va. – appears far too large for the number of people who work at the reconnaissance agency, said committee aides from the congressional audit. The original plans called for about 1,900 employees and 1,000 outside contractors who work for the agency to be housed there, but the actual complex is designed for 3,500 people. If there are to be 600 more people working at the NRO than what the United States government payroll specifies, just whose payroll are they on?

The complex is in clear sight of Virginia Route 28, a major highway in the suburban area. The only identification is a sign that says “Rockwell.” One thing that was known was that over the past four years, Rockwell International has paid more than $1.5 million in property taxes on the office complex. It could not be determined, however, whether government funds were used to pay the taxes or whether Rockwell used its own money. As a federal government facility, the project would have been exempt from local taxes.

It becomes clear that private industry may know more about what our government is doing than our government. Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said intelligence officials had barely mentioned the complex, even in closed, classified testimony, since the National Reconnaissance Office started planning it in 1989. “For all we know, they might have a battleship floating around out in the Pacific with a bunch of communications on it that we don’t know about.” Indeed, we appear to be riding upon a very deep and icy sea. From the decks of our ship of state we peer out into the fog at a dimly lit form. Are we looking at the tip of an iceberg?

http://aboutsilvermedicine.com/media/spy.html

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