Inside the Pentagon: US military HQ has amenities of a small city
Date
3/29/2016 10:14:43 AM
(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Staff leave the River Entrance of the Pentagon generally used by defence ministers and generals. (File photo November 13 2011.)
Fortress-like and five-sided the Pentagon is heavily guarded. The shock of the 2001 attack on it endures. The US Defence Department's internal security team insists such a blow could never again succeed. By Johannes Schmitt-Tegge
Washington: "If anyone wants to use the rest-room by themselves now is the last chance."
The group of two dozen tourists giggles but Shakeem Serville is serious.
The young sailor stands straight in his black ceremonial guard uniform and speaks with authority. The crease of his white ascot lies perfectly under his chin. Medals shimmer and his polished patent-leather shoes sparkle.
The mandatory escort for any visitor who needs to use the rest-room during the tour is just the first indication of the level of security at the Pentagon. A few steps from where Serville stands is one of the most strictly guarded places in the United States: the entrance to the nerve centre of the American military.
The Stars and Stripes hang high in this building. Bald eagle motifs look down on the entrance hallway with watchful eyes. Card readers beep every second as employees stream in with a wave of their Pentagon pass which makes a little traffic light turn green.
Golden block letters spell out Welcome to the Pentagon. Named for its five sided shape it is located just outside Washington DC proper.
Every day about 26000 employees enter the headquarters of the most powerful military force in the world.
It is the world's largest low-rise office building with six postal codes 24 restaurants including McDonald's and Burger King post offices and banks a pharmacy a dentist and an optician boutiques along with more ordinary shops offering candy flowers jewellery and suitcases a shoemaker and a branch of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.
Starbucks operates four coffee shops in the Pentagon. On any given day 33000 cups of coffee are consumed throughout the building.
Newcomers get lost easily in the pentagonal building with its confusing array of levels concentric rings and corridors. Someone looking for the laundry service in 2E1076 must go to the second floor in the outer E ring find corridor 1 and room 076.
US Navy serviceman Shakeem Serville lays down the security rules to visitors to the Pentagon. (File photo November 13 2011.)
Once an employee understands the numbering system he or she can go anywhere in the Pentagon in seven minutes or less.
An electric scooter makes the trip even shorter but people who drive them must register with the Department of Motor Vehicles and may only park at designated locations or risk being towed.
"It's like a small city" said Steven Calvery who heads the Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA). The estimated 1300 employees of the security agency are the best of the best in Calvery's estimation. Only about 1 per cent of applicants to be in the PFPA are selected.
Only the White House and the US Capitol are guarded as strictly.
"We understand that we are a terrorist target" Calvery said. "We are one of the few places in the US that's actually been attacked successfully."
The trauma of September 11 2001 is still felt deeply. The 184 people who died when five men of the terrorist network al-Qaeda flew a passenger jet traveling at 850 kilometres per hour into the Pentagon are memorialized outside the building.
The Boeing 757 crashed through three of the building's rings and put a huge crack through the reinforced concrete. An area equal to five football fields was destroyed or damaged.
Firefighters fought for three and a half days to extinguish the kerosene-fueled fire. Soot on an outer wall and on a door handle was left deliberately in place as a reminder.
The attack forced the government to rethink its defences against terrorism.
"The whole threat environment changed after 9/11" said Calvery. Over night the mission changed for the whole department."
Suddenly security had to be increased at monuments and symbols of the United States such as the Statue of Liberty.
"Who would've thought that we had to worry about a plane crashing into the Pentagon? No one. It wasn't in anybody's consciousness that that was even in the realm of possibility."
And so the building completed in 1941 began growing into a fortress.
At the main entrance the fear of attack is tangible in the air. Behind barricades and checkpoints a security guard is posted at a steel crash barrier machine gun at the ready.
"Some people are afraid because of the things that have happened in the past" said Latricia Prioleau who works in the gift shop. The 32-year-old nevertheless likes her job.
The phrase "Pentagon. Protect This House" written on her hoodie is visible only after the African-American woman pulls her braids aside. The shop sells little army helmets mugs and ties with the Pentagon logo and matching baby bibs.
The military hall of fame is not far from the landscaped inner courtyard. Exhibits set up in the corridor tell the stories of the two world wars the Gulf war the carnage of Vietnam and of flying aces who shot down five or more enemy planes.
The exhibit also honours five-star General Dwight Eisenhower and recognizes what it calls the "forgotten victory" in Korea. It includes a model of a B29 bomber which was used in 1945 to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
But the patriotic display would not be complete without the house's own art collection.
In it US military superiority is transfigured in oil on canvas into a role as peacemaker. Camouflaged combat units look towards a golden dawn Army Rangers are shown in action in the dead of night Predator and Reaper drones land in a desert in the Middle East.
The title of an oil painting showing a transport aircraft is Angel on My Shoulder.
Deep inside the Pentagon behind other doors opened only by code waits John O'Neill.
In his carpet-muffled operations centre full of monitors mounted on the walls all security threads tie together: cameras access and alarm systems the status of all elevators and escalators the police radio and the air traffic control data on explosives and biological chemical and nuclear weapons.
Could today's technology have prevented the devastating terrorist attack of 9/11?
"Yes absolutely" said O'Neill. "People just didn't think it could happen."
Beside him hangs a black screen with small green aircraft symbols on a schematic map of the US capital. It's the control system of the Federal Aviation Administration. Its link into the Pentagon is a direct result of the al-Qaeda terrorist attack.
The Pentagon's current active operations are many. It has been conducting airstrikes on terrorists in Iraq and Syria for months. In Afghanistan and Iraq many thousands of US troops are deployed to improve security in those two countries. Thousands more guard Kuwait and South Korea.
While 1.3 million US military personnel worldwide do their jobs and miss their families Carol Bull sells a bouquet of flowers at her Pentagon shop. When dpa's reporter spoke to her the shop was in the process of closing because another enterprise had won the flower-shop concession.
"I cannot believe that you are leaving" said a customer in camouflage.
"It was not our idea" Bull replies. "We did not want to go." When the sad news came that her proposal to continue fell short she brought pies to her employees in a sign that at the Pentagon "we're really a big family."
dpa