THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 11, 1994 TAG: 9408110550
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHANTILLY, VA. LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
For five years, the spooks protected their $350 million secret from some of the sharpest pencils in the U.S. Senate. But as he made sandwiches for construction workers at the buildings just off Route 28 here, Pat Charles had a pretty good idea what was going on.
``You could just smell it,'' Charles said Wednesday afternoon between puffs on a cigarette. ``Any building over three stories has gotta be involved with the government. Why the hell else would they come out here?''
A half-mile from Talkin Turkey, Charles' short-order restaurant at the fringe of the Washington suburbs, one of the U.S. government's most closely guarded agencies has been constructing a four-building, 1-million-square-foot office complex.
A lone sign outside the main gate says only ``Rockwell,'' for giant defense contractor Rockwell International. But the Clinton administration and senators disclosed this week that Rockwell is fronting for the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that deploys and operates America's spy satellites.
``You've gotta see it to believe it,'' Virginia Sen. John W. Warner, the senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Monday as the complex's purpose and scope were announced. At a committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Warner offered a postscript: ``I saw it and I still can't believe it.''
Warner and other senators have spent much of the past three days venting their outrage at how the NRO and leaders of the CIA and the Defense Department concealed the details and scope of the project from them and the general public. The CIA oversees the NRO, and money for both agencies is provided through the Pentagon's annual budget.
``I think you have not been as forthcoming as you could have been and should have been,'' Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, lectured CIA Director R. James Woolsey at Wednesday's hearing.
But in testimony and documents released to reporters, NRO leaders argued that if senators didn't know about the project, it wasn't because they hadn't been told.
The spy agency produced memos and congressional reports mentioning the building plan as early as 1989, when the very existence of the NRO was still classified.
A just-declassified section of the final 1990 appropriations act, for example, mentions a provision of $30 million ``for certain facilities costs associated with the NRO reorganization.''
And in a February 1990 letter to Sen. David L. Boren, then chairman of the intelligence panel, then-CIA Director William H. Webster and then-Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney detailed plans to seek more than $195 million for the office complex during budget years 1991-95.
One senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., was quoted Wednesday as saying he was fully aware of the NRO development and had no complaint with how the agencies involved handled it.
And some senators conceded they should have paid more attention to the project. ``We knew that the NRO was building a new headquarters facility in Northern Virginia,'' Warner said. ``In fact, I played a role in bringing the NRO building to my state.''
But by burying annual appropriations for the project in its overall budget and not volunteering details, the NRO effectively kept them in the dark, the senators said. ``It was as if the covert art was being practiced on this committee,'' complained Sen. Richard H. Bryan, D-Nev.
At Clinton's direction - the president apparently did not learn of the NRO project until last week - Woolsey and Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch have created a special committee to review the project's development and the way in which Congress was kept informed of it. They don't want to prejudice that review, the two men said Wednesday, but Woolsey conceded that ``if this (building) were begun today . . . there's no question it would be done differently.''
Scheduled for completion by September 1996, the complex is designed to consolidate NRO operations around the country. Under questioning from Warner, Woolsey conceded that it has grown even as the rest of the defense and intelligence establishments have absorbed severe budget cuts in recent years.
But Woolsey asserted that when the complex is complete and running, the result will be a leaner, less expensive NRO. ``In the short term, some of these reductions require expenses,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Color AP photo
National reconnaissance Office headquarters in Fairfax County
Color map
Area shown: New spy complex
by CNB