<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-black-
wire7-2009jun07,0,7176956.story>

Near Washington, D.C., construction crews watch for mystery 'black'
wire

A Metrorail extension risks hitting communications lines, including
some used for top-secret government intelligence operations.

By Amy Gardner

June 7, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- This part happens all the time: A
construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of
congested Tysons Corner in McLean, Va., hit a fiber-optic cable no one
knew was there.

This part doesn't: Within moments, three black SUVs drove up, half a
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. 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 about the
incident in 2000. "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 risks of the 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, the CIA. With work underway on a Metrorail extension, crews are
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.

"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 a three-mile stretch.

The Tysons corridor is also home to part of MAE-East, one of the
nation's primary Internet pipelines installed years ago by the
government and private companies. Most major telecommunications
carriers link to the pipeline, meaning there's a jumble of fiber-optic
wire under the new rail route.

Moving utilities quickly and cheaply is a big part of any construction
work. But the $5.2-billion rail project, which will extend service to
Dulles International Airport, is particularly complex.

Construction crews have been digging for more than a year to shift the
wires of more than 21 private utilities out of the path of the rail
line -- and they have another year to go.

And they have snapped, accidentally, dozens of those carriers' lines,
because even not-so-secret commercial lines sometimes don't show up on
utility maps. Goguen, the utility manager, estimates that the rail
project has already hit three dozen lines.

Such issues are likely to resurface this summer, when tunnel
construction is scheduled to begin. Above the tunnel's path is a giant
microwave communications tower operated by the U.S. Army. And if you
want to know what the 280-foot tower is for, too bad. "The specific
uses of the system to which this particular antenna is attached" are
classified, Army spokesman Dave Foster said.

Other government agencies near Tysons also had little to say. A CIA
spokeswoman would not comment. And Mike Birmingham, a spokesman for
the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, would say only
that if a communications line used by the agency was cut, the nation's
intelligence-gathering would carry on uninterrupted.

"No particular project puts us at risk -- highway construction,
building construction," Birmingham said. "We don't have a single point
of failure. Our systems are redundant."

Georgelas, the developer whose company was overseeing the work when
the Chevy Suburbans drove up, said he figured 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 -- and 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.

Gardner writes for the Washington Post.